The Theatre team’s research activities are organised around several key areas of contemporary performance and involves staff participation in a number of high profile research grant projects:
- Physical theatre/dance, embodiment and performative relations with experimental poetry and writing practice
- Performances of the body and experimental performance, interconnecting theatre and performance studies, anthropology, sociology, and gender studies
- Intersections of bodies, cultures and identities in intercultural performance (including dance, critical race theory and contemporary South Asian dance)
- The use of the voice in writing and experimental writing by women
- Street theatre, British alternative theatre history, musical theatre, and intersections of gender and sexuality
- Commemorative practices, spectatorship and public performance of collective identity in times of social change
- Digital performance and digital cultures, and the intersections of interactive media technologies with immersive performance, wearable design, and digital scenographies
- Neuroaesthetics and the aesthetic potential of digitized technology for performance (artificial intelligence, motion capture, 3D modeling and animation, biotechnology)
Some of these research pursuit evolved from the Centre for Contemporary and Digital Performance and its strategic aims over the past few years, namely building a leading international role in researching physical theatre and digital performance (with the biannual Artaud Forum serving as a hybrid laboratory for research symposia and exhibitions), as well as developing innovative collaborations with institutional and extra-institutional partners. Another major aim has been to sustain research excellence amongst our doctoral students and postdoctoral fellows.
Open to partnerships in research collaboration the team’s activities centre on the integration of creative arts, performance writing, directing, choreography and performance design with digital technologies.
The team won a grant for its popular Research Seminar Series on “Precarity and the Politics of Art: Performative and Critical Empowerment after Democracy.” Staff members also serve as editors on some of the most important research journals and book series in the field.
Prof Johannes Birringer is research lead and coordinator for the subject.
Email: johannes.birringer@brunel.ac.uk
Tel.: +44 (0) 1895 267343
Useful Links:
Publications
For an overview of the publications and research activities of our staff, please consult the staff pages. Below are some of the highlights of recent publications and artistic premieres:
- Johannes Birringer, METABODY (EU partnership project) and DAP-Lab’s metakimospheres, world premiere April 2016
- Susan Broadhurst, editor BST, and series editor for Palgrave Macmillan’s Studies in Performance and Technology
- Broderick Chow: AHRC-funded Leadership Fellows project Dynamic Tensions: New Masculinities in the Performance of Fitness; see photo on Work Songs
- Royona Mitra, New Book: Akram Khan: Dancing New Interculturalism.
- Fiona Templeton, world premiere, (La Mama Theater, New York, May 2017)