Royal Central School of Speech and Drama
Central Research and Creativity Online - Royal Central School of Speech and DramaNot a member yet
743 research outputs found
Sort by
Supporting Patients Living with Dementia During a Pandemic
No full textThis book tells the story of how digital applied theatre was adapted to support patients living with dementia across hospitals in a pandemic. The challenges, successes, and opportunities that this unusual project, Innovating Knowledge Exchange, created are shared in this book that acts as a guide to person-centred online practice. The narratives of the book share insights into horizontal team structures as ways of supporting students learning this evolving practice that adapted to COVID restrictions and in doing so opened up a whole new world of possibilities for creative practice to support the wellbeing of older adult patients in acute hospital contexts. We hope you find the journey of the evolution of this new type of practice as useful and exciting to read as we have to live, dream, and advance
Imposed Identities and British Further Education: The Experiences of Learners Classified as "Low Ability".
No full textWhat is the impact when a social identity is not chosen and embraced, but imposed upon you?
UK policy can be criticised for pressurising the education sector to funnel learners who fail their GCSEs into vocational learning courses such as Media Studies. With narratives drawn from the original, person-centred research conducted by the author in the Further Education sector, this book centres the often-discounted voices of the so-called “low ability” learners themselves.
They tell of the lack of agency that comes from having choices made for them, and the impact on their lives and identities as well as their post-education destinations. Featuring stories from a range of individual research participants, the book also explores intersectional issues, such as how race, ethnicity, socio-economic status, and language of origin can feed into the imposed identity and how it impacts their sense of self
Directors: Organisation, Authorship, and Social Production
No full textThis chapter presents a history of directorial practice in the post-war British theatre to argue that directors have been able to assert their authority over the sector thanks to their operation at the intersections of art and finance, organisation and creativity. This analysis of the work of directing owes a great deal to Ric Knowles’ development of ‘materialist semiotics’, and to Stuart Hall’s readings of the politics of cultural production and reception. The chapter extends Knowles’ and Hall’s insights into theatre production through three parallel accounts of theatre directing in the post-war period. These focus on the managerial and administrative position of the Artistic Director (key examples include Michael Buffong, Stephen Daldry, Peter Hall, Paulette Randall); ‘auteur’ directors who create theatrical ‘performance texts’ (Joan Littlewood, Simon McBurney, Katie Mitchell, Emma Rice), and directors whose artistry is to be found in social production, the shaping of relations between people in public space (Geraldine Connor, Jenny Sealey, Lois Weaver). Through this analysis of a wide range of directorial practices, the chapter aims to concretise the multiple forces and interests that govern the theatre sector, and thereby expose the social relations that shape its creative practices, and the political interests that govern them
Dancing with Coronaspheres: Expanded Breath Bodies and the Politics of Public Movement in the Age of COVID-19
No full textThis essay develops the concept of the ‘coronasphere’ to grapple with how breath shifts the perceptible extent of the body during a pandemic, and the implications of such a radically altered sense of proximity for the choreography of public movement. Coming into being through an act of perception that is entangled with responsibility to others, the coronasphere is offered as a sensory alternative to fixed-distance models of social distancing approaches to risk, one that overrides the false dichotomy between the seeming stasis of shelter-in-place on the one side, versus ‘freedom’ of movement on the other. Redefining the extent of bodies relationally by the range of their breath has implications for understanding the uneven impacts of COVID-19 in terms of tactile entanglements and the vulnerability to uninvited touch that may violate bodies as individual and impermeable, in particular when the capacity for movement is limited. Ultimately turning to the coherence of such expanded bodies in terms of individual versus communal mobilization through a series of protests, the essay shows how the pandemic can not only reify but challenge the conflation of freedom and mobility, and the sensory ramifications of this in terms of finding new ways to rebuild public life
Sixteen Things We Learned about Programming for Film Festivals Under Covid
No full textFive programme advisors from the UK’s British Film Institute (BFI) London Film Festival offer reflections on film programming during and post Covid. In addition to a discussion on hybrid festivals, the programme advisors also comment on audiences, Q&As, the engagement with filmmakers and what it means to programme for both virtual and live festival formats
The Rising Sun
No full textCreated by Variable Matter, ‘The Rising Sun’ (2022) was a snapshot of everyday people, shining a light on hidden stories of the local community, not the stereotypes that were often portrayed in this unique and changing outer East London town. Pubs were at the heart of our communities and could serve as a place of conversation. This project encouraged debate about what was possible in our town centres by building a sense of destination and pride. ‘The Rising Sun’ was an immersive multimedia installation that enveloped spectators in haze, light, and sound which evolves as time passes. Built in partnership with local people and communities, the project celebrates the voices of 100 people in Havering, mapping their histories and futures.
The installation has been designed to resemble a public house on the outside, whilst the inside offered an environment filled with a hue that follows the movements of the sun. A space of contemplation and hope.
It was built in partnership with a range of community partners, including; Ahava Community, The Bull Pub, Di’s Diamonds, Diamond Geezers (The Harrow Pub), Dicing with Life, The Golden Lion, Havering Asian Social & Welfare Association (HASWA), Havering Council, Hope Café, The Mercury Shopping Centre, Romford Markets, Romford Shopping Hall and YMCA Thames Gateway.
The aim was to use an inspiring and unusual art that could animate public space and help to bring us together. Like so many town centres, Romford was a different place following Covid, with the loss of many major retailers, and a different night-time economy landscape. The project sought to create an accessible art that would inspire a sense of placemaking.
The installation had also been designed to explore and celebrate the complexities and changing identities of East London and Essex. The borough of Havering had the 4th lowest level of public arts engagement in London, placing it firmly in the bottom third of places nationally. The Rising Sun installation, which was commissioned in partnership with Romford Business Improvement District (BID), Queen’s Theatre Hornchurch, and supported by Havering Changing, a consortium of local organizations, was part of a wider progressive strategy being undertaken in the borough to trial radical new ideas to engage local people in arts and culture in different ways. The research impact of the project was supported by Royal Central of Speech and Drama.
The installation was available to a wider audience online via an interactive digital website in which viewers were able to click on and ‘eavesdrop’ into the many captured voices. The online binaural soundscape had been built in partnership with artist/composer James Bulley and Rabbit Hole, a creative agency known for their leading digital work for Coldplay.
https://therisingsun.variablematter.com/sound-experience
Visceral Data for Dance Histories: Katherine Dunham’s People, Places, and Pieces
No full textBetween 1947-60, choreographer Katherine Dunham spent over 5000 days in hundreds of cities on six continents. During that time, almost 200 dancers, drummers, and singers travelled with her, performing over 200 repertory pieces. This essay engages with Dunham as a case study to explore the questions and problems that make data analysis and visualization meaningful for dance historical inquiry. Using a granular approach, we build datasets that elaborate the historical contours of the Dunham company as a porous and dynamic movement community as it traveled extensively through the world. Through this historical dance data, we sketch possible lines of transmission for embodied knowledge, and consider how repertory itself further circulated that knowledge. Dunham’s expansive work lends itself to digital approaches that illuminate the complex ways history is iterated across bodies, and how the specific questions raised by dance history underpin a visceral approach to the digital humanities
Movement Through Disorientation: The De-stress Through Movement Activity Pack Created for Music in Detention
No full textMovement through Disorientation” is a visual essay that presents images from—and discusses the co-authorship of—the activity pack De-Stress through Movement. The essay is a reflection, sometimes through interview format with a co-facilitator, on the images developed and drawn for the activity pack. I discuss how those images echo the practice facilitated in the detention center. I point to how we attempted to confront the impossibility of navigating the hierarchies within movement practice. I consider the decisions we made to navigate these hierarchies and how the different identities of my co-facilitators made that possible. I reveal the stories within the images that tell of the dancing and the fraternity established in the workshops