Royal Central School of Speech and Drama
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Performing Herself: Autobiography and Fanny Kelly's Dramatic Recollections
No full textThis unique book contains the never before published script of the first ever one-woman show, written by Fanny Kelly. The script was performed in Britain in the 1830s and 40s, based on Kelly's own experiences and offers a picture of the exuberant and often bizarre Georgian entertainment world.
The performance text is introduced, edited and explained by Gilli Bush-Bailey, who focuses 21st-century revisionist scholarship on Kelly's story. It is an innovative contribution to the modern debate on biographical and autobiographical writing, whilst also being a valuable text for those who wish to study comedy and women's performance. The materials and methods of the modern stand-up routine are already to be seen in this unusual text.
This book will appeal to students and scholars who are involved in performance, theatre history, or biography. It is also an accessible text for the interested general reader
A Paidic Aesthetic: An Analysis of Games in the Ludic Pedagogy of Philippe Gaulier
No full textThis article analyses how Philippe Gaulier's use of play in performer training produces a particular type of ludic performance: a paidic aesthetic. Based on Roger Caillois' play theory, specifically the dialectical relation between the paidic (pleasurable play) and ludus (rule-bound, complex play), the analysis identifies how play forms (games) are intrinsic to Gaulier's pedagogy and the type of performance this produces. The author argues for an autotelic function of play forms, how these produce a ludic dialectic between paidia and ludus in order to demonstrate the function of games in Gaulier's performer training. Focusing on the production of pleasure infused play and the function of failure in training for clown, the aim of this article is to demonstrate how play theory can tease out the different components of ways of playing in order to develop understanding of the complexity and potential of ludic approaches to performer training
'That's Who I'd Be, If I Could Sing': Reflections on a Verbatim Project with Mothers of Sexually Abused Children
No full textIn this article I consider a charge often levelled against verbatim theatre: that it is essentially appropriative and that it uses the life experiences of vulnerable and marginalized individuals and communities within our society in order to authenticate or invigorate theatre making. By using as a case study, a verbatim theatre project I led involving the charity Mosac and seven mothers of sexually abused children, I examine the process and the relationships that emerged between the verbatim subjects who offered up their stories as part of the project and the actors who played them at a public rehearsed reading of the play. Drawing on psychoanalytic readings of 'identification', I challenge the assumption that appropriation always only equates to an eradication of the other by the self. Instead I propose that the enactment of the verbatim subject's story by a professional actor can facilitate a moment of recognition and a positive process of empathetic identification which, if handled carefully, can be beneficial or even therapeutic for the verbatim subjects who offer up their stories in this way
Theatrical Photography, Photographic Theatre and the Still: The Photography of Sophie Moscoso at the Theatre du Soleil
No full textPhotography impacts upon how theatre performance is seen and done, just as performance impacts upon photography. The significance of video being employed at the Theatre du Soliel just as dynamic ways of viewing video have changed the viewer's relationship to the still is highlighted
Challenging Place 'Live Poster'
No full textA ‘live poster’ on the first Stage/Outcome of the two-day research project planning intensive. This focused on ‘collaborative methodology: a resource for research’ and articulated some of the opportunities available in a joint process of this nature and how the group endeavoured to share knowledges
Towards a New Sissiography: The Sissy in Body, Abuse and Space in Performance Practice
No full textAlong with the live performance of Sissy!, the present document constitutes research centred on the figure of the ‘sissy,’ defined in relation to the effeminate homosexual. The practice-based study proposes ‘sissiography’ as an original concept, conceived of as a negotiation between the three elements of body, abuse and space. Bodily traits are investigated under the coin ‘negotiable markers’ to include mannerisms, behaviours and sartorial choices commonly regarded as characteristic of the sissy. Abuse is studied in reference to Butler’s notion of ‘words that wound’ as well as to incidents of hate crime in London. Thirdly, sissy space is analysed in relation to safe and hostile urban zones. The study concludes that the unifying principle at the heart of sissiography is the concept of failure.
In examining the writing of sissiness, the thesis considers existing scholarship on sissies and positions itself against the diagnostic concept of so-called Gender Identity Disorder. The argument developed here is underpinned by autobiographical elements. Historical discourses of male effeminacy are presented to challenge the notion of fixity in perceptions of the sissy.
While offering a written investigation of the concept of sissiography, the study also develops an analysis through the researcher’s body in a series of studio experimentations and live performances. Practice is the central instrument of the enquiry, facilitating the writing of new sissy discourses. A cyclical mode of research leads from practice to theory and back to practice. The sissiography is thereby shown to be a form of inscription on the body, a form of writing space, of writing movement, of reinscribing history, of describing possible sissy futures
Applied Aurality: Noise and the Aesthetics of Access in Graeae's 'Reasons to be Cheerful'
No full textAs co-editor of Theatre Noise, I felt we couldn't produce a this volume without attention to the sound of performance by theatre makers who do not conform to normative concepts of hearing: deaf artists who make theatre, as a culturally defined group as well as with/for the 'hearing audience'. This, this chapter focuses on a form of applied theatre: disabled performance, and will review - or more aptly, rehear - both the art of creating and the act of audience to this form of theatre. The case study in this chapter is Graeae, the UK's foremost disabled theatre company. My focus is on its creative practice that includes sensory and physically disabled artists and in addition embraces integration with non-disabled performers and audiences. This chapter pays attention to the aural strategies and acts of sounding by the deaf artists involved; in the case of 'Reasons to be Cheerful' both director Jenny Sealey and lead actor, Stephen Collins, This is not an analysis of Theatre for the Deaf, nor an attempt to theorise the culture if the non-hearing, but is a series of reflections on the applied aurality of theatre making by these deaf artists that, in turn, offer a reconsideration of the theories of sound and noise in relation to performance. Rather than a 'refusal of intersubjectivity', I argue that the act of sounding by the Deaf is an act of emerging subjectivity which, when considered in relation to theories of noise, is more than readily available to be heard