Applied Theatre and Practice as Research: Polyphonic Conversations

Applied theatre practice as research might be perceived as a curious conflation. Not greatly foregrounded in the literature on applied theatre or performance practice as research, this article engages with the particularities of such a pairing. Beginning with identifying why a consideration is timely, ‘the practice as research’ and ‘social’ turns are invoked and analysed as relevant contexts to consider applied theatre practice as research. Two projects are offered, providing specific examples for discussion. Revealed by increased scrutiny, some broader epistemological questions emerge concerning power, hierarchy of knowledge and research ‘authoring’. A metaphor of polyphonic conversations is offered as an amplification of the applied theatre practical research methodological terrain. Encouraging the basis of many sets of voices contributing to research and potentially negotiating concerns about power hierarchies and knowledge production, the metaphor provokes a fluidity of epistemology, including expanding on the now familiar debates around theory and practice particularly relevant for socially engaged performance-related practical research

Readjusting Our Sporting Sites/Sight: Sportification and the Theatricality of Social Life

This paper points out the potential of using sport for the analysis of society. Cultivated human movement is a specific social and cultural subsystem (involving sport, movement culture and physical culture), yet it becomes a part of wider social discourses by extending some of its characteristics into various other spheres. This process, theorised as sportification, provides as useful concept to examine the permeation of certain phenomena from the area of sport into the social reality outside of sport. In this paper, we investigate the phenomena of sportification which we parallel with visual culture and spectatorship practices in the Renaissance era. The emphasis in our investigation is on theatricality and performativity; particularly, the superficial spectator engagement with modern sport and sporting spectacles. Unlike the significance afforded to visualisation and deeper symbolic interpretation in Renaissance art, contemporary cultural shifts have changed and challenged the ways in which the active and interacting body is positioned, politicised, symbolised and ultimately understood. We suggest here that the ways in which we view sport and sporting bodies within a (post)modern context (particularly with the confounding amalgamations of signs and symbols and emphasis on hyper-realities) has invariably become detached from sports' profound metaphysical meanings and resonance. Subsequently, by emphasising the associations between social theatrics and the sporting complex, this paper aims to remind readers of ways that sport—as a nuanced phenomenon—can be operationalised to help us to contemplate questions about nature, society, ourselves and the complex worlds in which we live

Celebrate the feet: indicators of our health and lifestyle

Exhibition of artworks: photographs on canvas, Royal Derby Hospital, Derby, October 2016 - January 2018. The focus is on creating positive patient experiences to support recovery and aid wellbeing. This fits with Derby Teaching Hospitals' aims of promoting increased wellbeing through engagement with the Arts. Located in the therapies and rehabilitation corridor to support self-healing for those in rehabilitation, Royal Derby Hospital, Derby

TEST RECORD PLEASE IGNORE. A gift for Eleonora

‘A gift for Eleonora’ investigates the cultural value of the arts for health, happiness and well-being as a cultural health intervention for public engagement. Eleonora di Toledo (1522-1562), was a Spanish noblewoman, who married into the Medici dynasty, and was the first Duchess of Florence in Renaissance Italy. I researched, devised and wrote the performance text, taking the funeral dress of Eleonora, restored over 12 years and housed in the Galleria del Costume in the Palazzo Pitti; the site-specificity of Filippo Brunelleschi’s design and plan of the Cappella dei Pazzi, a masterpiece of Renaissance architecture in the Basilica di Santa Croce; Agnolo Bronzino’s portrait of ‘Eleonora of Toledo with her son Giovanni’ c.1545 located in the Galleria degli Uffizi, and the Early Renaissance form of a madrigal of voices as the starting points for experimentation. My interdisciplinary research process builds on previous publications of the performing lives of women and research themes of identity, motherhood and being. I have investigated renaissance history, memory, art and identity in Europe from the visual culture of Bronzino’s portraiture of Eleonora di Toledo, the interrogation of her world of fashion, textiles and trade, her attitude to health, well-being and the apothecary’s cabinet, through to the literature of Tullia d’Aragona’s poetry as search for self-expression and identity. As part of these identity making research processes, I interviewed contemporary Florentine aristocracy, which involved them bringing a gift for Eleonora, a fashion memento that was particularly special to them and linked to the cultural heritage, history and life of Eleonora di Toledo. Edited footage of these filmed interviews in March 2015 at the Villa Favard in Florence was used to make the trailer for the performance, see website. From original historical documents, the use of portraiture as document for a period and the interrogation of textile as the principle decorative medium in how fabrics were woven, dyed, printed and stitched to give varying textures, has created a life lived through performance and the mediums of language, fashion and culture