Virtual-Talk: Prof. Esther Kim Lee (Duke)
Date of Event: May 3, 2023 Event Type: Interim Event
Prof. Esther Kim Lee (Duke) – “Toward New Theatre Histories: The Case Study of Yellowface during the Exclusion Era” – 3 May, 4:30-6 PM
This talk uses the recently published book Made-Up Asians: Yellowface during the Exclusion Era (Univ. of Michigan, 2022) as a case study to examine how theatre historians should rethink key foundational concepts and historical narratives in the field of theatre and performance studies. It questions the dominance of mimesis in discussions of acting and racialized performances and argues for a broader conceptualization of theatre history.
Please email theatrehistory@tapra.org to be added to the MS Teams event.
From Enthoven to East: Theatre and Performance at the V&A
Date of Event: September 4, 2023 Event Type: Interim Event
We’re delighted to announce our third ‘Theatre and Performance Working Group’ online event. It will take place 5.15-6.30pm on Monday 4 September. This has been planned to follow on from our working group Business Meeting, which has been scheduled for 4pm-5pm on Monday 4th September. The event will give us some all-important updates on the re-opening of the V&A Theatre and Performance collections. The Business Meeting is open to anyone who wishes to join the conversation about the WG’s activities and future plans – you do not need to have been at this year’s conference in order to attend.
If you wish to sign up for either of these, or both, please email us on theatrehistory@tapra.org and we will send you the relevant links.
From Enthoven to East: Theatre and Performance at the V&A
The V&A is currently undergoing its most intense period of transformation since being founded as the Museum of Manufacture in 1852. 2023 sees the opening of Young V&A (formerly the Museum of Childhood), 2024 marks the Theatre and Performance Collections’ centenary, and 2025 heralds the much-anticipated opening of V&A East, comprising a new museum and new research and collections centre. This session is an opportunity to hear from V&A Theatre and Performance curators directly about their current work, the team’s plans for the future, and what this means for the National Collection of Performing Arts, having evolved greatly since Gabrielle Enthoven’s gift of 80,000 playbills in 1924.
Jane Pritchard M.B.E
Jane Pritchard is Curator of Dance at the Victoria and Albert Museum. Exhibitions and displays for the museum include On Point: Royal Academy of Dance at 100 (2020), Anthony Crickmay: Photographing People and Performance (2017) and Diaghilev and the Golden Age of the Ballets Russes, 1909 – 1929 (2010). Prior to joining the V&A, Jane was archivist for Rambert Dance Company and English National Ballet, and created the Contemporary Dance Trust Archive.
Harriet Reed
Harriet Reed is Curator of Contemporary Performance at the Victoria and Albert Museum. She has co-curated the exhibitions Censored! Stage, Screen, Society at 50 (2018), Alice: Curiouser and Curiouser (2021) and Re:Imagining Musicals (2022) and contributed research towards the exhibition Diva (2023). She is part of the curatorial team behind The David Bowie Centre for the Study of Performing Arts, set to open at V&A East in 2025. She is a Committee Member of the UK Society for Theatre Research and the Membership Secretary for SIBMAS (International Association of Performing Arts Collections).
Simon Sladen
Simon Sladen is Senior Curator of Modern and Contemporary Theatre and Performance at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London and Senior Tutor (Performance) on the V&A and Royal College of Art’s History of Design MA programme. Recent exhibitions and displays for the museum include Re:Imagining Musicals (2022), Alice: Curiouser and Curiouser (2021), Laughing Matters: The State of a Nation (2019), Ivan Kyncl: In the Minute (2019) and Censored! Stage, Screen, Society (2018). Simon is Chair of the UK Pantomime Association, on the editorial board of the British Theatre Guide and chairs the Academic Advisory Board of Blackpool’s new museum Showtown. He is currently co-chairing a V&A-wide initiative about the future of curation and is part of the curatorial team behind The David Bowie Centre for the Study of Performing Arts.
All are very welcome to join us for this event. If you would like to attend, please email theatrehistory@tapra.org to receive the relevant link to MS Teams.
‘Intangible Heritage’
Date of Event: May 17, 2019 Event Type: Interim Event
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TaPRA History & Historiography working group Interim Event: ‘Intangible Heritage’ Friday 17th May 2019, 9:30-17:00, at the Performance Lab, Sheffield Hallam University Join us for a day of discussion exploring the relationship between current research methodologies and tangible/intangible heritage in contemporary practice and performance historiography. In 2003 UNESCO defined “intangible cultural heritage” as the ‘means the practices, representations, expressions, knowledge, skills – as well as the instruments, objects, artefacts and cultural spaces associated therewith – that communities, groups and, in some cases, individuals recognize as part of their cultural heritage. This intangible cultural heritage, transmitted from generation to generation, is constantly recreated by communities and groups in response to their environment, their interaction with nature and their history, and provides them with a sense of identity and continuity, thus promoting respect for cultural diversity and human creativity.’ Such ‘intangible heritage’ UNESCO contends is manifest in: (a) oral traditions and expressions, including language as a vehicle of the intangible cultural heritage; (b) performing arts; (c) social practices, rituals and festive events; (d) knowledge and practices concerning nature and the universe; (e) traditional craftsmanship. https://ich.unesco.org/en/convention Subsequent works such as Smith and Akagawa,(2009), Harrison, (2011), Jackson and Kidd, (2011), Pietrobruno, Gavin (2013), Ott and Pozzi (2015), Taylor (2016), and Ishiguro (2018), have explored the scope, tensions and possibilities that exist around conceptualizations of heritage while organisations such as Arts Council England and the Heritage Lottery Fund regard ‘intangible heritage’ as an increasing imperative in their grant allocations. For The Machinery Caroline Radcliffe and Sarah Angliss have collaborated to create a contemporary, live performance of Pat Tracey’s original clog dance, (the steps for which Pat herself has traced back to pre-1820). The piece mixes dance steps with music and video to reflect the conditions of women’s repetitive labour and the human/automaton relationship created by the Industrial Revolution and described by Marx in Das Kapital (1867). Together, Radcliffe and Angliss filmed and recorded the working machinery at Quarry Bank cotton mill, juxtaposing clog dancing with the repetitious script of a contemporary call-centre and the overwhelming sounds of the cotton machines to create a performance that brings to the fore the intricate relationships between the industrial vernacular and technologies of the nineteenth and twenty-first centuries. Part of the project is to relate it to the creative response of workers to the industrial revolution and how, by performing the workplace, they coped with it. More recently The Machinery has been recreated for Ironbridge Gorge Museums, (2018) as a large-scale immersive audio/visual installation by Jon Harrison with support from the Arts Council England, the University of Birmingham and Ironbridge Gorge Museums. Radcliffe, Harrison and Angliss’ The Machinery engages with the recovery of ‘intangible heritage’ as well as the History and Historiography working group’s ongoing theme of ‘Industry Professionals/Professional Industry.’ As such, our interim event will feature a screening of The Machinery, accompanied by a presentation from Caroline Radcliffe and Sarah Angliss. Our afternoon discussion will be framed around pre-circulated reading and invited provocations based on individual experiences of working with/from intangible heritage. For further info re The Machinery, please see: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LeoWj8DJL4Y https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=naCDVVKA724&feature=youtu.be If you’d be interested in attending our interim event please contact Hayley Bradley and Lucie Sutherland at theatrehistory@tapra.org We also invite applications for up to two postgraduate student travel bursaries for this event (£100.00 to be made available, which will form a contribution to travel costs). Postgrads wishing to be considered for a bursary should write to the conveners explaining how and why the event would benefit their current postgraduate study. Please note: TaPRA interim events are open to both existing and new members. If you’re not already a TaPRA member you will need to join the TaPRA membership in order to attend. TaPRA membership can be obtained at: http://tapra.org/join-tapra/ We’d also encourage you to sign up to the working group via the TaPRA website and please see our CfP for the September 2019 conference (deadline for proposals is Monday 8th April) on ‘European Legacies and Connections’: http://tapra.org/call-participation/tapra-2019-surrey-history-historiography-wg-cfp-industry-professionalsprofessional-industry-european-legacies-and-connections/ Suggested reading: Findlay, G. (2013). Mapping Tangible and Intangible Cultural Heritage: The Splinters Archive Project. Australasian Drama Studies, 113–129. Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com/docview/1424374995/ Harrison, R. (2011). Intangible heritage embodied and Intangible heritage. International Journal of Heritage Studies, 17(3), 280–282. https://doi.org/10.1080/13527258.2011.557864 Ishiguro, M. (2018). Malay Theatre: Intangible Cultural Heritage and Islam: Wayang Kulit Kelantan and Mak Yong by Kathy Foley and Patricia Hardwick, and: Tradition in Transition: Intangible Heritage in South and Southeast Asia. Asian Theatre Journal, 35(1), 216–221. https://doi.org/10.1353/atj.2018.0024 Jackson, A & Kidd, J. (2011). Performing Heritage. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Ott, M., Dagnino, F., & Pozzi, F. (2015). Intangible Cultural Heritage: Towards collaborative planning of educational interventions. Computers in Human Behavior, 51, 1314–1319. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2014.11.039 Radcliffe, C., & Angliss, S. (2012). Revolution: Challenging the automaton: Repetitive labour and dance in the industrial workspace. Performance Research, 17(6), 40–47. https://doi.org/10.1080/13528165.2013.775758 Pietrobruno, S. (2013). YouTube and the social archiving of intangible heritage. New Media & Society, 15(8), 1259–1276. https://doi.org/10.1177/146144481246959 Smith, L.S & Akagawa, N. (2009). Intangible Heritage. London: Routledge. Taylor, D. (2016). Saving the “Live”? Re-performance and Intangible Cultural Heritage. Études Anglaises, 69(2), 149–161. Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com/docview/1841298542/ |
