Royal Central School of Speech and Drama
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Symposium: Training in a Cold Climate
No full textTraining in a Cold Climate was a roundtable event that took place at the University of Leeds on 30th October 2013. This event was conceived and an adjunct this special issue and its aim was to open up a space in which those involved in training as students, educators, scholars and practitioners, could discuss, contest and challenge the present state of performer training as well as imagine its potential futures. In his introduction to the event, Jonathan Pitches identified a number of developments that possibly 'chill' the climate and beg for critical thinking and action: the recent proposed 'beefing up' of 'softer' subjects at GCSEs, including Drama, and a parallel move away from 'practice'; the absence of creative arts in a list of 'facilitating subjects' by Russell Group universities; the shift from training to apprenticeship in teacher training degrees; the encouragement of private universities to enter the marker. Add to this list the recent rise of university tuition fees, it would be fair to say that decisions and discussions are underpinned by a sense of anxiety and what Anthony Giddens calls 'manufactured uncertainty' (Giddens 1995 as cited in Levitas 2000, p. 201). What should the aims of a training programme be? How can a training programme be both artistically coherent and financially sustainable? How should a form or programme of training relate to global and local contexts? The event consisted of three parts. In the first, the guest speakers positioned themselves and their work within existing contexts and offered their perspectives on the questions above. In the second, they were invited to imagine and spell out their utopias; their ideal notions and conditions of training. What could possible futures hold and how can we navigate towards a future that is closer to the needs and ideals we feel in our present? The third was an open discussion amongst the panellists and the audience. This edited transcript follows the order of the event and captures about half of its content
Towards Performed Dramaturgy
No full textecent shifts in the theatrical landscape have had corresponding implications for dramaturgy. The way we think about theatre and performance today has changed our approaches to theatre making and composition. Emerging new aesthetics and new areas of dramaturgical work such as live art, devised and physical theatre, experimental performance, and dance demand new approaches and sensibilities.
New Dramaturgy: International Perspectives on Theory and Practice is the first book to explore new dramaturgy in depth, and considers how our thinking about dramaturgy and the role of the dramaturg has been transformed
Spanish Cinema 1973-2010: Auteurism, Politics, Landscape and Memory
No full textThis collection of essays offers a new lens through which to examine Spain’s cinema production following the decades of isolation imposed by the Franco regime. The seventeen key films analysed in the volume span a period of 35 years that have been crucial in the development of Spain, Spanish democracy and Spanish cinema. They encompass different genres (horror, thriller, melodrama, social realism, documentary). Both popular (Los Abrazos Rotos/Broken Embraces, Vicky Cristina Barcelona) and more select art house fare (En la Ciudad de Sylvia/In the City of Sylvia, El Espíritu de la Xolmena/Spirit of the Beehive). They are made in different languages: English (as both first and second language), Basque, Castilian, Catalan and French
Advance Notice
No full textThis note provides a brief introduction to Advance, a project currently being tracked and documented by a research team from the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama. I am joined by Dr Katharine Low and Dr Sarah Grochala who bring their separate expertise and interest in documenting practices from applied theatre, playwriting and performance to our collaboration with industry partners Tonic Theatre. Funded by the Paul Hamlyn Foundation, Advance is working with (and for) 11 leading theatre companies across England, facilitating reflection and knowledge exchange on the means to achieve greater gender equality in the theatre industry’s workforces and repertoires. A full report on Tonic’s work through Advance will be published later in the year. What follows is not, therefore, an assessment but a pause in the process of critical documentation, a reflection on the terms by which questions on the present project, and projects undertaken within the recent past, might be seen to interact. It hopes to link to earlier key moments, to raise queries and to take notes from colleagues, who are cordially invited to respond to me [email protected] rather than to Tonic Theatre or the participating companies. For a list of these companies see http://www.tonictheatre.co.uk/our-work/initiatives/advance.php
Inheriting Dance’s Alternative Histories
No full textIn 1975, German choreographer Kurt Jooss created his last dance, Dixit Dominus, for Swedish-based Indian dancer Lilavati Häger. After Rani Nair reconstructed what is often seen as a “minor” work, she then created Future Memory (2012) to engage more directly with her inheritance, from caring for the personal things and stories that surrounded the piece to re-working its promise of dancing between European and Indian forms. Working outward from my position as dramaturg and historian for this project, this essay addresses the potential and precariousness of contemporary dance's experiments with redoing history at the intersection of multiple contested legacies
Film Festivals: Cinema and Cultural Exchange.
No full textHistorically the focus of journalistic reports, film festivals have recently started to attract the attention of academics, applying concepts from crossdisciplinary fields such as cultural studies and ethnography. As a result, film festivals are now gradually being institutionalised as a field of study within the wider discipline of Film Studies. This thesis adds to this growing body of literature by exploring film festivals as sites of cinematic, cultural, social, political and economic exchange, as well as the multiple ways in which these events produce cultural value. This thesis draws on three detailed case studies: the Buenos Aires Festival de Cine Independiente, known as BAFICI, in Argentina; the BFI London Film Festival in the UK; and the San Sebastián International Film Festival in Spain. Issues of national identity, history and memory inform and become crystallised in each festival. They acquire a particular resonance in the tensions between national and regional allegiances in San Sebastián, as well as the pressures between cinema as culture and entertainment in the case of London. The focus on BAFICI allows for a development of the argument beyond critics and academics’ habitual focus on Western film festivals. Transnational events by nature, all three festivals relate in complex ways to their own national cinemas and localities, as well as to other festivals within the international circuit. My personal experience as film critic and reporter at festivals is underpinned by academic research, giving this project a dual perspective. With findings based on extensive interviews (primary research) with the teams responsible for programming the three festivals, this thesis aims to bring into the public domain the views of those who have shaped these festivals, creating a new body of material that can be drawn on by future scholars working in this area
'Women Like Us'?
No full textThis article works to excavate the historical depth of representations of working women in comedy, arguing that the constructio∂n of women in comedy has deep historical roots that are reflected in cultural understandings and expectations of women in popular performance today. Catherine Tate's outraged (and outrageous) ‘Nan’ (2004), Mabel Constanduros’ ‘Emily’, a forerunner to her long-running and forthright radio character ‘Grandma Buggins’ (1925–1948) and Fanny Kelly's lovelorn, and lachrymose household servant, ‘Sally Simkin’ (1832), are just three examples among the numerous characters created by female comedy writers and performers over the past 200 years. Delighting their audiences with a potent mix of sentimentality undercut by their deliciously shocking observations about life, these characters work to demonstrate a deeply embedded set of constructs that make up the stereotypical representation of the metropolitan working woman. Deploying a deliberately eclectic mix of approaches from the cultural turn in performance theory and feminist revision, this article uses the methodologies of theatre historiography to make connections between the latest women on the comedy sketch scene and their predecessors, arguing for renewed understandings in our critical appreciation of writing and performing ‘funny’ women
