Royal Central School of Speech and Drama
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Voice and Speech in the Theatre
No full textA re-framing of Clifford Turner's classic voice training manual with an introduction by Jane Boston
A Social Use of Theatre
No full textThis article is based on a workshop run by Dr. Low at the 14th Conference of the Union for International Cancer Control, held in Stockholm from 30 May - 2 June 2007
Transient Roots Performance, Place and Exterritorials
No full textThis article interrogates the performance of place as facilitating transient roots for 'exterratorials' (Bauman's neologism [2001] for contemporary mobile humanity). How might place be performed in non-permanent environments? What are the implications for a performance of place when participants are only briefly and temporarily located? What might characterise such performance activity? For an academic in the field of applied and social theatre (as I am), praxis arising from exploring performance in temporary locations might well have uses for drama facilitation contexts. Could a detailed and closely analysed research experiment in performing place yield transferrable ontologies and strategies for engaging displaced transient peoples with their with their temporary - or exterritorial - locality
A Disappearing Number - Complicite Performance Video
No full textVideo of the Complicite production of 'A Disappearing Number' for which I was Associate Director.
Winner of the 2008 Olivier Award for Best New Play, 'A Disappearing Number' tells the true story of the extraordinary collaboration between Cambridge professor G.H. Hardy and self-taught mathematician Srinivasa Ramanujan, who made some of the most significant mathematical discoveries of the 20th century.
This production was devised by Complicité and directed by Simon McBurney and is accompanied by an in-depth conversation about the show and the company, between Co-Founder Annabel Arden and Associate Director Catherine Alexander.
Visit the Complicité website for A Disappearing Number's Resource Pack
Taking Place: Some Reflections on Site, Performance and Community
No full textAn introductory editorial on the articles included in this special issue of Research in Drama Education, which has as its theme, 'On site and place'
Performance, Place and Allotments: Feast or Famine?
No full textoai:repository.cssd.ac.uk:1Interrogations into ‘place’ have been undertaken in performance theory in tandem with an increasing transdisciplinary positioning and interest in the concept. There is still a lack of clarity about the particularity of place-based performance however. How is it differentiated from, say, site-specific performance? Can place be distinguished from site as a focus for performance projects?
Pearson and Shanks describe site-specific performances as ‘conceived for, mounted within and conditioned by the particulars of found spaces, existing social situations or locations, both used and disused ... They are inseparable from their sites, the only contexts within which they are intelligible’. Place-based performance, I am suggesting, assumes a strongly specific site but expects more from its participants. Place is a contested concept; I am reading it, following Escobar, ‘in an empirical and analytical sense – that is, as a category of thought and as a constructed reality’. Here, place is interpreted as a perceived environment or geographical area with which individuals (or groups) believe they have a personal relationship; there is a psychological interaction between person and location. It follows, then, that a performance of place would demonstrate the materiality and psychological construction of that place. I am suggesting Feast as an example of such a demonstration where there is evidence that participants’ responses to the combination of site and performance were intrinsically connected with their subjective locus and where the impact of the event affected their understanding and experience of that place.
This article uses Feast, then, to articulate an emerging theory of the performance of place asking how performance can impact upon participants’ understandings of place and what function performance can have in demonstrating place. Feast was set on a London allotment as part of a major theatre ‘Enquiry’ by LIFT (London International Festival of Theatre). In moving towards a theory of the performance of place therefore, the article engages briefly with LIFT, the Enquiry, ecology and allotments
Performance Lighting Design: How to Light for the Stage, Concerts and Live Events
No full textNew technologies have made lighting more prominent in live performances of all kinds, not just stage theatre, and in many courses lighting has been subsumed into `performance lighting'. Performance Lighting Design is a practical guide to the art and technique of lighting for the stage, concerts, and live events. The book will also cover the use of projected images in performance including projected scenery on the West End stage, in fringe shows, and on the stadium "rock" stage, as well as the use of images from live camera and from other sources as "performers".
The book will serve students of lighting design and will also be accessible to anyone with an awareness of technical theatre. Practical knowledge is combined with aesthetic and theoretical considerations. The book will also address the difficult area of getting inspiration and evolving design ideas through a broad range of performance genre. The author will discuss the pros and cons of several computer based techniques, and incorporate 25 years of his own professional experience in the UK and Europe
The Fluidity of Bodies, Gender, Identity and Structure in the Plays of Sarah Kane
No full textAlternatives Within the Mainstream II follows from the first volume’s dedication to a critical appreciation of and a tracing of trajectories of the theatres of our Others on the British stage. The first volume Alternatives Within the Mainstream: British Black and Asian Theatres traced a history of Black and Asian British plays, playwrights, theatre companies and theatre voices. The two volumes celebrate the plurality on the post-war British stage in terms of class, gender, race and sexualities.
Alternatives Within the Mainstream II: Queer Theatres in Post-war Britain is an introduction to queer sexualities and their presence on the post-war British stage. From an introduction which addresses the possibilities of an undoing of repressiveness in desiring another, this volume charts a history of queer on the British stage, from a climate of sexual repressiveness and criminalisation, to a period of legal acceptance of homosexual desire. It covers gay, les, trans and queer British theatres, the influence of American queer theatre, AIDS consciousness, black queer theatre and television drama. Alternatives Within the Mainstream II: Queer Theatres in Post-war Britain is aimed as an introductory text which introduces the several plays, playwrights, theatre companies and queer theorists to students and scholars of contemporary queer British theatres.
This book is dedicated to Anthony Blair and the Labour government for bringing in the Civil Partnerships Act
Creative Writing and Curated Speaking
No full textA discussion of the role of the writer in verbatim theatre, where the dialogue is taken from real life interviews with the subjects. The event took place as part of a symposium on verbatim theatre at the Central School of Speech & Drama, 13-14 July, 2006. The discusion was chaired by Professor Dan Rebellato, Professor of Conetmporary Theatre, Royal Holloway, University of London