When: Tuesday 14^th November, 5.30pm-7pm

In person: James Arnott Theatre, Gilmorehill Halls, 9 University Avenue, Glasgow, G12 8QQ. For accessibility info, see: https://www.accessable.co.uk/university-of-glasgow/access-guides/gilmorehill-halls

Online: If you cannot visit in person and would like to follow online, please email Elizabeth.Tomlin@glasgow.ac.uk with the subject line “Catrin Evans” to request Zoom link.

This research seminar will see Catrin explore the multi-layered aspects of her thesis: from her experience of being a practice-based researcher working across disciplines, and the methodological path she carved for herself, to the key topics that emerged from within the research. She will span reflections on how collaborative arts practice can push against the burden of representation and pressure to (re)tell one’s story; what creative solidarity might be within the context of an ever-increasing Hostile Environment; and what role creative practice might have in supporting the (re)construction of individual and community identities. She will also share how the profound emotional labour involved in navigating the asylum system was made hyper visible when attention was paid – through an arts-based methodology – to the question ‘what does integration look and feel like’. Catrin will acknowledge throughout that as a non-refugee practitioner, she must work to hold herself accountable to the critical lens associated with academic and art voyeurism & extraction, whilst making a case for working out how we can join in voice with those we collaborate with to strengthen calls for justice-based arts practice.

London-born, Glasgow-formed, Dr Catrin Evans is a theatre practitioner, producer and practice-based academic. She is currently the Head of Creative Learning at the Citizens Theatre. As a practitioner she has always been committed to creating work that centres the personal and the political. Her expertise sits within creating multi-artform performance projects with communities through participatory and collaborative processes, as well as staging ambitious new plays as a director and writer. Catrin’s academic specialism is in methods of Applied Theatre practice, with a critical interest in the intersections between experiences of the UK’s hostile asylum system, arts participation and the ethics of representation. Catrin undertook her doctoral research within the School of Education at Glasgow University, under the supervision of Professor Alison Phipps, Dr Gareth Mulvey and Gary Christie (Scottish Refugee Council), and in 2020 submitted her thesis – The Arts of Integration: Scottish policies of refugee integration and the role of the creative and performing arts: https://theses.gla.ac.uk/81798/

#FrenchTheatreSoWhite? Postcolonial Theatre in France

Thursday 19th October, 5.30pm-7pm, in the James Arnott Theatre, Gilmorehill Halls, 9 University Avenue, Glasgow, G12 8QQ

For accessibility info, see: https://www.accessable.co.uk/university-of-glasgow/access-guides/gilmorehill-halls

Postcolonial studies of French-speaking societies and cultures are a major growth area, from which theatre is all but absent. This might be because, in the words of director Eva Doumbia, theatre audiences are “old and white”, tending not to reflect France’s multi-ethnic population (Décolonisons les arts !, 2018). It might also be because figures including director-producer Kader Aoun claim that postmigrant artists gravitate towards stand-up or rap, not theatre. However, in the past five years audience “diversification” has been top of the theatre establishment’s agenda; and the directors, playwrights and actors contributing to the important collection Décolonisons les arts ! illustrate that there is indeed a desire from racialised postmigrants to stage their work, but that they are habitually excluded by the theatre establishment. This paper will attempt to shine a light on these mechanisms of
exclusion, by investigating French theatre’s relationship with monarchy, nation and nationalism, thereby seeking to understand the multiple structures of omission and exclusion that postcolonial theatre-makers have had to overcome.

Clare Finburgh Delijani is the recipient of a Leverhulme Major Research Fellowship (2023-6) and Professor in the Department of Theatre and Performance at Goldsmiths, University of London. She has written and edited many books and articles on theatre from the French-speaking world and the UK, and is currently writing Spectres of Empire: Performing Postcoloniality in France (contracted with Liverpool University Press).

Reclaiming mime from the condescension of posterity …

Seminar and book launch

5.30pm, Thursday 4^th May 2023. James Arnott Theatre, Gilmorehill Halls. University of Glasgow, G12 8QQ.

https://www.accessable.co.uk/university-of-glasgow/access-guides/gilmorehill-halls

This seminar will be presented in the form of a performative conversation between Mark and Simon around the themes, ideas, perceptions, contexts, personalities, histories and controversies enshrined in their very recently published book, Mime into Physical Theatre: a UK Cultural History 1970 – 2000. They will consider why this period can justifiably lay claim to be highly significant in the development of embodied theatre practices in the UK, initially signed as mime but, increasingly by the 1990s, as physical or visual theatre.  A moment – or moments – when the radical movements of the late ‘60s and ‘70s met Thatcherism and the early seeds of neo-liberalism. They will reflect on why and how mime as a perceived practice has often been the object of derision or disdain from both the university sector and – in a different way – within popular culture. Mark and Simon will consider the complex cultural conditions which framed and gave rise to these practices, and some of the key figures (both artists and other cultural workers) and organisations involved in performing and enabling this work.

Drawing upon their own experiences as professional performers and theatre makers in the 1980s and ‘90s, and later as academics, they will offer a blend of analysis, history, personal stories and documentation in relation to mime and its bastard and unruly child, physical theatre. Their conversation will reflect on the intersections between gender, class, sexuality and race in the making and performing of this work, the significance of often heated debates about training for mime and physical theatre and the reasons for the campaigning zeal of mime activists in the late ‘70s and ‘80s both in Scotland and across the UK. They will particularly identify organisations such as the Mime Action Group (MAG), the International Workshop Festival (IWF), the Scottish Mime Forum (SMF), the Centre for Performance Research (CPR) and the London International Mime Festival (LIMF) as playing key roles in the shape, dramaturgies, aesthetics, promotion and cultural politics of these projects and activities. Together, the authors will take a passionate but critically reflective glance at the heterogeneous range of embodied performance practices which have had huge influence on theatre making into the 21^st century and to the present day. 

Following the seminar there will be a wine reception, between 7.00 and 8.00pm in the main foyer.

Mark Evans is Professor of Theatre Training at Coventry University. He has written widely on movement, actor training and physical theatre. His recent publications include Frantic Assembly (with Mark Smith); Performance, Movement and the Body; The Routledge Companion to Jacques Lecoq (with Rick Kemp); and a critical introduction to The Moving Body by Jacques Lecoq.

Simon Murray teaches contemporary performance and theatre studies at the University of Glasgow. He was co-founder/co-editor (with Jonathan Pitches) of the Theatre, Dance and Performance Training journal and has been a professional theatre practitioner. His disparate writings include publications on Jacques Lecoq, physical theatres, lightness, WG Sebald and performances in ruins.