Royal Central School of Speech and Drama
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Curated Conversation Led by Key People
No full textBorn of the pioneering collaboration between the University of Birmingham and the Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC), the Radical Mischief conference offers an unmissable opportunity to be involved in an urgent and open conversation about what thought and theatre can do in our time at the RSC’s centre for research and development, The Other Place
Capital, Cooperation and Creating Performance: Blood Water Theatre Develops Ownership in Collaborative Theatre Practice
No full textThis thesis is developed from an experiment undertaken between 2011 and 2014. It interrogates Marx’s theory of capital, with a particular focus on cooperation. The purpose of the experiment was to develop a model for non-hierarchical collaborative theatre premised on collective ownership. My personal experience of collaborations and the literature in this field pointed to an erosion of the political roots of the theatre collectives formed in the 1950s and 1960s. Since then collaboration has come to reflect capitalist modes of production, characterised by hierarchy and utility, distancing it from its earlier intentions to promote equality in the making of theatre. By interrogating Marx’s theory of capital through practice, I suggest possibilities for reclaiming shared ownership in collaborative theatre-making. While the argument for ownership originates from capital and cooperation, it is developed through a theoretical and practical engagement with Engels’ three laws of the dialectic. I identify capital and cooperation to be the primary dialectic of capitalist economy and transpose this to the product/process dialectic in theatre-making. By applying the laws of the dialectic to the process/product dialectic, I discover a theoretical route to developing ownership in collaborative theatre. I test and refine this in practice with BloodWater Theatre, a collective of artists I formed for the purpose. I name my theory and our practice Dialectical Collaborative Theatre.
The findings of this research materialise from BloodWater Theatre’s practice of Dialectical Collaborative Theatre over the three years when we created Whose Story Is It Anyway? and Leave Your Shoes at the Door, performed at the Tron Theatre and the Centre for Contemporary Arts in Glasgow, respectively. Through observations, video diary reflections, focus group/audience feedback and dialectical analysis, I suggest how we came to own the processes and products of our labour. It is not my intention to replace capitalist modes of theatre production. These have their place. Dialectical Collaborative Theatre works within the capitalist cultural economy but it challenges its systems of production and proposes an alternative way of making theatre, working with and against normative cultural production. I hope this practice as research thesis opens up conversations and new practice which interrupt prevalent hegemonic utility-led collaborative theatre practice
Myth in Contemporary Mask Praxis: A Jungian Approach to Mask Making and Performance Within Lecoq-based Actor Created Theatre
No full textA Popular Theatre for All: Western European Theatre Direction in the Mid-Twentieth Century
No full textComposing for Voice: Exploring Voice, Language and Music
No full textComposing for Voice: Exploring Voice, Language and Music, Second Edition, elucidates how language and music function together from the perspectives of composers, singers and actors, providing an understanding of the complex functions of the voice pedagogically, musicologically and dramatically. Composing for Voice examines the voice across a wide range of musical genres (including pop, jazz, folk, classical, opera and the musical) and explores the fusion of language and music that is unique to song. This second edition is enlarged to attract a wider readership amongst all music and theatre professionals and educators, whilst also engaging an international audience with the introduction of new co-author Maria Huesca.
New to the second edition:
A review of the history of singing
An overview of the development of melisma
A chapter designed to help performers understand each other, as singers and actors often receive disparate educations
Case studies and qualitative research around song, lyric and meaning
A discussion of the synthetic voice
An introduction to the concept of embodied composition
Interviews with composers and singers
Summaries of various vocal styles, including bel canto, the lyric voice, the belt voice, the rap voice, the dramatic voice, the virtuoso voice, the folk voice, the crooner, the live voice and the actor’s voice
A website with many of the links and performances of music discussed, as well as related workshops and seminars: www.composingforvoice.com
Composing for Voice: Exploring Voice, Language and Music, Second Edition, articulates possibilities for the practical exploration of language, music and voice by composers, singers and actor
The Heterarchical Director: A Model of Authorship for the 21st Century
No full textThe keynote talk for 'Collaboration in Theatre symposium' at the University of Oxford, 19 October 2018.
Most of the directors presented in David Bradby and David Williams's seminal 1988 volume Directors' Theatre are also renowned as leaders of ensembles. This position has often been problematised in terms of authorship and the implied hierarchies. Simon Shepherd (2012) has noted that director figureheads in ensembles became increasingly unfashionable in the aftermath of poststructuralist anti-authoritarianism. At the turn of the 21st century ensemble directors have sought to emphasise the element of co-authorship in their work or a relativisation of their own authority. Mermikides and Smart (2010) have identified a contemporary prevalence of ensembles led by tandems. My own previous research has encountered reluctant ensemble leaders, directorless ensembles and leaders interested in facilitating self-determination of their groups (Radosavljevic 2013). Using notions of heterarchy and eco-leadership, this paper took the investigation forward in an attempt of defining a 21st century model of ensemble director. More specifically, the paper looked at the case study of Improbable Theatre's directorial tandem Phelim McDermott and Lee Simpson and their use of improvisation as a type of self-sustaining systemic leadership. The case study expands the theme of improvisation established in the original volume, and represents an addition to a revised anniversary edition of the book, edited by Peter Boenisch and David Williams (due in 2018). Dr Duska Radosavljevic is a Reader in Contemporary Theatre and Performance at the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama. She is the author of the award-winning Theatre-Making - Interplay Between Text and Performance in the 21st Century (2013) and editor of The Contemporary Ensemble (2013) and Theatre Criticism - Changing Landscapes (2016). The talk was introduced by Hannah Greenstreet (Jesus College) and Alexander Thomas (University College
Civility, Empathy, Democracy and Memory : Exploring the 'We' in Compromised Times
No full textIn this article I explore a number of ideas concerning civility and its relationship to democracy and empathy inspired by events (both political and cultural) in late 2017 and 2018. These ideas are a way of reflecting on the temper of our angry times, asking questions about how we engage with each other in ways that help to promote understanding and respect and the role that culture can play in facilitating this process. I end with a contemplation of three works I saw in 2018, Robin Campillo’s 2017 film 120BPM, Lluís Pasqual’s theatre production In Memoriam (Teatre Lliure Barcelona) and Albert Boadella’s performative Tabarnia. By exploring the ways in which they engage with cultures of (mis)representation, I offer a series of reflections on the ways in which culture can reaffirm its civic responsibility and offer modes of thinking through issues of community, civility and camaraderie in troubled times
Queer Stages: LGBTQ+ Venues, Drag Performance, and Hope
No full textIn Cruising Utopia José Muñoz proposes that ‘popular culture is the stage where we [queers] rehearse our identities’ . Understanding the stage as both a performance space and a temporal moment that queers are often told to get over, Muñoz argues that performance offers a mode critical, hopeful engagement with an increasingly homophobic present. Starting there, this piece cruises on the line between academic enquiry and practical account, exploring the complexities of my position in opening Her Upstairs, a queer bar and performance venue in Camden, London
Abject Digital Performance: Engaging the Politics of Electronic Waste
No full textBuilding on anthropologist Mary Douglas’s writing on the ritual function of dirt, this article presents a strategy in digital performance art that engages with electronic waste (e-waste). It is suggested that planned obsolescence in electronics is of a particular nature that facilitates the representation of consumer technologies within the logic of a “symbolic order of technological progress,” where digital devices act as mere signifiers for abstract notions of connectivity, well-being and innovation. Conceptualizing discarded electronic devices as abject technology that is positioned outside this symbolic structure, a performance practice is proposed where abject body parts and abject technologies are connected to challenge this techno-ideology