Tag Archives: theatre

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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.

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CFP: Twofold: the Particularities of Working in Pairs – Deadline 27 January 2017

Call for proposals

Twofold: the Particularities of Working in Pairs

Friday 3 & Saturday 4 March 2017

Birkbeck Centre for Contemporary Theatre,

Haranczak/Navarre Performance Projects & Camden People’s Theatre

**Deadline: Friday 27 January 2017**

This is an open call for proposals from academics, artists, students and writers, for the symposium Twofold: the Particularities of Working in Pairs.

Twofold: the Particularities of Working in Pairs focuses on the dynamics of working in pairs across disciplines and contexts.  It marks the conclusion of a long-term series of duet performances entitled The Difference Between Home and Poem, undertaken by Karen Christopher, Artistic Director of Haranczak/Navarre Performance Projects.

Twofold: the Particularities of Working in Pairs takes Haranczak/Navarre’s duet series as a starting point, to investigate how practitioners in a range of settings work in pairs.  In the field of collaborative performance making, a duet offers the most direct form of collaboration.  If even one member leaves, the duo or dyad dissolves.  However, live performance is only one area that offers the duet form.  The proposed symposium examines a range of working relationships to think about how the pair functions as a working collaborative unit, and why it is so often chosen.

Contributions are invited from people who work in pairs and from those who study the dynamics of such working relationships.  While the symposium departs from the world of arts research and practice, we seek input from researchers across the arts, humanities and social sciences, and from those working in arts, science, healthcare, athletics and construction contexts.  Examples for exploration might include athletes (including visually impaired athletes with guides), double acts (comedy, magic, circus acts), duos (dance, music, theatrical performance, visual art, photography, cinema, writing, arts management), surgeons, construction teams, climbers, or humans paired with animals.

Twofold: the Particularities of Working in Pairs is a forum for sharing ideas on the theme of working in pairs, and an opportunity to develop new work.

Call for proposals

Twofold: the Particularities of Working in Pairs invites proposals for 20 minute presentations in either of the following formats:

  • academic papers;
  • practice-based or performative presentations.

Additionally, we invite proposals for 20 minute extracts from performance works on this theme that are in development.  Two performance proposals will be selected.  A fee of £100 per performance is on offer to non-affiliated artists.

Questions for exploration include (but are not limited to):

  • what are the differences and similarities in working in pairs between different contexts?
  • what rituals and practices attend working in pairs?
  • what is the role of structure, system, pattern, repetition, intuition and spontaneity in such work?
  • how does working in pairs compare to other modes of collaborative practice?

Deadline for proposals

Please submit 300-word proposals and 50-word bios to birkbeckcct@gmail.com by **Friday 27 January 2017**.

Twofold: the Particularities of Working in Pairs is a collaboration between Birkbeck Centre for Contemporary Theatre, Haranczak/Navarre Performance Projects and Camden People’s Theatre.

http://www.bbk.ac.uk/english/our-research/bcct/

www.karenchristopher.co.uk

https://www.cptheatre.co.uk/

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CFP: Theatres of Contagion: Infectious Performance Deadline – 20 January 2017

Call for proposals

Theatres of Contagion: Infectious Performance

Birkbeck Centre for Contemporary Theatre, 11-12 May 2017

At least since Thebes was beset by plague, western theatre has incubated a fascination with its own contagious power. This has extended beyond investigating medical and psychological conditions on stage, to both exploring and protecting against performance’s capacity to transmit ideas, illnesses, feelings and behaviours. This two-day Wellcome funded symposium puts the relationship between theatre and contagion under the microscope, to assess it from a range of humanities, medical, psychological and scientific perspectives, and by looking to diverse forms including drama, theatre, live art, dance, musical and cultural performance.

Our central questions include:

  1. How have theatre and performance represented, examined or been implicated in the transmission and circulation of medical and psychological conditions?
  2. How has our understanding of these relationships and phenomena changed over time, across cultures, including via developments in interdisciplinary practice and inquiry?

Keynote speakers:

  • Bridget Escolme (Queen Mary University of London)
  • Kirsten Shepherd-Barr (University of Oxford)

With performances by Birkbeck Centre for Contemporary Theatre Fellows:

  • Dickie Beau
  • David Slater and Entelechy Arts

20 minute academic papers or performative presentations might address:

  • How theatre has represented contagious medical conditions: plague and its metaphors in Sophocles and Shakespeare; venereal disease in Ibsen; measles in Shaw; infections and neurological conditions in Beckett; HIV/AIDS in Kushner
  • How theatre has represented contagious psychological conditions: versions of melancholia or depression in Chekhov; hysteria in Miller; madness in Churchill; paranoia and anxiety in Letts
  • The ways in which theatre has been affected by public health epidemics (e.g. plague, sweating sickness, cholera, influenza, HIV/AIDS, ebola), and reacted (e.g. through banning assemblies, withdrawing funding) or been strategically deployed (e.g. to inform and educate)
  • Contagious group emotion and behaviour: yawning, coughing, crying, laughing, violence
  • Scientific, medical, historical and theoretical accounts of how ideas, illnesses, feelings and behaviours spread in theatre and performance
  • The relationship between contagion and affect theory
  • How performance site, architecture, technology and design are implicated in questions and processes of transmission
  • The relationship between immersive practices and histories and theories of contagious performance
  • Performance in digital cultural, and analogies of viral dramaturgies or effects
  • Health, safety and law

Abstracts of 300 words and a short bio (less than 100 words) should be sent to birkbeckcct@gmail.com by Friday 20 January 2017.

The symposium can also offer 4 x £50 bursaries to graduate students to help with attending from outside London. Please outline your situation briefly (less than 100 words) if applying one of these. The conference is free, although booking and registration will be required to attend once the schedule has been formalised and announced.

Funded by Wellcome (ISSF) with support from BiGS (Birkbeck Gender and Sexuality) and Birkbeck Institute for Social Research.

Enquires to Fintan Walsh f.walsh@bbk.ac.uk

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Performing Greece 2016 – Saturday 3 December 2016

We are pleased to announce Performing Greece 2016: 2nd Annual International Conference on Contemporary Greek Theatre, which will take place at Keynes Library, School of Arts, Birkbeck College, University of London on Saturday 3 December 2016, and is organised by Dr. Christos Callow Jr (Associate Lecturer, Department of English and Humanities, Birkbeck, University of London) and Andriana Domouzi (PhD Candidate, Royal Holloway, University of London).

Following the successful Performing Greece 2015, the 1st Annual International Conference on Contemporary Greek Theatre in the UK, the conference returns to Birkbeck, University of London in 2016. This year has seen a rise of theatrical interest in contemporary Greece, judging from the National Theatre production of the Greek-British Alexi Kaye Campbell’s play, Sunset at the Villa Thalia, which explored the tense relations of UK and US with Greece at the time of the Junta, but also highlighting issues of immigration and cultural appropriation; and also with the Royal Court’s staging of The Things you Take with You by Greek playwright Andreas Flourakis, a play that responds to the refugee crisis and Greece’s involvement. In addition, we see an increasing number of Greek artists based in the UK who explore, through their art, contemporary issues that reflect on Greek and European identity, Brexit, immigration, and respond to the socio-political issues of our times. This conference is therefore an invitation for people, both academics and theatremakers to come together and reflect on the rise and significance of contemporary Greek theatre and its relation to European and global culture.

10:00-10:30: Registration & Coffee

10:30-11:30  Keynote

Evi Stamatiou (Lecturer in Musical Theatre, University of Portsmouth): “An Artist’s Belonging and otherness in Post-Brexit Britain”

11:30-12:45  Performance, Philosophy and Identity in the 21st Century

  • Dr. Stella Keramida (University of Reading): ‘‘Performance narratives and Representations of the Greek identity: An examination of the genre of Performance in Greece’’
  • Lizeta Makka (PhD Candidate, Brunel University): ‘‘The necessity of a figure: the philosopher as performer’’
  • Presentation of Purged by playwright Chris Vlachopoulos

12:45-13:45: Lunch break

13:45-15:00  Contemporary Reception of Ancient Greek Myth and Drama

  • Dr. Ioannis Souris (University of Exeter): ‘‘The river Lethe: an English and Greek interpretation of the myth’’
  • Andriana Domouzi (Royal Holloway, University of London): ‘‘The Metahuman in Greek Theatre: science fiction motifs in Medea by Vasilis Ziogas’’
  • Performance with actress Lia Kostinou (Drama Centre London)

15:00-15:15: Coffee Break

15:15-16:30  Future Theatre: Metaphysics, Ideology, and Science Fiction

  • Dr. Evangelos Konstantelos (SOAS, University of London): ‘‘Transmutation of Metaphysics into Ideology: Challenges to Theatre’’
  • Dr. Christos Callow Jr (Birkbeck, University of London): ‘‘Longing for the future in times of crisis: the rise of science fiction theatre in contemporary Greece’’
  • Presentation of Superhero by playwright Andreas Flourakis

This event is free and open to the public but places are limited. Please register to attend on Eventbrite: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/performing-greece-2-conference-on-contemporary-greek-theatre-tickets-29412261867?aff=es2

For any enquiries, please feel free to contact the organisers at performinggreece@gmail.com.

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CFP: Deeper than Swords: Fear and Loathing in Fantasy and Folklore – Deadline 11 November 2016

University of Edinburgh Fantasy and Folklore Postgraduate Conference and Creative Writing Seminar

Deeper than Swords: Fear and Loathing in Fantasy and Folklore

18th-19th January 2017

School of Literatures, Languages and Cultures

University of Edinburgh

CALL FOR PAPERS

“Fear cuts deeper than swords.” A Game of Thrones, George R.R. Martin

Shakespeare acknowledged that “in time we come to hate that which we often fear” (Antony and Cleopatra). Fantasy and folklore literature have long explored these themes and their interdependent relationship. From the threat of the wicked witch in traditional fairy tales to new and terrifying monsters such as A Song of Ice and Fire’s White Walkers, it is from these stories that our worst nightmares are drawn and our deepest hatreds formed. Yet what is it about these genres that make them so well suited to depicting fear and hate? How do fear and hate symbiotically engage with each other within these genres, and how do these genres use this relationship to comment on wider socio-political issues?

The University of Edinburgh’s Fantasy and Folklore Reading Group is hosting its first, interdisciplinary postgraduate student conference on the 18th and 19th January 2017. We welcome submissions for 20 minute individual papers as well as panel proposals exploring manifestations of fear and hatred throughout fantasy and folklore literature. Potential topics can include, but are not limited to:

  • Fear of the Other. Is fantasy literature particularly well placed to respond to the Other, and does it agree with or challenge normative perceptions?
  • The uncanny. How do fantasy and folklore work to make the familiar frightening?
  • Critical fear of fantasy literature. Why are fantasy and folklore still maligned within the academic community?
  • How do cultural norms dictate what is understood as frightening? How is this typified or interrogated in fantasy narratives?
  • How is death, as a concept or a real threat, handled in fantasy and folklore?
  • How do fantasy narratives engage with themes of contemporary terror and psychological warfare?
  • Fear, fantasy and psychoanalysis. Freud used fairy tales to extrapolate his theories – how can we, in turn, trace these theories through contemporary folklore?
  • Are fear and loathing gendered? How can fantasy and folklore’s engagement with these themes be refracted through feminist perspectives?
  • How do space, place and landscape influence our experiences of horror and hated?
  • Trauma and survival: how do these narratives represent the impact of that which “cuts deeper than swords”?

We are also interested in papers which explore the intersections between fantasy, folklore and

  • Cinema
  • Television
  • Theatre
  • Creative Arts

Creative Writing Seminar

On Friday 19th January, we will also be holding parallel creative writing sessions. Writers working in any genre, from both the academic and local communities, are invited to join us for a stimulating day of workshop and discussion, led by postgraduate students and professional practitioners. The discussions will be influenced by papers presented on the first day of the conference and will allow writers to incorporate elements of fantasy and folklore into their work, even if they are not writing purely within those genres. The sessions will culminate in a reading, where delegates will be invited to present short pieces of work.

What to send

Conference abstracts:

250 word abstracts should be submitted by Friday 11th November 2016. Please include a short bio of up to 250 words.

Creative writing attendees:

If you are interested in presenting and taking part in the creative writing sessions, please indicate this in your email.

If you are only interested in the creative writing seminar, please email us to register your interest.

Organising chairs: Harriet MacMillan and Anahit Behrooz

fantasyandfolklore2017@gmail.com

 

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Conventions of Proximity in Art, Theatre and Performance. 5 & 6 May 2016

Thursday 5 May 1-6pm & Friday 6 May, 10am-6pm
School of Arts, Birkbeck College, 43 Gordon Square, London WC1H 0PD
Booking: http://bit.ly/1YiQzYJ

Immersive and curatorial strategies are highly current in contemporary theatre, visual art and exhibition culture – bringing audiences into close and often interactive relationships with artistic work. But how else do art, theatre and performance engage ideas of proximity, and how have they done so in the past?

 

Conventions of Proximity in Art, Theatre and Performance investigates forms of nearness and distance from numerous perspectives: dramaturgical, curatorial, affective, social, conceptual, virtual, geographical. Over a day and a half, artists and writers will share their work on proximity as an idea and as a practice. From the early modern to the contemporary, in examples drawn from southeast Asia to the global north, the symposium explores proximity in relation to a diverse range of topics, including digital networks, architectural design, home, public space, cinema, loneliness, friendship, listening, darkness, museum display, and music.

Conventions of Proximity combines papers, workshops from guest artists in the School of Arts’ studio space, film screenings in Birkbeck Cinema, performance installation, and an exhibition of contemporary art in the Peltz Gallery.

On Thursday 5 May, researchers and practitioners will share their work in parallel panel presentations, from which attenders can make a selection.

On Friday 6 May, film screenings, panel presentations, workshops and a performance installation will run in parallel, from which attenders can make a selection.

Contributors include:
Silke Arnold-de Simine (Birkbeck, University of London)
Maaike Bleeker (University of Utrecht)
Fiona Candlin (Birkbeck, University of London)
Fourthland
Sheila Ghelani
Alison Green (Central Saint Martins)
Peader Kirk & Teoma Jackson Naccarato
Nicholas Ridout (Queen Mary, University of London)
Victoria Walsh (Royal College of Art)

Conventions of Proximity takes place on Thursday 5 May, 1-6pm and Friday 6 May, 10am-6pm. It is free of charge to attend but places are very limited, and booking is essential. The schedule can be seen here.

Booking: http://bit.ly/1YiQzYJ

Co-hosted by Birkbeck Centre for Contemporary Theatre and Birkbeck Interdisciplinary Research in Media and Culture, and supported by Birkbeck Institute for the Humanities and Birkbeck Institute for the Moving Image.

Birkbeck Centre for Contemporary Theatre

http://www.bbk.ac.uk/english/our-research/bcct/events

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Room at the Top Open Lecture Series 2016

Room at the Top open lecture series commences on Monday 11 January 2016 at with ‘The Artistic Case’ with Amit Sharma, Associate Director of Graeae Theatre Company.

When: Monday 11 January 2016, at 6pm

Where: Malet St, MAL G16

There will be 3 lectures per term over the Spring and Summer and will feature speakers from varying Arts areas such as the Director of Sky Arts, the Director of the Jerwood Charitable Foundation and more.

Once a month on a Monday evening speakers from a broad spectrum of the cultural sector will come to the School of Arts to share their thoughts and experiences and debate current issues in cultural policy making. The aim is to capture policy ideas, development and implementation wrapped in personal narratives from a variety of cultural perspectives. Together, speakers represent snapshots of a cultural landscape that is continuously asked for validation, reassurance and critical discourse. In six lectures and conversations speakers address topics as diverse as what drives artistic vitality in theatre, how one negotiates commercial scrutiny in TV and why tangible impact means success in the world of philanthropic giving. Furthermore, flexibility is questioned when the glass ceiling of the arts labour market meets ambitions for promotion and when local government arts funding is discussed as an oxymoron. Last but not least, festivals are on the agenda, where we will be exploring their fashionable status and querying their unifying community spirit.

We invite you to join the debate. Come and participate, discuss and care for the Arts.

Entry is free, but you will need to register here: https://roomatthetop1.eventbrite.co.uk

Room at the Top

 

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