Research seminars: theatre

Theatre Studies Research Seminars at the University of Glasgow, 2011 – 2012 : ALL WELCOME!

(Information kindly forwarded by Dr Simon Murray, Senior Lecturer in Theatre Studies at the University of Glasgow)

Wednesday 16^th November at 5.15, Seminar Room 208, 2 University Gardens.   Dr Kate Dossett, University of Leeds: Our Actors May Become Our Emancipators: Race & Realism in 1930’s American Political Theatre.

 Kate Dossett will talk about 1930s political theatre and, in particular, a production of a labor-race play, Stevedore. Performed in New York in 1934, Stevedore is pre-Federal Theatre, but has important implications for leftist and black theatre debates about realism, empathy, and how best to rouse the masses to action. It was also performed by 'Negro' Units of the Federal Theatre a couple of years later.

Thursday 1^st December at 5.15, Room 408 in the Gilmorehill Centre, home of Theatre, Film and Television Studies and Centre for Cultural Policy Research. Charlotte Higgins, chief arts writer on the Guardian: Newspapers, criticism and the web: reviewing the arts in the Twitter age

Until very recently, only newspapers had the means to publish and distribute arts criticism widely, cheaply and quickly. But what happens when the old “authority” of newspapers crumbles in the face of self-publishing on the web? Is there still a place for professional critics? Charlotte Higgins surveys the current scene.

Thursday 19^th January, at 5.15, Room 408 in the Gilmorehill Centre, home of Theatre, Film and Television Studies and Centre for Cultural Policy Research. Alexander Weigel: Theatre in the German Democratic Republic (GDR) – the Deutsches Theater in Berlin.

Alexander Weigel is a dramaturg and author. He studied history in Leipzig and worked as assistant director and assistant dramaturg in Rostock and Greifswald before joining the prestigious Deutsches Theater Berlin as a dramaturg. Weigel remained in this role from 1964 to 2001 and worked with some of the leading playwrights, directors and actors of the time: Heiner Mueller, Adolf Dresen, Jürgen Gosch and Matthias Langhoff. Weigel edited the programme notes of the Deutsches Theater, organised events such as rehearsed readings and lectures in the theatre, and curated a number of exhibitions. Since retiring from the theatre has worked as a freelance author, editor and lecturer.

Thursday 9^th February at 5.15, Room 408 in the Gilmorehill Centre, home of Theatre, Film and Television Studies and Centre for Cultural Policy Research.  Dr Katie Gough, Senior Lecturer in Theatre Studies, University of Glasgow: Between the Image and Anthropology: Theatrical Lessons From Aby Warburg's 'Nymph’.

In this talk Katie Gough will reconsider Richard Schechner’s “Restoration of Behaviour” by rewinding the clock to a time that predates the film technology that animates this paradigm. In doing so, she will consider the still image whose movements animate an analogical performance paradigm that the late art historian, Aby Warburg, began to theorize in the 1890s: a paradigm he called the “Pathos Formula,” and conceptualized around the figure of woman in movement who he referred to as “Nympha.” In considering Warburg’s theories as an antecedent to the Restoration of Behaviour, Katie will explore the ways that the invocation of film strips (“strips of behaviour”) as culturally neutral inflected performance studies from the outset with a gendering that has been reified, reflected and contested ever since.

Thursday 8^th March at 5.15, Room 408 in the Gilmorehill Centre, home of Theatre, Film and Television Studies and Centre for Cultural Policy Research.  Dr Laura Bissell, Lecturer in Theatre  Studies, University of Glasgow: The Female Cyborg as Grotesque in Performance

Intermedial artist Julia Bardsley’s performance Aftermaths: a Tear in the Meat of Vision is an example of contemporary performance that makes the connection between historical female hybrids and current ones. By using Mikhail Bakhtin’s theory of the grotesque and feminist responses to this, alongside ideas expounded in Donna Haraway’s ‘Cyborg Manifesto’, Laura will explore the similarities between female bodies that have been rendered hybrid historically through the grotesque and the contemporary figure of the cyborg.

                                                             

Thursday 3rd May at 5.15, Room 408 in the Gilmorehill Centre, home of Theatre, Film and Television Studies and Centre for Cultural Policy Research.  Professor Hans-Thies Lehmann, Leverhulme Visiting Professor at the University of Kent and Professor of Theater Studies, Goethe-University, Frankfurt:  Postdramatic Tragedy without drama?

Hans-Thies Lehmann, author of Postdramatic Theatre (Routledge 2006), will discuss two texts which seem to have a "tragic" theme at their heart and are nonetheless nowhere similar to dramatic "tragedy". How are we to think of the notions of tragic drama and tragedy in these cases? How does the notion of 'performance' fit into this problem? Hans-Thies Lehmann will discuss texts by Heiner Mueller, Wolokolamsker Chaussee Part 1 (The Road of Tanks, "Russian Opening", translated by Marc van Henning; and Sarah Kane, 4.48 Psychosis.

Lee Hall, playwright and theatre director, author/script writer for Billy Elliott, Spoonface Steinberg and The Pitman Painters, has agreed to talk at one of our seminars in 2012. Dates and further details to be confirmed.