Upcoming Workshops: Suspense Festival of Adult Puppet Theatre Workshops (CSSD)

SUSPENSE - FESTIVAL OF ADULT PUPPET THEATRE WORKSHOPS

CENTRAL SCHOOL OF SPEECH AND DRAMA, LONDON

30 OCTOBER - 8 NOVEMBER 2009

CALL FOR PARTICIPANTS

The Central School of Speech and Drama’s Centre for Excellence in Training for Theatre and its Puppetry course are supporting three workshops on puppetry/object theatre as part of the new festival of adult puppet theatre Suspense between 30 October and 8 November 2009

Two-day workshops

1. Ephemeral Animation

This two-day workshop will be run by Nenagh Watson of Barking Dog Theatre and Creative Fellow at CSSD.

Ephemeral Animation is a term coined by Watson to encourage appreciation of animation, often momentary, of discarded objects animated via natural elements. The plastic bag blowing and dancing in the wind in the film American Beauty has become a cultural reference point. Void of the interruption of human ego, these fragmentary experiences have a lot to tell us about the art form of puppetry. This two-day workshop will encourage debate and exploration, stripping the art form to its raw essential state. We will examine Kantor's fascination with objects and 'puppetry without ego': how can we allow something to have its own intrinsic presence, its own immanence, provoking questions of what is authentic; and how can we engage audience in this appreciation?

The workshop will take place at The Central School of Speech and Drama

Friday and Saturday 30 and 31 October, 10.00 am - 5.00 pm.

Workshop fee: £50 for both days (student fee £25).

2. Objects and New Technologies

This two-day workshop will be run by Maria Dominguez Alba who is a painter and film-maker, and also Research Fellow at the University of Castilla-La Mancha in Spain.

This two-day laboratory will explore and create a multi-disciplinary dialogue between theatres of objects and puppets and new technologies. The workshop will focus practically and theoretically on the relationship between the object and new technology. It will also provoke reflection about identity and the body; of the individual's projection in a collective environment, and vice versa; virtual reality, fiction, the idea of presence, the concept of real time, tele-presence, the fragility of the technological medium and interaction.

The workshop will take place at The Central School of Speech and Drama.

Friday and Saturday 30 and 31 October, 10.00 am - 5.00 pm.

Workshop fee: £50 for both days (student fee £25).

Four-day Masterclass with the Philippe Genty company

To be or not to be: a material

How to use emotional and sensorial memory for the creation of visual theatre

The Philippe Genty company is renowned for its visual theatre productions. The company leads many courses on manipulation of puppets and materials, object theatre, dance and movement and other elements of visual language. This four-day workshop will be led by Eric de Sarria (Drifting, Dedale, Zigmund Follies) and Simon Rann (Stowaways, Le Fin des Terres), long-standing members of the company. We aim to transmit knowledge of the manipulation of materials, puppets and objects, and to stimulate each student in their personal search for their own visual language. During these four days we will focus on two tools which are central to the artistic process of the company: the manipulation of materials nourished by personal memory.

The workshop will take place at The Central School of Speech and Drama.

Monday - Thursday 2 - 5 November, 9.00 am - 6.00 pm

Workshop fee: £120 (students £60).

Workshop participation is by application: please send your CV and a letter of application to cariad.astles@cssd.ac.uk by Tuesday 15 September 2009.

On Friday 6 November The Central School of Speech and Drama, jointly with the Little Angel Theatre, is hosting a one-day symposium entitled Objects in Performance, which will include talks and presentations by object theatre practitioners, researchers and performers at Suspense.

The symposium will take place at the Little Angel Theatre between 11.00 am and 3.00 pm.

Bookings for the symposium will be taken by the festival bookings office at the LAT.

Places for the symposium (including show) will be £30 (students £10).

CFP: Kleinkunst 2 (CSSD)

KLEINKUNST 2

THE ROUNDHOUSE, LONDON

30 NOVEMBER 2009

CALL FOR PROVOCATIONS, PAPERS, PERFORMATIVE PAPERS

Papers, performances and critical debate on “low art” short performances in variety shows, vaudeville, cabaret, burlesque and other neo and hybrid forms at The Roundhouse, London on Monday 30 November 2009.

Following the success of Kleinkunst held on 21 April 2009 at the Roundhouse Theatre, The Central School of Speech and Drama’s Centre for Excellence in Training for Theatre, in association with the Roundhouse Theatre, will present Kleinkunst 2 to continue our critical thinking in this field.

These events have come from an identified need to reconsider, produce discourses and contextualise the growing popular emergence of the various types of “low art”/short performances that take place in bars, clubs, festivals and other subcultural spaces across the UK. Such performance art practice draws on camp and other aesthetics, and aims to satirise, parody, steal, borrow, twist and subvert other genres of performance art practice for its own raucous, comic, edgy and controversial ends.

Set out in cabaret style, the audience will enter into a fantastically designed atmosphere that looks to picture the underworld of Kleinkunst. Audience members will be offered table service and are invited to get involved in discussion.

Please send in 200 to 400 word synopsises for papers / performance-papers (for 10-12 min presentations) to the CETT Office: cett@cssd.ac.uk by 1 September 2009. Please put Kleinkunst 2 Proposal in subject box.

Kleinkunst 3 will take place in April / May 2010 and will focus specifically on circus, freak-show, fairground shows as its theme. We are accepting proposals for this event as well, so please also send to the above email address also by 7 September 2009. Please put KleinKunst 3 Proposal in subject box.

Zombomodernism: the Ends of Practice-as-research (CSSD, London)

ZOMBOMODERNISM: THE ENDS OF PRACTICE-AS-RESEARCH

CENTRAL SCHOOL OF SPEECH AND DRAMA, UNIVERSITY OF LONDON

26 SEPTEMBER 2009

CALL FOR PAPERS

DEADLINE EXTENDED: 6 JULY 2009

The figure of the zombie is the uncanny split par excellence: neither living nor dead, both familiar and unfamiliar. The zombie presents a unmeasurable proximal distance between the known and unknown. The zombie’s movements are human in resemblance (as is its physical form), and yet, in its single-minded determination, its constant pace, and its inability to manoeuvre around obstacles in its path, it is clearly inhuman.

Is not the condition of the zombie also the condition of the modern practice-as-research academic? That is, current PAR can be described as existing within a state of ‘Zombomodernity,’ that post-postmodern state in which the ideas are not dead, but nor are they truly alive. Practice-as-research features a similar uncanny split: is it research or is it art? And the spectacle of the modern practice-as-research academic is analogous to that of the zombie in many ways: we’re single-minded, move slowly and bang our heads against the wall over and over again.

Central School of Speech and Drama’s Research Degree students are pleased to announce a one-day interdisciplinary colloquium exploring practice-as-research from the perspective of its relationship to both professional practice and the institution, aimed at finding the antidote and liberating it from Zombomodernism or cutting its head off and putting it to rest forever. As an institution, CSSD is uniquely placed to explore these issues, being itself an uncanny hybrid of conservatoire and research institution, and this colloquium is part of the Festival of Emergent Art, a high-profile two week festival of new practice-as-research performances and presentations from PhD students, MA Performance Practices and Research students, staff and visiting artists.

We invite 20-minute papers and proposals for workshops that might interrogate the value of PAR and its contribution to new knowledge and professional practice.

What is the relationship between PaR and professional practice?

What is the relationship between PaR and the university?

Does PaR create new knowledge?

Is the university the best place to make experimental practice?

Can we imagine new ways of documenting experimental practice?

Can we imagine new ways of writing about practice?

Can we stop asking ourselves if it’s ok and just get on with it?

Submissions are invited from all researchers and postgraduate students working in theatre, drama, dance, film, puppetry and object-theatre, circus, installation, live art and visual culture. Interdisciplinary work is especially welcome, as well as submissions of experimental writing and documentation.

Please send a 250 word abstract (for papers) or proposal (for workshops)along with a brief biographical statement to colloquium organiser Broderick Chow at dick.chow@cssd.ac.uk by Monday, 6 July 2009. Please send large attachments tozombomodernism@googlemail.com Decisions will be made within three weeks. Any questions can also be directed to the colloquium organiser.

Documenting Practices (Upcoming exhibiton - CSSD)

DOCUMENTING PRACTICES
CENTRAL SCHOOL OF SPEECH AND DRAMA
UNIVERSITY OF LONDON
6 - 7 NOVEMBER 2008

Documenting Practices is an exhibition sampling different approaches to documenting theatre and diverse models of documenting. An afternoon of round table discussions addresses issues and practices.

The exhibition features four broad thematic areas.

- Archiving the performance

Includes materials from the Cameron Mackintosh archive, the LIFT Living Archive, the National Theatre digital archive, the Rambert archive and the V&A’s National Video Archive of Performance

- Documentation by theatre practitioners in the process of making productions

Includes drawings by Rae Smith for War Horse, video design storyboards by mesmer, sound design documentation by Gareth Fry, and benesh movement notation from early Rambert productions

- Documentation by way of artistic interpretation

Includes drawings by Quentin Blake and Jane Heather, books by Ernst Fischer, photographs by Manuel Vason

- Diverse modes of documenting new theatre

Includes examples that document experimental pieces by Central practitioners

A symposium on the afternoon of Thursday 6 November at 3.00pm addresses the following topics:

Documenting and archiving theatre in the digital age

Panellists include representatives from the Theatre Collections (V&A), National Theatre Archive, Royal Opera House New Media Department, Musicians’ Union and arts & media lawyer Sean Egan. The panel will address the range of digital forms of documentation and their related costs; the growing interest in streaming performances online and the use of podcasts and clips; and issues of intellectual property and copyright.

Theatre practitioners on documenting practices

Panellists include Rae Smith (designer), Mervyn Millar (associate director/writer), Gareth Fry (sound designer), Sven Ortel (video designer and co-director of mesmer) and David Harradine (designer/director). The panel will address how and why they document, the problems they face, solutions they find and costs they encounter.

Thur 6 Nov (exhibition, symposium, reception), 1.30-8.00pm
Fri 7 Nov (exhibition only), 10.00am-7.00pm
Admission is free. To reserve a place at the symposium, contact cett@cssd.ac.uk (020 7449 1571)

No Drama just an Induction

I had a truly delightful time today doing an Induction for PGCE Drama students of the Central School of Speech and Drama. (I hope I didn't bore them to death!) It gave me a chance to test out some of the Web 2.0 applications firsthand with a group of students. I spent the first half talking about the traditional caveats to searching library resources, toggling between windows to demonstrate active searches in particular resources. From that foundation I went on to describe the shift in usage of the web and technology and how this can inform academic research.

Looking back at it I realise that my statement that 'everything I just said half an hour ago on controlled vocabulary now goes out the window' really drives home how much information management and literacy has shifted in the last few years with these social networking tools. For me, it seemed to be like Pigafetta's descriptive chronicles five centuries ago detailing and refining the edges of the map and conceptions of Magellan's world. In spite of time's travels, librarians are exploring anew in that area along the burnt edges of today's information map. Hopefully it will be as revolutionary a discovery as it was centuries earlier!