Tag Archives: performance

Posted on by

GRiT: ‘Unruly Access’ 11 December 2019 4pm

Please see details below of this year’s first GRiT (Graduate Research in Theatre) event. 

Dr Lewis Church’s talk ‘Unruly Access’ will take place on Wednesday, 11 Dec  (4-5 pm) in Room 106 (43 Gordon Square).

‘Unruly Access’

This presentation will discuss how research on the experimental and sometimes seemingly inaccessible topics of experimental theatre practices of the twentieth century, contemporary live art, and subcultures can sit alongside a parallel professional practice as an arts writer and editor concerned chiefly with notions of access. Both have been enriched by the other, and the attempt to address structural issues in the creative sector, (particularly in relation to gender, race, class and disability) can perhaps benefit from a commitment and attention to the uncomfortable, unconventional and occasionally unruly.

Dr Lewis Church is an academic and writer based in London, who completed his Ph.D. in the Drama Department at Queen Mary University in 2017. In 2019/20 he holds the position of associate lecturer at Queen Mary and Birkbeck Universities, and has previously taught at Edinburgh University and the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama. His research has been published in PAJ, The First Line and Punk & Post-Punk. Other writing has been published in Something Other, The Art Story, Hackney Citizen, Exeunt and Loose Lips, and by SPILL Festival of Performance, the Live Art Development Agency and The Sick of the Fringe. He has worked as an artistic collaborator with Sh!t Theatre, Daniel Oliver, Ron Athey, Vaginal Davis, Franko B, Bobby Baker, Stacy Makishi and others. 

. . Category: Archived Events . Tags: , , ,
Posted on by

Birkbeck Centre for Contemporary Theatre – Autumn 2019

Birkbeck Centre for Contemporary Theatre – Autumn 2019

Scream Queer Murder!

On Thursday 7 November, 6-7.30pm, join us for a panel and discussion considering the “gay” characters in Agatha Christie’s work and the R & D of Scream Queer Murder! by Martin Lewton, recently premiered at the International Agatha Christie Festival 2019. The evening includes readings from the play, topped off by a generous dollop of Polari – the secret language gay men used to protect themselves.

This event is free of charge to attend – book here.

Contributors:

  • Andrew McKinnon Theatre Director, and Director of Studies, Institute of the Arts Barcelona
  • Martin Lewton Fellow of Birkbeck Centre for Contemporary Theatre, Artistic Director of Theatre Northand ¡Barcelona Solo! Festival, and author of Scream Queer Murder!
  • Julius Green Fellow of Birkbeck Centre for Contemporary Theatre, Olivier award-winning theatre producer, and author of Agatha Christie: A Life in Theatre and How To Produce a West End Show
  • Dr JC Bernthal Panel Tutor, University of Cambridge and Visiting Lecturer, Middlesex University, whose books include Queering Agatha Christie: Revisiting the Golden Age of Detective Fiction

Graduate Research in Theatre

GRiT is our termly research seminar, featuring presentations by visiting scholars, faculty and graduate students. There is no need to book in advance to attend.

Wednesday 11 December, 4-5pm (Room 106), Lewis Church (Birkbeck, and independent scholar, writer and producer), ‘Unruly Access’
This presentation will discuss how research on the experimental and sometimes seemingly inaccessible topics of experimental theatre practices of the twentieth century, contemporary live art, and subcultures can sit alongside a parallel professional practice as an arts writer and editor concerned chiefly with notions of access. Both have been enriched by the other, and the attempt to address structural issues in the creative sector, (particularly in relation to gender, race, class and disability) can perhaps benefit from a commitment and attention to the uncomfortable, unconventional and occasionally unruly.

Forthcoming sessions:

  • Wednesday 11 March, 4-5pm (Keynes Library): Ian Morgan (RADA)
  • Wednesday 6 May, 4-5pm (Keynes Library): Sarah Grochala (Royal Central School of Speech and Drama)

Birkbeck Theatre Alumni

Birkbeck Theatre Alumni network was set up in 2019 to explore ways for graduates of Birkbeck theatre programmes to stay in touch and share skills, resources and opportunities.

Our first meeting will take place on Friday 29 November at 6-8 pm in G10, 43 Gordon Square. For more information, and to book, click here.

London Theatre Seminar

Birkbeck Centre for Contemporary Theatre also supports London Theatre Seminar. For the schedule of seminars for 2019-20, click here

For regular Centre news click here or follow us on Twitter @BirkbeckCCT

. . Category: Archived Events . Tags: , , , , , , , , ,
Posted on by

GRiT – Graduate Research in Theatre event: 28 Nov 4-5pm

I would like to invite you to this year’s first GRiT – Graduate Research in Theatre event. The talk by Prof. Alyson Campbell (University of Melbourne), whose research focuses on gender/queer theories and dramaturgies, and the experiential nature of performance, will take place on Wednesday, 28 Nov (4-5 pm) at the Keynes Library (43 Gordon Square). 

Please see the link below for further information on her work:

https://findanexpert.unimelb.edu.au/display/person10953

Please email me at s.ilter@bbk.ac.uk if you would like to attend this event.

All the Best,

Dr Seda Ilter

. . Category: Archived Events . Tags: , , , , , ,
Posted on by

GRiT: Graduate Research in Theatre 2018-19 programme of events

We would like to invite you to this year’s GRiT: Graduate Research in Theatre events. GRiT is our termly research seminars, featuring presentations by visiting scholars, faculty and graduate students.

Please note down the dates below, and let me know if you have any questions: s.ilter@bbk.ac.uk

  • 28 Nov, 4-5pm (Keynes Library): Prof Dr Alyson Campbell (University of Melbourne)
  • 13 Feb, 4-5pm (Room 106): Daragh Carville (Lecturer in Creative Writing at Bbk, playwright and screenwriter)
  • 20 March, 4-5pm (106): Sasha Dovzhyk (PhD at Bbk – working on the Victorian artist Aubrey Beardsley in early 20th century Russia)
  • 8 May, 4-5pm (106): Hannah Barton (PhD at Bbk – working on internet memes as discourse strategies within a networked culture)

It would be wonderful to see you at these events, and I’d appreciate if you could circulate it amongst your peers.

. . Category: Archived Events . Tags: , , , , ,
Posted on by

CFP Action: Arrest – Performance, protest, and the law deadline 11 June 2018

Action: Arrest 

Performance, protest, and the law

A one-day symposium

Keynote Speaker: Jennifer Doyle (University of California, Riverside)

Join us in exploring the role of action and arrest in protest, law, and performance. Taking place during the year of the Suffragette centenary, the fifty-year anniversary of the Paris ‘68 uprisings, and a period of burgeoning civil unrest and political uncertainty in the UK and worldwide, Action: Arrest looks to assess and reassess the relationship between performance, protest, and the law. Inspired by their compelling dualities, the symposium aims to open up a new set of questions that may further complicate the relationship between these terms.

Recent and ongoing people-led political movements – for example, the March for Our Lives against current US gun laws, Yarl’s Wood #HungerForFreedom hunger strikes and #Stansted15 activists fighting against inhumane detention in the UK, and global campaigns to fight gendered and sexual violence with #MeToo and #TimesUp – contribute to the sense that we are in a moment of global action, where national and international uprisings are opening up new alternatives for social and political futures. At the same time, disparities in media representation, state reactions, and police response to different forms of activism expose tensions between the hope for positive change and forward momentum and the recreation and reinforcement of existing oppressions and dynamics of power. This conference asks where performance intervenes in these tensions, examining the value of reading protest as performance, particularly as it intersects with the law and disciplinary structures of power. Grounding itself in the current political moment, we hope the conference will provide an opportunity to engage with current and historical protest in its varying forms and varying spaces – the street, the theatre, the courtroom, and the gallery, amongst others – to analyse the relationship between performance, protest, and the law.

Interdisciplinary in its aims, Action: Arrest draws together academics, artists and practitioners from varying disciplines and their intersections. Honouring the constitutive links between methodologies, content, and form, Action: Arrest resists the cloistering control of academic tradition and discipline and encourages diversity, collaboration, and dissent. We welcome proposals for 15-20 minute papers, 10-minute provocations, and collaborative and performative papers. We are also very open to suggestions for alternative formats or styles of presentation not listed here.

Proposals for contributions that bear directly on one or more of the above themes are welcome. These might address:

  • Explorations of action and arrest as bodily and affective, and considerations of how they define different bodies.
  • Racialised, gendered and sexualised bodies in performance, protest and arrest.
  • Thinking through the relationship between movement, action, arrest, and stillness, and their relationship to political uprisings and the law.
  • How does action catalyse change, and how is action used as a means of control?
  • Affect as protest, the body protesting itself through exhaustion, fatigue, boredom, irritation, sweat, and excitement.
  • (Non)/Spectacular violence and protest.
  • Protest in and outside the museum, gallery and/or institutional setting (e.g. WHEREISANAMENDIETA, Liberate Tate etc).
  • Protest as the duality and contradictions of arrest as a control of bodies, and as a protection of bodies.
  • Explorations of restorative and transformative justice, penal reform, and abolitionism.
  • The influence of legal structures and policies on recent or historical actions and protests, with particular focus on how this has been used as a regulatory and disciplinary tool.
  • Protest, legal action, and minoritarian feminisms.
  • Resistance to repressive politics through action, arrest, stillness and movement.
  • Considerations of police behaviour, civil unrest, and dissonance. Moments of action and stillness between dissenters and those attempting to exert state control. (e.g. riot police and protesters, state or police interventions in performance works).
  • The relationship between arrest as being taken into legal custody, and arrest as inaction or stillness.
  • The capitulation of radicalism under neoliberal/late capitalist regimes.
  • Languages of visual activism.

Please send 250 word abstracts and 100 word bios and/or artist statements to actionarrest@gmail.com by the 11th of June 2018.

Bryony White and Savannah Whaley

King’s College London

www.actionarrest.wordpress.com

Kindly supported by the London Arts and Humanities Partnership

 

. . Category: Archived Call for Papers . Tags: , , , , , ,
Posted on by

GRiT: Jaswinder Blackwell-Pal, ‘The Value of Authenticity’ – 2 November 2017

Join us tomorrow, Thursday 2 November, 4-5pm, in G04, 43 Gordon Square for our first GRiT session of the academic year:

Jaswinder Blackwell-Pal (Birkbeck PhD candidate), ‘The Value of Authenticity’

This presentation will explore the notion of ‘the authentic’ in service and hospitality work, comparing it with the search for ‘truthful’ or ‘authentic’ performance in theatre. Using workplace training documents which provide instructions for employee’s behaviour and emotional labour, it will consider what role these social performances play in generating value, and why ‘authentic’ experience has become so prized by businesses and consumers in today’s economy.

GRiT (Graduate Research in Theatre) is Birkbeck’s research seminar series on theatre and performance research, drawing on Birkbeck’s PhD students and academics and invited speakers. Everyone is welcome, including MA students considering PhD research in future.  

. . Category: Archived Events . Tags: , , ,
Posted on by

Birkbeck Centre for Contemporary Theatre – Autumn 2017

Welcome to a new academic year. As the term begins, we are delighted to welcome a number of new Fellows to the Centre, including Lily Hunter Green (as Artist in Residence), Kris Nelson, Amy Lamé and Scottee. For more on their work, and our other Fellows and Centre members, please click here.

Join us for a number of public events this term, which speak to the theme of night-life (no booking required):

Theatre Conversation: David Eldridge
Friday 3 November 2017, 5.30pm, G10

Writer and Birkbeck lecturer David Eldridge’s new play Beginning opens at the National Theatre in October 2017. In this Theatre Conversation, David will discuss the process by which he developed this new work, which is set over the course of a night at a party.

Performance: Nights at the Circus
Friday 17 November 2017, 6pm, G10

In a post-apocalyptic world the circus is forced to perform. As the night plays out the performers slip between their stage personas and the person they dream to be; trapped by their own desires and lusting after new sensations. A collaboration between learning-disabled and non-disabled artists exploring sex, desire and violence.

www.fauvealice.com

Film screening: Two-Lane Black Top (dir. Monte Hellman, 102 mins)
Monday 27 November, 2pm, Birkbeck Cinema

Join us for a screening of Monte Hellman’s iconic road movie, with an introduction and discussion led by Centre Fellow Andrew Dickson.

Other events this term include:

Theatre Conversation: Hannah Khalil
Monday 11 December 2017, 7.30pm, G10

Join us for a dialogue between playwright Hannah Khalil and screenwriter and Birkbeck lecturer Daragh Carville.

Irish-Palestinian playwright Hannah Khalil is one of the most exciting new voices in British theatre. Her play Scenes from 68* Years ran at the Arcola Theatre in 2016 and has been nominated for the James Tate Black Award. Her new play The Scar Test opened at the Soho Theatre in July 2017.

GRiT seminar series: Jaswinder Blackwell-Pal (PhD candidate), ‘The Value of Authenticity’
Thursday 2 November, 4pm, G04

This research will explore the notion of ‘the authentic’ in service and hospitality work, comparing it with the search for ‘truthful’ or ‘authentic’ performance in theatre. Using workplace training documents which provide instructions for employee’s behaviour and emotional labour, it will consider what role these social performances play in generating value, and why ‘authentic’ experience has become so prized by businesses and consumers in today’s economy.

Researching (with) Difficult Feelings
Thursday 14-Friday 15 December 2017

A two-day training workshop aimed at PhD students at CHASE institutions, featuring presentations by theatre academics and makers, and a keynote by Prof. Jennifer Doyle. Click here for more information.

For regular news and events, keep an eye on our new website or follow us on Twitter @BirkbeckCCT

. . Category: Archived Events . Tags: , , , , , ,
Posted on by

CFP: No Way Out: Theatre as a Mediatised Practice Deadline 24 February 2017

Call for Papers / Presentations

No Way Out: Theatre as a Mediatised Practice

TaPRA Performance & New Technologies Working Group Interim Event

20th April, Birkbeck College, University of London

21st April, London South Bank University (LSBU)

Call deadline: 24 February

Confirmed Keynote Speakers

Prof. Matthew Causey (Trinity College) (20th April @ Birkbeck College) & Prof. Andy Lavender (Surrey) (21st April @ LSBU)

Book Launch & Wine Reception

Launch of Intermediality and Spectatorship in the Theatre Work of Robert Lepage: The Solo Shows (Aristita I. Albacan, 2016). Wine reception and conversation with Professor Christopher Balme (Ludwig-Maximilians University Munich) (21st April, LSBU)

Mediatisation – the increasingly pervasive influence of new media technologies in the form of social institutions and ideological apparatuses on society, culture and consciousness since the late twentieth century – has radically shaped our everyday lives and relationships. Mediatisation as a social and cognitive phenomenon has changed the way theatre and performance are produced, shaped, performed and perceived. This shift has led to a state where there is nothing left outside of mediatisation. Hence, we argue, all contemporary theatre and performance today is mediatised.

The mediatised theatre and performance of the 21st century propose a practice, and offer ground for the development of a scholarship, in which ontological boundaries between media and performance, live and mediatised, analogue and digital, are no longer useful or even possible to consider. Mediatisation lies within the aesthetic and political [un]consciousness of the works, whichever form or manifestation those choose to take. It is, directly or implicitly, embedded within their architectures, dynamics, and processes; we might even argue that, in some ways, mediatisation is the works.

This two-day symposium seeks to investigate the processes and practices of mediatised theatre and performance in the 21st century with a particular interest in such questions as: How does the mediatised theatre and performance of the 21st century engage with digital culture and labour as, partly, products of capitalist ideology and economy? Is there potential for resistance (in the wider understanding of the term) within theatre as a mediatised practice? Or, to use Stiegler’s analogy, can theatre and performance approach the digital as a pharmakon in order to engender social ‘remedy’, opening up critical spaces for resistance and dissensus in contemporary neoliberal culture?

We invite submissions for research papers and presentations that explore theatre/performance as a mediatised practice. Submission can respond –but are not limited to – to the following areas of investigation:

  • Aesthetics and politics of mediatisation in contemporary performance
  • Forms and practices of resistance in contemporary performance
  • Postdigital performance
  • Alternative modes of writing for/in mediatised theatre
  • Text and immateriality in mediatised theatre and performance
  • Emerging critical mediaturgies
  • New methodological approaches, and practice-as-research methodologies
  • Mediatised performance as a response to ‘postpolitical’ times
  • Spectatorship and structures of power in mediatised performance
  • Digital (cheap) labour and performance
  • Embodiment and materiality in mediatised performance

Submissions can include papers, practice-as-research presentations and/or demonstrations, sharing of work in progress, provocations and other scholarly interventions.

Please send 250 word abstracts along with a short biography (50 words max) to m.chatzi@lsbu.ac.uk and s.ilter@bbk.ac.uk by February 24, 2017.  Please include full details of any technical and other requirements for presentations with your submission. The exact format and duration of the presentations will be decided as appropriate to the work in agreement with the event conveners.

The Interim Event is Organised and Convened by

Dr Maria Chatzichristodoulou (LSBU) & Dr Seda Ilter (Birkbeck)

The TaPRA Performance and New Technologies WG Conveners are:

Dr Jem Kelly, Dr Christina Papagiannouli, Dr Jo Scott

This TaPRA Interim event is supported by the School of Arts and Creative Industries and the Centre for Research in Digital Storymaking at London South Bank University; the Birkbeck Centre for Technology and Publishing; Vasari Research Centre for Art and Technology (Birkbeck College, University of London); Birkbeck Interdisciplinary Research in Media and Culture (BIRMAC), and Department of English and Humanities (Birkbeck College, University of London).

. . Category: Archived Call for Papers . Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,
Posted on by

Practice Based – Corkscrew Spring Term 2017

CORKSCREW: SPRING 2017

Show and Tell

Hosted by Bruno Roubicek, artist and Birkbeck PhD student, show and tell sessions invite practice-based research students to present work in progress. It’s an opportunity to share your emerging practice and receive feedback in a supportive environment. Sessions through the year will consider how practice and scholarship can work together to generate insight and understanding. What is “doing knowledge” and how can practice be made evident to examiners?

On Monday 27 February, 2-5pm, join us for the spring Show and Tell session. Alongside presentations, we will discuss Sophie Hope’s article ‘Bursting paradigms: a colour wheel of practice-research’, Cultural Trends, 25, 2 (2016), 74-86 (NB. Senate House Library membership needed for access via this link).

Show and Tell takes place in G10, School of Arts. The summer date will be announced later in the year.

RSVP to Bruno here.

The Particularities of Conference Presentation

On Friday 3 March, 9.30am-12.30pm, join us for a 3-hour workshop that offers training in delivering conference presentations effectively.

Conference presentation is an essential aspect of the working life of a professional researcher.  Yet doctoral students often acquire skills in this area somewhat unevenly, learning through trial and error.  This workshop approaches the conference presentation as a moment of public performance.  It asks: what are the formal features of an effective presentation?  What techniques can a presenter use to communicate with his or her audience – whether in the context of scholarly conferences, public lectures, or arts venues?  This workshop is run in collaboration with artists from Haranczak-Navarre Performance Projects.

Participating students can then either attend or present research on collaborative practices at Twofold: the Particularities of Working in Pairs (Friday 3 & Saturday 4 March 2017) – a symposium that explores the duet as a mode of collaboration across the disciplines.  See the foot of this email for the CFP – deadline Friday 27 January.

The Particularities of Conference Presentation is supported by the CHASE Cohort Development Fund.  Places are free but limited to 20 – booking is essential.

. . Category: Archived Events . Tags: , , , , , , , , ,