The Pedagogy of Reciprocity in Digital Applied Theatre Practice: The Antithesis to Unjust Responses to the COVID-19 Pandemic that have Devalued and Ignored the Rights and Lives of Older Adults Living with Dementia.

In this article, I will offer case study insights into the value of digital applied theatre practice that has evolved to remain person-centred, valuing what Gail Mitchell et al. (2020) termed a ‘relational ethic of care’ that seeks to enable active citizenship at the heart of hospital-based practice for patients living with dementia. ‘Innovating Knowledge Exchange: Student Involvement in Delivering Better Patient Experience in the NHS (National Health Service)’, is a digital applied theatre project jointly funded by Research England and the Office for Students, in partnership with Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust’s Dementia Care Team. The project offers six interventions that happen via zoom to support patients living with dementia who have had little social interaction and thereby cognitive stimulation in COVID-19 and medicine for the elderly wards. The emphasis of each project is to create bespoke workshops that embody a term I have coined, a ‘pedagogy of reciprocity’, which is an approach that has evolved over the course of the translation and implementation of the project practice in a digital form. The relationship between arts and health has a long, rich history, but recently known models of practice have either stopped or had to adapt to happen online through digital practice. Moving to online interventions can be exclusionary for artist practitioners who are less familiar with platforms such as Teams, Zoom, Google Meet and Skype, and for those who are familiar, the challenge of ensuring meaningful participation has been complicated. However, the need to continue to be responsive practitioners is vital, and the urgency for arts intervention to support positive wellbeing in the midst of the pandemic has only grown. Arts and healthcare hold a long-standing relationship that should not be compromised because of the necessity to traverse new terrain by entering the domain of the digital, I will argue that in fact this process is vital, and one that I will unpack and interrogate from my own experience working in a hospital during our third national UK lockdown and continuing digital arts and health projects. The reality of the pandemic and the severity of its impact on the mental health and wellbeing of older adults is profound. The International Psychogeriatric Association have discussed the ongoing impact on the mental health and wellbeing of older adults forced to socially isolate. This circumstance is unavoidable for the prevention of the spread of COVID-19, but the fear of contracting COVID-19, or not receiving hospital treatment for particular age brackets, and the impact of not being able to socialise with family and friends is causing a rise in suicide, anxiety, agitation and loneliness. Myrra Vernooij-Dassen (2020) argues that social, mental and cognitive health are not considered by policy makers, and the impact of a lack of social health for people living with dementia is particularly detrimental causing conditions to rapidly deteriorate without social interactions. In this article, I will set out the conceptual framework for the pedagogy of reciprocity as a methodology for responsive digital applied theatre practice that has emerged directly from my experience running projects in the pandemic in acute hospital settings

Unity Over Unison: Creating AntigoneNOW in Lockdown. A Conversation between Margaret Laurena Kemp, Sinéad Rushe, and Roger Ellis; moderated by Dassia N. Posner

This is a conversation between Margaret Laurena Kemp, Sinéad Rushe, and Roger Ellis; moderated by Dassia N. Posner about the performance film AntigoneNOW. AntigoneNOW was created in lockdown in April 2020. When the COVID-19 pandemic closed the theatres, the work’s co-directors Margaret Laurena Kemp and Sinéad Rushe radically reimagined their originally planned stage production at University California Davis as a twenty-minute performance film that was rehearsed, directed, and created online. Devised from Sophocles’ play, Antigone, in a translation by Seamus Heaney, a cast of twelve women – each in isolation, each playing Antigone – filmed themselves on their mobile phones, iPads, and video cameras, together forming a chorus that portrays Antigone’s defiance of the law forbidding her to bury the body of her dead brother. Choreographer Roger Ellis created ensemble movement, and sound designer Lex Kosanke composed an original sound score. Kemp edited the film, in collaboration with Rushe. In 2020-21, AntigoneNOW screened at UC Davis, Cairo International Festival of Experimental Theatre, Northwestern University’s Wirtz Center for the Performing Arts, London School of Sound, Michael Chekhov Association USA, Valparaiso University, Louisiana State University, and SPE Media Festival. The conversation is based on a talkback with the film’s creators that followed an online screening on November 13, 2020, hosted at Northwestern University’s Wirtz Center for the Performing Arts

Drag Histories, Herstories and Hairstories: Drag in a Changing Scene Volume 2

Drawing 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

Visceral Data for Dance Histories: Katherine Dunham’s People, Places, and Pieces, 1947-60

Between 1947-60, choreographer Katherine Dunham spent over 5000 days in hundreds of cities on six continents. During that time, almost 200 dancers, drummers, and singers travelled with her, performing over 200 repertory pieces. This essay engages with Dunham as a case study to explore the questions and problems that make data analysis and visualization meaningful for dance historical inquiry. Using a granular approach, we build datasets that elaborate the historical contours of the Dunham company as a porous and dynamic movement community as it traveled extensively through the world. Through this historical dance data, we sketch possible lines of transmission for embodied knowledge, and consider how repertory itself further circulated that knowledge. Dunham’s expansive work lends itself to digital approaches that illuminate the complex ways history is iterated across bodies, and how the specific questions raised by dance history underpin a visceral approach to the digital humanities