PRIZES

Sylvan Baker and Maggie Inchley

for the project The Verbatim Formula

The participatory practice research project The Verbatim Formula (TVF) seeks to positively affect the lives of care-experienced young people (CEYP) and care leavers and the working practices within the systems of their care and education. It demonstrates the capacity and importance of theatre beyond the theatre industry. The possibility for and evidence of transformation benefits from clearly outlined stakes. The project examines the care industry as the centre of power—this is where it is truly transformational—and theatre is used as a means of transformation, rather than the end. The empowerment of adults to listen to care-experienced young people, rather than attempting to site CEYP as the locus of the problem, is evidence of lasting systemic transformation. Transparency in naming the challenges (as outlined by the stakeholder statement in particular, as well as in social and governmental contexts) makes a very strong case for ongoing, sustainable change.

Professor Yvette Hutchison, for African Womens’ Playwright Network

Dr Margherita Laera, for Playwriting in Europe: Mapping Ecosystems and Practices with Fabulamundi

Dr Gareth Osborne, for Storhaven

Ella Parry-Davies

for the project Home Makers: Expertise in the Filipino domestic worker diaspora 

More about this project:  

Go for a walk with sounds made by migrant domestic and care workers: https://homemakersounds.org/  

Ella Parry-Davies (2021) Essential and Invisible: Filipino irregular migrants in the UK’s ongoing COVID-19 crisis https://www.kanlungan.org.uk/?page_id=2127  

This project addresses a hugely important issue related to modern slavery by revealing lived experiences of domestic workers that have been previously unheard and invisible. The collaboration with the Filipino Domestic Workers Association has been harnessed with considerable ingenuity and reciprocity to create performance works that are activist and empowering. The fact that participants were remunerated for their contribution – creating the soundwalks – is a significant shift in the ethics and politics of participatory performance projects. It’s clear from the stakeholder statement and the soundwalks themselves that the project has had an important and positive impact on the participants. The forms of documentation and dissemination show innovation in how practice research is shared across and beyond the academy. 

Petronilla Whitfield

for Teaching Strategies to Enable Acting Students with Dyslexia

The judges commented that Petronilla Whitfield’s timely and important project aims to transform disabling pedagogical practices and presumptions in actor training, providing specific strategies suitable for the diverse needs and skills of students. The judges remarked that while the transformation enabled by Whitfield’s work is localised and intimate, it has clearly long-lasting impact on participants, who report now having a set of tools to mobilise in their own practice. The project’s significance is demonstrated by its call for the discipline itself to scrutinise its own practices, which is crucial for an ethical and just future of theatre and performance studies.

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