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The TaPRA Transformative Research Prize
This prize is awarded to a research project that has brought about demonstrable change using theatre and performance knowledge and praxis. This award is for scholars at any stage in their career. It can be awarded to an individual researcher or to a team.
PRIZES
2023
WINNER
Sylvan Baker and Maggie Inchley
for the project The Verbatim Formula
The Verbatim Formula is a participatory research project for care-experienced young people. It uses verbatim theatre techniques, listening and dialogue to work with young people, care leavers, social workers, and universities.
In The Verbatim Formula we use headphone performance to make audio testimonies that can be shared safely and anonymously. To make the testimonies, participants record interviews with each other, and with facilitators. The content of the recordings are chosen by participants, edited, and loaded up onto MP3 players or iPods. A performer then listens back to the testimonies through personal headphones, and relays the original recording to an audience by paying minute attention to the words on the audio, and repeating them accurately and respectfully. The identity of the original speaker remains anonymous, and this often means that their words can be heard with special attention. Our performances intend to create spaces for reflection and dialogue, not defensiveness or blame.
NOMINATIONS
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
2022
WINNER
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.
2021
WINNER
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.
MAKE A
Nomination
Only current TaPRA members can submit nominations for our awards or elections. Each nomination requires a seconder, who must also be a current member.
TaPRA 2024 at Northumbria
Our 2024 conference will be hosted in partnership with Northumbria University from 4 to 6 September.
TaPRA 2024 at Northumbria
Our 2024 conference will be hosted in partnership with the University of Northumbria.
