Asylum Monologues: On Monday 26 October, 8pm, we welcomed ice&fire theatre company to present their powerful performance work, Asylum Monologues. Read by actors and performers, Asylum Monologues is a piece of documentary theatre sharing first hand accounts of people’s experiences of seeking refuge in the UK and undergoing the UK asylum process. ice&fire are a theatre company dedicated to exploring human rights stories through performance, putting human rights at the core of everything they do to make accessible theatre for a wide range of audiences across the UK. This performance of Asylum Monologues was supported by Birkbeck Centre for Contemporary Theatre and BiGS: Birkbeck Gender and Sexuality.
Care Collaborations: In 2020-21, Birkbeck Centre for Contemporary Theatre collaborated with other research centres to support the development of three digital artworks accessible online exploring the subject of care.
CARE(FREE), by Centre Fellow Alinah Azadeh, is a new piece of prose poetry, a journey through the future imaginary of the Greco-Roman goddess Cura (Care) as she creates the first human out of clay. The work invites reflection on the gendered origins of caring itself, through the interwoven narratives of three women, and considers the cost of crossing the shifting boundary between caring for others into the potential loss of one’s own freedom, life and health in the process. It also sings its praises, as a well of creative and political potency through times of crises. CARE(FREE) is a collaboration between Birkbeck Centre for Contemporary Theatre and BiGS (Birkbeck Gender and Sexuality). Listen to CARE(FREE) here.
BURNING LIGHT INTO THAT GOOD NIGHT, by Centre Fellow Alda Terracciano, is a single-screen moving image based on a memory session recorded in the summer 2019 by the artist with her father, a few weeks before his death. The artwork explores memory as fleeting grasp of the self and care as impulse, positioning a man with dementia at the centre of his story. BURNING LIGHT INTO THAT GOOD NIGHT is a collaboration between Birkbeck Centre for Contemporary Theatre and BRAKC (Birkbeck Research in Aesthetics of Kinship and Community). Watch BURNING LIGHT INTO THAT GOOD NIGHT here.
SPACES OF CARE, by Centre Fellow Fauve Alice, is a video piece born from the experience of being a professional care worker over the past 18 months; the frustrations of being atomised as a worker, and dreaming of what care could look like if we thought about it in a more playful and holistic way, and in relation to the spaces that we construct. SPACES OF CARE is a collaboration between Birkbeck Centre for Contemporary Theatre and BiGS (Birkbeck Gender and Sexuality). Watch SPACES OF CARE here.
Birkbeck Arts Weeks ran from 3-21 May 2021 online, and included an extraordinary range of events, including the theatre events listed below.
11 May: Building Back Better: On the eve of the re-opening of the nation’s theatres, leading freelance theatre makers from Freelancers Make Theatre Work discuss the challenges faced by the theatre’s workforce and the future of our theatre ecology.
17 May: Theatre Scratch Night: A rich collection of new short-form sound and video works from students in Birkbeck’s School of Arts, encompassing terrific solo pieces, poetry, rehearsed readings, adaptations, and audio performances.
17 May: Invisible Ink: Interactive online life drawing event and panel discussion responding to Invisible Ink, a theatre project exploring isolation and alienation, inspired by film noir.
18 May: Circles of Hell: Live streamed from Sitges, Barcelona, in association with Museus de Sitges, Theatre North presents a new solo performance piece based on Salvador Dali’s paintings of Dante’s Inferno.
19 May: Burning Light Into That Good Night: Talk by artist Alda Terracciano about her new work, a single-screen moving image based on a memory session recorded in the summer of 2019 with her father, a few weeks before his death.
20 May: Belarus Free Theatre’s Burning Doors: A screening and Q&A about Belarus Free Theatre’s film Burning Doors, drawn from the real-life stories of iconoclastic Russian performance artist Petr Pavlensky, Ukrainian filmmaker Oleg Sentsov and Pussy Riot’s Maria Alyokhina.
GRiT (Graduate Research in Theatre) is our termly research seminar, featuring presentations by visiting scholars, faculty and graduate students. Our programme for 2020-21:
Monday, 28 September, 4-5 pm, Sarah Grochala (Royal Central School of Speech and Drama), ‘The Politics of Form: Exploring the role different dramaturgies play in determining the political character of a play‘: Within the context of British theatre, plays are generally considered political if they address current social and political issues within the content of their narrative. Little attention is paid to the political character of the dramaturgical forms that shape the play’s content. As Rebellato notes, there is a ‘puritan attitude’ within British theatre that ‘thinks form a distracting nuisance’ and privileges plays that provide audiences with a series of ‘pungently instructional points’ (Contemporary Theatre Review, 18:4, p.530). This seminar will look at the importance of considering a play’s form when determining the political character of a play. It will explore the role that different dramaturgies play in shaping a play’s politics, arguing that dramatic structure can act as a prism though which to re-imagine the structures of everyday social reality. Sarah Grochala is Senior Lecturer, Writing for Theatre at the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama, where she leads the MA/MFA in Writing for Stage and Broadcast Media.
Monday 23 November, 4-5pm, Ian Morgan (RADA), “Practising rebellion: Laboratory Theatre as a model for a certain Post Graduate Actor/ Performer Training”: Based on generic QAA descriptors for a Masters level study, we might suggest that both rigour and revolution should be explicitly embedded in the pedagogic approach to Post Graduate Actor / Performer programmes. In fact any actor training might do if we are to go by Stanislavski, who said: “Create your own method. Don’t depend slavishly on mine. Make up something that will work for you!” Cited by Joshua Logan, in ‘Foreword’ to Moore S., The Stanislavski System (New York: Penguin Books, 1984). This talk will discuss what shifts a Laboratory-based approach to training at a UK Post Graduate actor training level might suggest. Ian Morgan is the Course Leader of RADA’s MA Theatre Lab programme.
Monday 22 February, 4-5pm, Lynette Goddard (Royal Holloway, University of London), ‘Legacies of slavery in plays by Black British women playwrights‘: This talk explores how legacies of slavery are represented in contemporary Black British women’s plays and performances. I consider how and why slavery is represented today and explore examples of plays that illustrate how Black women playwrights connect the past to the present by exploring important historical incidents with reference to contemporary concerns. I will suggest that these contemporary plays bear witness to the past while empowering Black women in the retellings of these stories in the present. Lynette Goddard is Professor of Black Theatre and Performance at Royal Holloway, University of London.
Monday 24 May 2021, 4-5pm, Andy Smith (Theatre Maker / University of Manchester), ‘Plays by Committee’: This talk will explore Andy’s current project plays for the people. These works are short pieces that are written to be read and discussed by a group meeting for that purpose, rather than performed by actors for an audience. The form is influenced in part by the lehrstücke (learning plays) of Bertolt Brecht, but also (and perhaps more importantly) by the theatrical and socio-political context in which they are emerging. Andy’s explorations so far have resulted in the creation of two examples: The Actions tells a story that asks questions about the efficacy of political activism, and was developed in 2018 in collaboration with director Sam Pritchard with the support of The Yard Theatre. The Rule of Six was written during lockdown in 2020, and is designed to be read and discussed by just six audience-participants at a time and location of their choice. Both these plays are available to read and undertake on a pay what you can basis through his website. The talk will outline some of the impulses and motivations for creating these works. Andy will reflect on these examples as a development of his practice and research over twenty years, as well as exploring some of the future possibilities for the project. Andy Smith is a theatre-maker and a lecturer in theatre practice at The University of Manchester.
