Play in Performance Practices

A TaPRA Postgraduate Symposium

19 January 2013: 10.10 – 17.45

2 Gower Street (Royal Holloway’s Bedford Square Residence)

 

The TaPRA Postgraduate Committee warmly invite postgraduates, artists and academics at any stage of their career to attend ‘Play in Performance Practices’, a TaPRA Postgraduate Symposium.

 

In Britain over the past few years, play has seemed ever-present and the concept widely applicable. The covert playing of financial stock markets, expenses and bonus scandals and tax avoidance schemes have come under critical and/or judicial scrutiny; territorial plays of protest, including the student marches against rising tuition fees, the Occupy Movement and the summer riots of 2011, have all gained significant media attention; and the Olympic Games and Diamond Jubilee have prompted patriotic celebrations of play within a governmentally and culturally sanctioned context.

 

The symposium is broken up into three panels which each pick up on this ever-evolving context: Play and Capital, Play and Method and Playing Realities. We are also very happy to announce a keynote from Professor Alan Read and an architect in residence, Aliki Kylika. The symposium concludes with a roundtable and an invitation for all who attend to participate and engage with the questions, themes, concerns, issues and practices arising throughout the day.

 

If you would like to attend this event, please notify Adam, Charlotte and David by emailing: [log in to unmask] no later than Monday 14 January. The event is free, but all attendees must be a member of TaPRA. Membership costs £25 or £10 for postgraduates and the unwaged. If you are not already a TaPRA member, please contact our treasurer on the TaPRA Executive Committee, Hayley Bradley, to arrange online payment via bank transfer:  [log in to unmask]. Alternatively, we advise bringing a cheque book on the day if the membership fee has not been paid in advance.

 

A modest lunch will be provided. We would also like to thank Royal Holloway, University of London, for funding a wine reception ahead of the closing roundtable.

 

Keynote: Professor Alan Read.

Panel One: Play and Capital

–          Elyssa Livergant: Everybody’s Working for the Weekend: The Theatre and Performance Workshop and the Cultural Economics of Play.

–          Ella Parry-Davies: ‘Wait and See’: Play and Vision in Pablo Bronstein’s Constantinople Kaleidoscope

–          Matt Cawson: Socialised versus Capitalised Play: A Marxist Approach to Creativity and Having Fun!

 

Panel Two: Play and Method

–          Ben Fletcher-Watson: Child’s Play: can play be theatrical?

–          Stephanie Bain: Legacies of Paratheatrical ‘Play’ in a society striving for accountability

–          Anija Dokter: Playing with Humanity: Art, Therapy and Animal-ness in the Roy Hart Theatre

 

Panel Three: Playing Realities

–        Clare Foster: Ludus, lusus and il-lusion

–    Daniel Oliver: Pantomime Commi Despots, Fun-mongering Reptilian Mascots, and Volatile Vegetative Deities: Fantastical Others and the Efficacy of Fun in Reactor’s Post-Relational Art Projects

–    Alvin Lim: Play and Non-Sense: An Interpretation of Virtual Play and Death

 

 

 

With kind regards,
TaPRA Postgraduate Committee
Adam Alston, Charlotte Bell and David Coates