Theatrical Intimacy

This presentation is a synthesis of my training and research on Intimacy Directing, supported by courses with Theatrical Intimacy Education and Intimacy Directors and Coordinators. In addition, this walks through actionable steps for Loyola\u27s Department of Fine and Performing Arts to take to create a brave, consent-based space in rehearsals and performance

When I Grow Up: Intimacy Work and Collegiate Theatre

The field of intimacy work within the wider theatre industry is rapidly growing, and universities should be prepared to meet the demands the industry is setting forth. Since 2016, intimacy direction has been making its way into the professional theatre world. As intimacy work becomes more mainstream, students will enter college with the ultimate goal of going into the field. Through this research, I have set out to create courses that could fit into the framework of a collegiate theatre program that would support students’ desire to learn about the intimacy field, and to create a department environment built on consent and collaboration. To do this, I researched the current intimacy landscape through participating in intimacy workshops with Intimacy Directors and Coordinators, Inc. and Theatrical Intimacy Education, as well as conducting textual research in the fields of trauma and feminist theory and applying those findings to the theatrical process

Wanna Play? Dries Verhoeven and the Limits of Non-Professional Performance

In October 2014, Berlin’s Hebbel am Ufer (HAU)—one of Germany’s most influential performance venues, programming and often co-producing work by artists such as Rimini Protokoll, Jérôme Bel, Meg Stuart and Gob Squad—opened its new season with a festival called Treffpunkte (meeting points).1 Conceptually, the month-long festival was located at the intersection of some of the major trends in contemporary Western theatre and performance, particularly the interest ‘in curating intimacy in public’ (Walsh 2014: 57; Read 2008), the renegotiation of theatre’s place in the public sphere (Balme 2014; Haedicke 2013) and the relation of socially engaged performance, in the broadest sense, to late global capitalism (Jackson 2011; Harvie 2013). Its explicit aim was to explore, through the means of performance, ‘the status of the private in the public sphere’ (den Status des Privaten in der öffentlichen Sphäre) and to find out whether ‘intimacy’ (Intimität)—equated with an authentic ‘communication between people’ (Kommunikation zwischen Menschen)—was still possible ‘in an age where the public space has been entirely pervaded by market conformity’ (im Zeitalter der totalen Durchdringung des öffentlichen Raumes durch das Marktförmige) (Vanackere 2014: 2).

Behind the Seams: An Ethnographic Study of the Performative Nature of Theatrical Costumes

Actors are said to bring a play to life, but what about the garments that they wear? Like set production, light design, and direction, the role of the costume plays an important part in informing and enchanting the audience. However, this is not all that they do. This paper acts as an in-depth examination of the culture of costume creation and destruction at Gettysburg College, researching their roles as garments, as well as how the garments themselves act around others. Imbued with their own set of responsibilities, the costumes are expected to behave certain ways, perform specific functions, and put on a show of their own. Through 20 hours of ethnographic research, this paper seeks to show that the costumes are not just as single component of the theatrical experience, but instead an integral performer in the social construction of the story itself

Debating critical costume: negotiating ideologies of appearance, performance and disciplinarity

In this article, I present an argument for a proposed focus of ‘critical costume’. Critical Costume, as a research platform, was founded in 2013 to promote new debate and scholarship on the status of costume in contemporary art and culture. We have now hosted two biennial conferences and exhibitions (Edge Hill University 2013, Aalto University 2015). These events have exposed an international appetite for a renewed look at how costume is studied, practised and theorized. Significantly, Critical Costume is focused on an inclusive remit that is interdisciplinary and supports a range of ‘voices’: from theatre and anthropology scholars to working artists. In that regard, I offer an initial argument for how we might collectively navigate this interdisciplinary field of practice with reference to other self-identified critical approaches to art and design. By focusing on an interdisciplinary perspective on costume, my intention is to invite new readings and connections between popular practices, such as Halloween and cosplay, with the refined crafts of theatrical and film professionals. I argue that costume is a vital element of performance practice – as well as an extra-daily component of our social lives – that affords distinct methods for critiquing how appearance is sustained, disciplined and regulated. I conclude by offering a position on the provocation of critical costume and a word of caution on the argument for disciplinarity

'The Coolest Way to Watch Movie Trailers in the World': Trailers in the Digital Age

At a time of uncertainty over film and television texts being transferred online and on to portable media players, this article examines one of the few visual texts that exist comfortably on multiple screen technologies: the trailer. Adopted as an early cross-media text, the trailer now sits across cinema, television, home video, the internet, games consoles, mobile phones and iPods. Exploring the aesthetic and structural changes the trailer has undergone in its journey from the cinema to the iPod screen, the article focuses on the new mobility of these trailers, the shrinking screen size, and how audience participation with these texts has influenced both trailer production and distribution techniques. Exploring these texts, and their technological display, reveals how modern distribution techniques have created a shifting and interactive relationship between film studio and audience

The Irrational Element of Self and Creation in the Time of the Plague

In this paper I discuss how I went beyond commonplace, rational ways of theater-making and relied on certain “extreme”, irrational gestures to create my production of Charles Mee’s Orestes 2.0. I discuss the circumstances that led me to unlock my subjective artistry, the manner in which I tackled and fulfilled my “directorial concept”, and how I created a production that challenged the tyranny of rationality both on the stage and within the culture of the theater department. I relate personal experiences entering school during a time of national suspicion, and I discuss how a more expansive artistic outlook developed in response to my environment. I go through the execution of my directorial concept and show how I “projected a world” from my interior into the theatrical concrete, drawing on the work of master Polish director Tadeusz Kantor. I describe the “rules” of my theatrical world in terms of its diegetic reality, its method of construction, and its aims. I then describe the rehearsal process, highlighting the ways that irrational methods and a focus on body and imagination drove the process. I discuss my creative state of mind, my performance as the character Farley, and the way in which I hoped authority and sense-making functioned in the audience experience of the performance.Throughout, I accompany my ideas with supporting quotations from Mee’s play and the writing of French theorist, poet, and director Antonin Artaud, situating my use of the power of the irrational inside the theatrical tradition and the play-text

Looking Back at the Audience: The RSC & The Wooster Group’s Troilus and Cressida (2012)

The controversy around the RSC & The Wooster Group’s Troilus and Cressida (Stratford-upon-Avon 2012) among the spectators and critics in Britain revealed significant differences between the UK and the US patterns of staging, spectating, and reviewing Shakespeare. The production has also exposed the gap between mainstream and avant-garde performance practices in terms of artists’ assumptions and audiences’ expectations. Reviews and blog entries written by scholars, critics, practitioners, and anonymous theatre goers were particularly disapproving of The Wooster Group’s experimentation with language, non-psychological acting, the appropriation of Native American customs, and the overall approach to the play and the very process of stage production. These points of criticism have suggested a clear perception of a successful Shakespeare production in the mainstream British theatre: a staging that approaches the text as an autonomous universe guided by realistic rules, psychological principles, and immediate political concerns. If we assume, however, that Troilus and Cressida as a play relies on the dramaturgy of cultural differences and that it consciously reflects on the notion of spectatorship, the production’s transgression of mainstream patterns of staging and spectating brings it surprisingly close to the Shakespearean source

Surfaces, depths and hypercubes: Meyerholdian scenography and the fourth dimension

An appreciation of Meyerhold’s engagement with theatrical space is fundamental to understanding his directorial and pedagogic practice. This article begins by establishing Meyerhold’s theoretical and practical engagement with theatre as a fundamentally scenographic process, arguing for a reconceptualisation of the director as ‘director-scenographer’. Focusing on the construction of depth and surface in Meyerholdian theatre, the article goes on to identify trends in the director’s approach to space, with an emphasis on the de-naturalisation of depth on stage. This denaturalisation is seen as taking three forms: the rejection of depth as a prerequisite in theatrical space, the acknowledgement of the two-dimensional surface as surface, and the restructuring of depth space into a series of restricted planes. The combination of these trends indicates a consistent and systematic process of experimentation in Meyerhold’s work. In addition, this emphasis on depth and surface, and the interaction between the two, also highlights the contextualisation of Meyerhold’s practice within the visual, philosophical and scientific culture of the early twentieth century, echoing the innovations in n-dimensional geometry and particularly, the model of the fourth spatial dimension seen in the work of Russian philosopher P. D. Ouspensky