The Drama Division, School of Music and Drama, UoH

Affiliated to teach on MA courses Writing for Performance and Ensemble Physical Theatre, Training and Performance within the Department of Theatre, Drama and Performance.

This relationship with the University assists my ongoing research into physicality and the playwright, exploring the practice and pedagogy of contemporary playwrighting (outside the convention of the ‘well-made play’) in the areas of: dramaturgy (through interrogating my own word-creation processes), collaboration and psycho-physical training.

The University supports this exploration, focused around exploring ways of creating a performance ensemble responsive to the nature of my texts through involvement of staff and student personnel, and by allowing use of their studio spaces and facilities wherever possible.

Text Under The Golem’s Tongue

Embodiment and the playwright in postdramatic text creation

Some audiences, academics and artists are beginning to observe that a casualty of process-driven work is often excellence, or even existence, of text. Steps are being taken towards the resuscitation of words in postdramatic performance, but almost exclusively by “practitioners, lecturers and theorists whose processes of creativity do not begin with text.” The playwright’s voice remains a whisper in the debate, as it often does in the process of lifting their texts from the page.

I am seeking, from my particular perspective and experiential process, to re-define the question “what is the playwright’s role in post-dramatic theatre?” – a question that has pushed many of us into beleaguered positions, protective of our text and role status. Rather, the core question of this research proposal is: “what could be the playwright’s role, within a new aesthetic?”

Aims and Objectives

This personal research-with-practice opportunity will centre the playwright in an exploration of the symbiotic relationship between physicality and language, made implicit by the root articulare: “to furnish with joints, to utter distinctly”.

Running parallel to, and supported by, my continuing professional practice and the unique configuration of research interests in the Drama Division of the University of Huddersfield, it will view artistic language-making as a bodymind skill and offer physical and theoretical insights into the practice and pedagogy of contemporary playwrighting in the areas of dramaturgy and play.