Intergenerational Process Drama: Practitioner Reflection on Creative Adventures in an Acute Hospital Context

This reflection will offer insights into the methodology of process drama as a tool for intergenerational connection, co-intentional pedagogy and playfulness for children collaborating with older adult patients living with dementia. Providing insights into the adaption of conventional models of process drama drawing on the work of Cecily O’Neill, this reflection considers the key lessons learnt from two years of Intergen, a project funded by Imperial Health Charity. Though the project itself incorporated multiple art forms, this piece will focus on intergenerational process drama to share insights into the way the practice evolved to engage both older adult patients and children in acute hospital contexts

Not Another Drag Competition From Amateur to Professional Drag Performance

This 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

Arte Político después del Giro Comunicativo

Resumen. Escribiendo en respuesta al ensayo de Sartre sobre literatura comprometida, Adorno proclamó: “No es el momento para obras de arte políticas; más bien, la política ha migrado a la obra de arte autónoma, y ha penetrado más profundamente en obras que se presentan a sí mismas como políticamente muertas”. Hoy, los teóricos del “giro social” en el arte han rechazado completamente a Adorno, adoptando en cambio un nuevo tipo de compromiso en el arte. En este ensayo, revisito esta larga disputa sobre la “eficacia” social del arte en sus formas clásicas y contemporáneas. Al preguntarme cómo debemos entender la labor política del arte en nuestros días, examino dos teorías del efecto, basadas en un análisis del “giro comunicativo” de Habermas: una que alego que conduce a una reducción sociológica de lo político en el arte; y otra que sugiero que ofrece una base para entender la eficacia política del arte, comprendida en términos de lo que yo llamo una teoría del efecto político “perlocutiva” o “aleatoria”. Palabras clave: Arte político; giro social; compromiso; eficacia; Habermas; perlocución

Applied Theatre: A Pedagogy of Utopia

Applied 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

AntigoneNOW: Mourning and Connection Across 4 Time Zones

A 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