Billy Elliot The Musical: visual representations of working-class masculinity and the all-singing, all-dancing bo[d]y

According to Cynthia Weber, ‘[d]ance is commonly thought of as liberating, transformative, empowering, transgressive, and even as dangerous’. Yet ballet as a masculine activity still remains a suspect phenomenon. This paper will challenge this claim in relation to Billy Elliot the Musical and its critical reception. The transformation of the visual representation of the human body on stage (from an ephemeral existence to a timeless work of art) will be discussed and analysed vis-a-vis the text and sub-texts of Stephen Daldry’s direction and Peter Darling’s choreography. The dynamics of working-class masculinity will be contextualised within the framework of the family, the older female, the community, the self and the act of dancing itself

Creative Robotics Theatre: Designing Creative Interactions with Tangible and Embodied Interfaces

Creative robotics theatre allows us to explore contemporary problems and societal issues, pushing artistic frontiers and technological boundaries, enhancing storytelling opportunities, interdisciplinary collaborations, and pedagogical innovation [28]. With the above issues in mind, we aim to explore new technologies by co-designing with the community in participatory approaches that stem from posthumanism and new materialism philosophies

The dramatic imagery of "Howl": the [naked] bodies of madness

Unlike Arthur Rimbaud who wrote his “A Season in Hell” (1873) when he was only 19 years old, Allen Ginsberg was 29 when he completed his epic poem “Howl” (1956). Both works encapsulate an intense world created by the imagery of words and have inspired and outraged their readers alike. What makes “Howl” relevant to today, 50 years after its first reading, is its honest and personal perspective on life, and its nearly journalistic, but still poetic, approach to depicting a world of madness, deprivation, insanity and jazz. And in that respect, it would be sensible to point out the similarities of Rimbaud’s concerns with those of Ginsberg’s. They both managed to create art that changed the status quo of their times and confessed their nightmares in a way that inspired future generations. Yet there is a stark contrast here: for Rimbaud, “A Season in Hell” was his swan song; fortunately, in the case of Ginsberg, he continued to write for decades longer, until his demise in 1997

“It’s All about Working with the Story!”: On Movement Direction in Musicals. An Interview with Lucy Hind

Lucy Hind is a South African choreographer and movement director who lives in the UK. Her training was in choreography, mime and physical theatre at Rhodes University, South Africa. After her studies, Hind performed with the celebrated First Physical Theatre Company. In the UK, she has worked as movement director and performer in theatres including the Almeida, Barbican, Bath Theatre Royal, Leeds Playhouse Lowry, Sheffield Crucible, The Old Vic and The Royal Exchange. Lucy is also an associate artist of the award-winning Slung Low theatre company, which specializes in making epic theatre in non-theatre spaces. Here, Lucy talks to George Rodosthenous about her movement direction on the award-winning musical Girl from the North Country (The Old Vic/West End/Toronto and recently seen on Broadway), which was described by New York Times critic Ben Brantley as “superb”. The conversation delves into Lucy’s working methods: the ways she works with actors, the importance of collaborative work and her approach to characterization. Hind believes that her work affects the overall “tone, the atmosphere and the shape of the show”

Reversing the Process: Investigating Multi-Disciplinary Compositional Practices in The Fall of Icarus [2009]

The Fall of Icarus was a piece of music theatre created by director George Rodosthenous, writer Duška Radosavljević, and composer Demetris Zavros with an ensemble of performers in 2009 in Leeds, UK. The piece was commissioned by the Cypriot embassy in Berlin as part of the “Fall of the Berlin Wall” anniversary, and the commission included the participation of Greek Cypriot Lia Vissi.1 As a director/producer, Rodosthenous wanted to create a chamber musical that could tour with a cast of four specific performers, as well as an aesthetically strong space design to showcase the bodies and voices of the performers. Thus Rodosthenous knew how the musical would look before he knew how it would sound or how it would develop its narrative. This is not customary in making musical theatre work according to the traditional model, whereby the music and book precede the visual identity of the work, whether it is a concept album (American Idiot), novel (The Phantom of the Opera), or film (Billy Elliot). Radosavljević accepted the customary restrictions of the commission (the theme of the fall of the Berlin Wall, the composition of the ensemble), but she also generated her own aesthetic framework of restriction by eliciting five mise en scène images from the director as her starting point. The working process leading up to performance yielded some important discoveries, which this essay wishes to highlight. We will contextualize our findings in two ways: dramaturgically and epistemologically, emphasizing the notion of reversed methodology in both cases

The boxer–trainer, actor–director relationship: an exploration of creative freedom

The similarities between the way performance knowledge is transmitted for martial and theatrical artists have been examined by Phillip Zarrilli. Zarrilli argues that strips of codified behaviour present artists with restricted fields of choice, a precise vocabulary of techniques and strictly prescribed parameters within which to operate. We extend this argument to include combat athletes, particularly boxers, proposing a closer examination of choice, agency and creative freedom within the boxer–trainer and actor–director relationship. Drawing upon autoethnographic data, and participant interviews, we explore how trainers, boxers, directors and actors talk about creative freedom as it relates to their relationships. This co-authored article uses two discrete voices to explore this creative freedom: P. Solomon Lennox writes from a boxer’s perspective and George Rodosthenous from a director’s point of view