Practice as Research PhD, Middlesex University
2009 - 2014
'Working with Gekidan Kaitaisha: Addressing the Complexity of the Self of the Performer as Other'.
Practice-based doctoral enquiry into contemporary performance making, supervised by Professor Susan Melrose and Dr. Signy Henderson
Abstract:
This project focuses on performance-making practices for contemporary audiences and addresses the complexity of the self of the performer as other, drawing primarily on the author’s collaborative practice with Japanese performance company Gekidan Kaitaisha. The investigation approaches the enquiry from a practitioner’s perspective and addresses questions that emerge from that practice. The aim of this is to establish accounts of the self of the performer, performer expertise, collaborative performance processes and cultural hybridization. The project specifically transcribes the sensed and felt experience, and knowledge, of the expert practitioner. This offers insights into the complexity of the self of the performer as other, transcultural collaboration, and performance making. Through a qualitative research based inquiry, the project draws on a practice-centred approach, with the inquiry taking place through both practice as research and literature-based research, culminating in a written thesis and the DVD documentation of the rehearsal processes and performances from a range of collaborative projects.
The inquiry constructs a layered, multifaceted, and multi-linear map of performer-bodyness and performer-selfhood that operates within the compositional processes of performance-making, and draws out an ‘actional self’ in-process and constantly altered, composed, recomposed, and difficult to grasp as a singular static unchanging “thing” or quality. The investigation addresses post-colonial complexities through an understanding of the work of certain twentieth century writers and practitioners, in terms of a desire for difference, and addresses the complexity of the self of the performer as other in a culturally complex context. It locates ‘otherness’ in terms of identity within the framework of cultural distinctions, where the other might be perceived to be a site of desire. The practice reveals that something is being played out, in performance-making terms, that is much more complex, complicated, and ungraspable than the idea of the ambiguities of cultural distinctiveness.
Conference Papers:
'From Tokyo and the Tokyo Marathon Walk: Walking as a Performative-Dialogue (Reflecting and Recollecting our Experience as Walkers in Tokyo)', Collaborative paper with Mikyoung Jun Pearce, Performance, Place, Possibility: Performance in Contemporary Urban Contexts Symposium, University of Leeds (2014).
'Virtual and Embodied Places of Transmission in Performer Training, Practice and Collaboration', Performer Training Working Group, Theatre and Performance Research Association, University of Glasgow and the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland (2013).
'Tracing Traces: Locating Training in the In-between Transcultural Performer Self', Performer Training Working Group, Theatre and Performance Research Association, University of Kent (2012).
‘The (Dis)Location of Time and Place: Locating the Distributed Actional Self whilst Collaborating with Gekidan Kaitaisha in Tokyo’, Symposium on Collaboration, Middlesex University (2012).
‘The (Dis)Location of time and space in Tokyo as experienced whilst collaborating with Gekidan Kaitaisha and through the Site/Memory Mapping Project: Tokyo Marathon Walk’, Collaborative paper with Mikyoung Jun Pearce, Journeys Across Media: ‘Times Tells’ Conference, Reading University (2012).
Publications:
‘Bodies in Motion: Working through Plurality’, collaborative article with Noyale Colin, Skepsi Online Publication (Autumn 2012)
See: http://blogs.kent.ac.uk/skepsi/issues/v05i01/
Abstract:
This collaborative article addresses questions regarding the notion of plurality as experienced in the performer-body. Through practice and writing we attempt to account for such a body and address wider questions regarding the body and identity in performance.
As professional performance-makers working independently through practice-as-research (in a doctoral context at Middlesex University), we have undertaken an on-going collaboration based on our mutual concern for the process of embodying our research. The purpose of the article is to frame certain tendencies which occur when two or more people are working together in the studio. The set of conditions for this on-going project has provided a good terrain in which to break down some of the mechanisms of performance making and has therefore allowed us to illuminate some aspects of contemporary performance making.
Drawing on philosophical approaches to performance making including William James’s Radical Empiricism, we discuss in detail our shared practice and attempt to find strategies that will allow us to examine the shifting tension between our sense of the monadic ‘I’ and the idea of the distributed self that Brian Rotman describes in Becoming Beside Ourselves: The Alphabet, Ghosts, and Distributed Human Being (2008).
Key Words: the body, dance, theatre, performance, practice as research, post-human, self, memory
‘The (Dis)location of Time and Space: Transcultural Collaborations in Tokyo’, collaborative article with Mikyoung Jun Pearce, Journal of Media Practice (Autumn 2012)
See: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1386/jmpr.13.3.197_1#.U0G0VKVCiCQ
Abstract:
This collaborative article explores the (dis)location of time and space as experienced by the authors while collaborating with Japanese theatre company Gekidan Kaitaisha (Theatre of Deconstruction), and through the authors’ own project: ‘Site Memory Mapping Project: Tokyo Marathon Walk’ (2012). Through discussing these projects in detail, the authors attempt to reflect the complexity of multiple perspectives within cross-cultural collaborations and to frame such collaborations as acts that allow transformation of the self. Drawing upon Henri Bergson’s notion of duration, time is discussed in terms of its non-linear temporality, and as it is experienced spatially within the performer body and in Kaitaisha signature practices. The article locates the authors as operating in, and dislocated by, time and space, in a geographical, spatial, cultural, philosophical and performative sense. They argue that through the performative practices, and the cultural and temporal/spatial located experiences they discuss, the self transforms/forms in the temporal/spatial specificity of the action.
Key Words: the body, performance, collaboration, time, space, duration, cross-cultural, transformation
2009 - 2014
'Working with Gekidan Kaitaisha: Addressing the Complexity of the Self of the Performer as Other'.
Practice-based doctoral enquiry into contemporary performance making, supervised by Professor Susan Melrose and Dr. Signy Henderson
Abstract:
This project focuses on performance-making practices for contemporary audiences and addresses the complexity of the self of the performer as other, drawing primarily on the author’s collaborative practice with Japanese performance company Gekidan Kaitaisha. The investigation approaches the enquiry from a practitioner’s perspective and addresses questions that emerge from that practice. The aim of this is to establish accounts of the self of the performer, performer expertise, collaborative performance processes and cultural hybridization. The project specifically transcribes the sensed and felt experience, and knowledge, of the expert practitioner. This offers insights into the complexity of the self of the performer as other, transcultural collaboration, and performance making. Through a qualitative research based inquiry, the project draws on a practice-centred approach, with the inquiry taking place through both practice as research and literature-based research, culminating in a written thesis and the DVD documentation of the rehearsal processes and performances from a range of collaborative projects.
The inquiry constructs a layered, multifaceted, and multi-linear map of performer-bodyness and performer-selfhood that operates within the compositional processes of performance-making, and draws out an ‘actional self’ in-process and constantly altered, composed, recomposed, and difficult to grasp as a singular static unchanging “thing” or quality. The investigation addresses post-colonial complexities through an understanding of the work of certain twentieth century writers and practitioners, in terms of a desire for difference, and addresses the complexity of the self of the performer as other in a culturally complex context. It locates ‘otherness’ in terms of identity within the framework of cultural distinctions, where the other might be perceived to be a site of desire. The practice reveals that something is being played out, in performance-making terms, that is much more complex, complicated, and ungraspable than the idea of the ambiguities of cultural distinctiveness.
Conference Papers:
'From Tokyo and the Tokyo Marathon Walk: Walking as a Performative-Dialogue (Reflecting and Recollecting our Experience as Walkers in Tokyo)', Collaborative paper with Mikyoung Jun Pearce, Performance, Place, Possibility: Performance in Contemporary Urban Contexts Symposium, University of Leeds (2014).
'Virtual and Embodied Places of Transmission in Performer Training, Practice and Collaboration', Performer Training Working Group, Theatre and Performance Research Association, University of Glasgow and the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland (2013).
'Tracing Traces: Locating Training in the In-between Transcultural Performer Self', Performer Training Working Group, Theatre and Performance Research Association, University of Kent (2012).
‘The (Dis)Location of Time and Place: Locating the Distributed Actional Self whilst Collaborating with Gekidan Kaitaisha in Tokyo’, Symposium on Collaboration, Middlesex University (2012).
‘The (Dis)Location of time and space in Tokyo as experienced whilst collaborating with Gekidan Kaitaisha and through the Site/Memory Mapping Project: Tokyo Marathon Walk’, Collaborative paper with Mikyoung Jun Pearce, Journeys Across Media: ‘Times Tells’ Conference, Reading University (2012).
Publications:
‘Bodies in Motion: Working through Plurality’, collaborative article with Noyale Colin, Skepsi Online Publication (Autumn 2012)
See: http://blogs.kent.ac.uk/skepsi/issues/v05i01/
Abstract:
This collaborative article addresses questions regarding the notion of plurality as experienced in the performer-body. Through practice and writing we attempt to account for such a body and address wider questions regarding the body and identity in performance.
As professional performance-makers working independently through practice-as-research (in a doctoral context at Middlesex University), we have undertaken an on-going collaboration based on our mutual concern for the process of embodying our research. The purpose of the article is to frame certain tendencies which occur when two or more people are working together in the studio. The set of conditions for this on-going project has provided a good terrain in which to break down some of the mechanisms of performance making and has therefore allowed us to illuminate some aspects of contemporary performance making.
Drawing on philosophical approaches to performance making including William James’s Radical Empiricism, we discuss in detail our shared practice and attempt to find strategies that will allow us to examine the shifting tension between our sense of the monadic ‘I’ and the idea of the distributed self that Brian Rotman describes in Becoming Beside Ourselves: The Alphabet, Ghosts, and Distributed Human Being (2008).
Key Words: the body, dance, theatre, performance, practice as research, post-human, self, memory
‘The (Dis)location of Time and Space: Transcultural Collaborations in Tokyo’, collaborative article with Mikyoung Jun Pearce, Journal of Media Practice (Autumn 2012)
See: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1386/jmpr.13.3.197_1#.U0G0VKVCiCQ
Abstract:
This collaborative article explores the (dis)location of time and space as experienced by the authors while collaborating with Japanese theatre company Gekidan Kaitaisha (Theatre of Deconstruction), and through the authors’ own project: ‘Site Memory Mapping Project: Tokyo Marathon Walk’ (2012). Through discussing these projects in detail, the authors attempt to reflect the complexity of multiple perspectives within cross-cultural collaborations and to frame such collaborations as acts that allow transformation of the self. Drawing upon Henri Bergson’s notion of duration, time is discussed in terms of its non-linear temporality, and as it is experienced spatially within the performer body and in Kaitaisha signature practices. The article locates the authors as operating in, and dislocated by, time and space, in a geographical, spatial, cultural, philosophical and performative sense. They argue that through the performative practices, and the cultural and temporal/spatial located experiences they discuss, the self transforms/forms in the temporal/spatial specificity of the action.
Key Words: the body, performance, collaboration, time, space, duration, cross-cultural, transformation
Practice as Research:
Practice as research collaboration with Noyale Colin
2011 - 2012
Studio-based shared exploration of practice in London, Aberystwyth, and at
PAF (Performing Arts Forum), St. Erme, France, leading to a collaborative article ‘Bodies in Motion: Working through Plurality’, Colin and Woodford-Smith, Skepsi Online Publication (Autumn 2012), and 'Polytempi', a work-in-progress performance with Noyale Colin, Florence Peake, Steve Tromans and JJ Wheeler, at On Collaboration Symposium, Middlesex University (2012).
Practice as research collaboration with Noyale Colin
2011 - 2012
Studio-based shared exploration of practice in London, Aberystwyth, and at
PAF (Performing Arts Forum), St. Erme, France, leading to a collaborative article ‘Bodies in Motion: Working through Plurality’, Colin and Woodford-Smith, Skepsi Online Publication (Autumn 2012), and 'Polytempi', a work-in-progress performance with Noyale Colin, Florence Peake, Steve Tromans and JJ Wheeler, at On Collaboration Symposium, Middlesex University (2012).