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
AntigoneNOW: Mourning and Connection Across 4 Time Zones
No full textA conversation between Sinéad Rushe and Margaret Laurena Kemp about the making of their lockdown performance film AntigoneNOW, which was rehearsed, directed and created in isolation online
Drag Histories, Herstories and Hairstories: Drag in a Changing Scene Volume 2
No full textDrawing on rich interdisciplinary research that has laced the emerging subject of drag studies as an academic discipline, this book examines how drag performance is a political, socio-cultural practice with a widespread lineage throughout the history of performance. This volume maps the multi-threaded contexts of contemporary practices while rooting them in their fabulous historical past and memory. The book examines drag histories and what drag does with history, how it enacts or tells stories about remembering and the past. Featuring work about the USA, UK and Ireland, Japan, Australia, Brazil and Barbados, this book allows the reader to engage with a range of archival research including camp and history; ethnicity and drag; queering ballet through drag; the connections between drag king and queen history; queering pantomime performance; drag and military veterans; Puerto Rican drag performers and historical film
Not Another Drag Competition From Amateur to Professional Drag Performance
No full textThis article examines Not Another Drag Competition (NADC), a small London-based drag competition that took place from 2016 to 2018, in order to argue that localized drag competitions have the potential to both reify and subvert their ‘professional’ mainstream counterparts such as RuPaul’s Drag Race (RPDR). Whereas RPDR privileges drag queens – and within that a rather narrow form a drag queening – and tends to espouse neoliberal, assimilationist politics, NADC includes a variety of gender positionalities and performance practices and aims to model a more generous, intergenerational and collective politics. In doing so, it also contests the RPDR – and more broadly the neoliberal – narrative of moving from amateur to professional.
NADC playfully engaged with the proliferation of drag competitions in the wake of RPDR, while taking seriously the opportunities for development and professional growth for younger or newer drag performers on the scene. Actively rejecting binaries or hierarchies of form (e.g. between kings and queens) or identity (e.g. female-identified drag queens, or trans and/or non-binary people in drag), the competition launched the career of a number of performers on the London scene. This article takes examples of the ways in which NADC might exert a drag upon (and resist) dominant and problematic forms such as RPDR and as such how drag as a queer performance form could drag neoliberal structures of competition, professionalization and progress more broadly. Ultimately, it argues that while drag is inculcated complexly in systems that oppress queer people, when looking at drag (and certain drag competitions) it is also possible to find ways to resist and subvert these systems and in so doing find possibilities for hope and survival
Applied Theatre: A Pedagogy of Utopia
No full textApplied Theatre is a widely accepted term to describe a set of practices that encompass community, social and participatory theatre making. It is an area of performance practice that is flourishing across global contexts and communities. However, this proliferation is not unproblematic. A Pedagogy of Utopia offers a critical consideration of long-term applied and participatory theatre projects. In doing so, it provides a timely analysis of some of the concepts that inform applied theatre and outlines a new way of thinking about making theatre with differing groups of participants.
The book problematizes some key concepts including safe spaces, voice, ethical practice and resistance. Selina Busby analyses applied theatre projects in India, the USA and the UK, in youth theatres, homeless shelters, prisons and with those living in informal housing settlements to consider her key question: What might a pedagogy of utopia look like? Drawing on 20-years of practice in a range of contexts, this book focuses on long-term interventions that raise troubling questions about applied theatre, cultural colonialism and power, while arguing that community or participatory theatre conversely has the potential to generate a resilient sense of optimism, or what Busby terms, a 'nebulous utopia
Skin Hunger by Dante or Die Written by Ann Akinrijin, Tim Crouch and Sonia Hughes
No full textIn the middle of the pandemic, a creative team of actors, directors, writers, movement director, lighting and sound designers created a work about touch. In the Summer of 2021, under strict COVID protocols, an immersive performance of new writings by Ann Akinrijin, Tim Crouch and Sonia Hughes, audiences were invited to touch by performers. This book is a trace of the creative process in words, photos, texts and reflections from those involved