TaPRA Postgraduate and Early Career Researcher Symposium 2015

‘People and Processes: Behind the Scenes of Theatre and Performance’

Saturday 7th February 2015, 10:00 – 18:00

Martin Harris Centre for Music and Drama

The University of Manchester, Oxford Road, Manchester, M13 9PL
The symposium is free for TaPRA members and £10 for non-members; this includes membership for the academic year 2014/15. All membership must be paid online via the TaPRA website prior to the symposium: http://tapra.org/membership/
Remaining places are limited, so please email postgraduate@tapra.org to book. You will be sent a confirmation email if a place is available. Further information about travel, hotels and a delegate pack will be provided in due course.
———————————————
A plethora of people and processes support and are themselves supported by theatre and performance. From the army of personnel working in arts marketing, outreach and education departments to the craftsmanship and mechanics of costume, set and production design, the activities that take place off stage / off site give theatre and performance researchers an opportunity to reflect, question and analyse the underlying values, efficacy and impact of the people and processes that make theatre and performance work.
10:00 Registration opens
10:20 Welcome
10:30 Keynote address
11:30 Parallel panels
1) BACKSTAGE PROCESSES: MAKING THE CASE FOR LIGHTING AND SCENOGRAPHY
Kelli Zezulka – ‘Early lighting designers and the Royal Court Theatre’
Natalie Rowland – ‘Lost in Translation? Compromises and assumptions in lighting programming syntaxes’
Francesca Peschier – ‘Visual Identity in Regional Theatre: cultural nationalism in the glocal context’
2) BEYOND THE STAGE: MARKETING, SKILLS, CASTING AND TEACHING
Sara Reimers – ‘Gender, ideology and the casting of Shakespeare’s plays in contemporary performance’
Laura Vorwerg – ‘The Skill Behind the Spectacle of War Horse: training and skill development in the rehearsal room’
Victoria Sawka – ‘Developing characters in the classroom for cross-curricular learning’
Adam Rush – ‘Mormonism in 140 Characters: marketing liveness in cyberspace (and back again)’
12:45 Lunch (please email any dietary requirements to postgraduate@tapra.org) with an introduction to Janine Cowell’s research exhibition: ‘“Someday just began”: meeting, making and mounting memories in the field’
13:30 Workshop (optional) with Kerrie Reading – ‘Turning The Key: what unlocking archives can mean for artistic venues’
14:00 Parallel panels
3) THEATRE SPACES: PERIPHERIES AND SPATIAL PHILOSOPHY
Rob Sayer – ‘Touring as creative force in production’
Adam Bee – ‘The Performance Never Stops: Curve’s stage challenges conventional theatre’s spatial philosophy’
Cath Badham – ‘Occupying The Periphery: the relationship between stage management and the offstage space’
4) THE PLAYWRIGHT AND THE STAGE
Gavin McAlinden – ‘Ernest Blythe: female representation, censorship and his impact on female Irish playwriting in the 1930s and 40s’
Tricia O’Beirne – ‘A Playwright Submits: Thomas Kilroy and pre-production responses to his plays’
Lara Kipp – ‘What is this place…?: spatial instability as core performative feature in Howard Barker’s Und and A House of Correction’
15:30 Panel session
5) PEOPLE AND PROCESSES IN THE ARCHIVES
Tracy Cattell – ‘With Living Voice: an argument for listening to primary source materials from theatre production’
Helen Gush – ‘The archive as celebration of people and processes’
Joseph Dunne – ‘The Spectator and the Document: living legacies of performance’
Followed by a performance by Kerrie Reading based on her workshop, ‘Turning The Key: what unlocking archives can mean for artistic venues’
17:00 Employability in the Sector: with and beyond the PhD
Professor Maggie Gale
18:00 Close