NUTS NZ Issue #6

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Editorial

Welcome to the sixth edition of NUTS NZ – the Newsletter for University Theatre Studies New Zealand. The purpose of the newsletter is to help us communicate more effectively as a community of scholars interested in Theatre and Performance. We have an interesting selection of stories and news items for you in this mid-year issue of of the newsletter for 2015. In this issue we have included the first of what we hope will be a series of ‘correspondences’ from Dr. Sharon Mazer who will be discussing issues related to the Performance-Based Research Fund (PBRF) exercise, and the challenges we face as a community in how performance research is evaluated. Sharon raises the possibility of beginning a conversation about PBRF at the ADSA annual conference which is just around the corner. This year’s Australasian Association for Theatre, Drama and Performance Studies (ADSA) conference ‘Revisiting The Player’s Passion: the Science(s) of Acting in 2015′ is being hosted by the University of Sydney. We understand there will be good representation by Kiwi scholars at this event. The new book ‘Embodying Transformation:Transcultural Performance‘ (Monash University Press, 2015) will be launched at the conference. The book features a substantial contribution from scholars based in Aotearoa/NZ, including Hilary Halba, James McKinnon, George Parker, Bronwyn Tweddle, and Rand Hazou.

We are conscious that this issue of NUTS is very Auckland focused. We are sure that other programmes around the country are producing wonderfully exciting theatre projects and research that we should know about. So please send us information on any upcoming events or initiatives that you think our wider theatre and academic community should be informed about. Perhaps you could nominate someone within your programmes to be a NUTS NZ media officer? Please refer to the important dates below. We plan to circulate our seventh issue in mid-August 2015, and we will need items of news by 31st of July. As always, submissions should be sent to the NUTS NZ editor Jane Marshall:  j.g.marshall@massey.ac.nz

Newsletter Issue Information Required by Date of Circulation
Issue 7 31 July 2015 14 August 2015
Issue 8 30 October 2015 13 November 2015

Kind regards,

NUTS NZ editors: Jane Marshall and Rand Hazou.

 

PBRF Corespondent’s Report

This is a critical year in the lead-up to PBRF 2018. Now is the time to be discussing strategies for meeting the challenges ahead within our own institutions and with each other more widely. We need to be thinking creatively both about the way our work is produced and about how it is to be represented in our portfolios. I expect PBRF will be central to our regular November meeting (hosted by Auckland University this year). In addition, if there is sufficient interest, perhaps we can organise an earlier conversation – at ADSA, for example, and at other regional gatherings (Auckland, anyone?).

In fact, we have less than three years to produce the work – performances and publications – that will be pulled into portfolios, counted and evaluated. Manuscripts of articles, book chapters, books and play texts must be in process by the end of the year to ensure they’re in print by the end of 2017. Even e-journals need a fair bit of lead time. And research-oriented performances will surely need to be in development, in order to elicit the sorts of critical, international attention that can lift the apparent value of the work in the eyes of the assessors.

There have been some significant changes to PBRF for the next round: an attempt, it seems, to emphasise quality over quantity, to place a higher value on reception of research (ie ‘impact’) in the wider community and to simplify the work of panellists somewhat. The number of ‘Nominated Research Outputs’ remains four, but the number of ‘Other Research Outputs’ has been reduced to twelve. The ‘Peer Esteem’ and ‘Contribution to the Research Environment’ categories have been merged into a single ‘Research Contributions’ category, with a maximum of fifteen examples allowed. There will be limits to the percentage of staff at any one institution who can claim ‘special circumstances’, and staff will no longer be able to request cross-referrals between panels.

You may also be aware of a number of consultations circulating. The proposal to collapse Creative and Performing Arts output categories into a single ‘Original Creative Work’ is especially problematic, I think, for those of us working in theatre and performance research. The suggestion to reduce the designations for conference contributions to just (1) paper published in proceedings, and (2) other (including full papers presented orally) is also troubling from my perspective. Your institutions’ PBRF coordinators can provide copies of the relevant documents and involve you in the discussion, if you’re at all interested. Truth is, they’d probably be delighted to be asked.

My new role at AUT directly involves supporting staff and student research in theatre and performance, PBRF included. While there is an aspect of competition between institutions, I remain committed to lifting the profile of our disciplines in this national exercise. Feel free to contact me: smazer@aut.ac.nz.

Best to you all

Sharon

Dr Sharon Mazer
Associate Professor of Theatre & Performance Studies @ AUT
Convenor, NZ Universities Committee for Theatre/Performance Research

NUTS PEOPLE

In each edition of NUTS NZ we profile an academic and a postgraduate student to show case “our people” and their current research/interests. It is our pleasure to be profiling Lecturer Emma Willis and postgraduate student James Wenley from the University of Auckland.  NUTS NZ asked each of them to answer the following questions:

  • What is your research about?
  • What theatre/performances have you seen recently?
  • What have you been reading lately?

Dr Emma Willis

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Research: Ask me anything except what I’m researching right now! The monograph that came from my PhD thesis, Theatricality, Dark Tourism and Ethical Spectatorship, was published last year so I feel I’m at the beginning of a new phase of research. I have some formative ideas that continue to play around with the concept spatial dramaturgies, this time beginning with the Humanist folly gardens of the 16th century, such as Sacro Bosco, as a point of departure. I’ve also been talking to Dorita Hannah about an edited collection on the history of experimental performance in New Zealand so that is on the horizon. As a prelude I am writing a short history of BATS’ STAB commission to coincide with its 20th year in 2015. On the creative side, I have returned to some playwriting this year – writing shorts scenes. I’m also continuing to work with Malia Johnston and we have a work in progress called Red, which we started making last year and which hopefully we’ll get to spend some more time on in the coming months. Keeping my creative research practice active and engaged is a focus for me this year.

Theatre:  I’m teaching a 700 level playwriting class this year and I am really excited by the theatre that I see my students creating every week. I’m very much interested in the work that words do in the theatre (especially having been quite involved in dance for the last few years) and I am always so struck by the range of responses to the weekly writing tasks that the students undertake. There are eleven completely distinctive voices in the class and their work has inspired me to get back to playwriting myself. I really love to see work-in-progress. There’s a freedom at that preliminary stage of the process that is so exciting. Some of the performances I’ve seen that I’ve enjoyed the most over the last year have been showings. I also love the generosity of the audience in these sorts of contexts. I wish we could maintain the spirit of artistic freedom and audience generosity when the whole ‘business’ of theatre comes into play.

Reading: For the playwriting class I’ve been reading a lot of plays. Highlights have been David Greig’s The Events, which the SiLO is producing later in the year. A very theatrically adventurous play about how we attempt to decipher seemingly indecipherable actions. I can’t wait to see it. I’ve also been delving into the work of Suzan Lori-Parks, who we don’t much read or teach here. I’ve put one of her plays on the curriculum so I am intrigued to see what students will make of her work. I’ve recently joined the Performance Paradigm team as book reviews editor. Their most recent issue is themed around resistance and there is a particularly fantastic essay by Paul Rae that thinks through the relationship between theatre and resistance. Essential reading for anyone interested in the topic: http://www.performanceparadigm.net/index.php/journal/article/view/146

 James Wenley

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Research: The Topic of my Doctoral Thesis is “New Zealand Theatre’s Overseas Experience”. I’m interested in the productions that have toured from this country overseas, examples of international companies producing New Zealand plays, and how cultural and national identity within New Zealand originated theatre works are represented and received in an international context. I’ve just done an archival research trip to the Alexander Turnball, Playmarket, Victoria’s J.C. Beaglehole Room, and Otago’s Hocken Library and am working through lots of material on playwrights like Bruce Mason, Robert Lord, Roger Hall, and productions like Waiora and Downstage’s Hedda Gabbler. There are lot of current initiatives to produce NZ theatre overseas, like the 2014 NZ at Edinburgh season, so this is an ideal time to be researching this topic and later this year I have the opportunity to run away from the zombies in Generation of Z in London. I’m playing with ideas of regionalism, cultural specificity, universalism, global hybridity as well as the economic and institutional factors behind the production of work overseas, and what it all means for theatremakers in this part of the world.

Theatre: I’m the editor of Auckland Theatre blog TheatreScenes.co.nz and a theatre critic for Metro Magazine so there are not many Auckland productions that escape me. I think Rochelle Bright’s Daffodils is brilliant, and was pleased to catch its return Auckland season at Q. It maximises nostalgia through its remixes of the great kiwi songbook (Anchor Me, Language etc) performed exquisitely by Todd Emmerson and Coleen Davis. It’s a boy meets girl story which doesn’t end well, and for me has something quite important to say about masculinity in this country. Most recently I was very energised by Emily Perkins’ contemporary adaptation of A Doll’s House which throws a grenade at social, gender, economic and ethical complacency. “Just what this country needs right now” I wrote in my review (http://www.metromag.co.nz/culture/stage/a-dolls-house-review/).

Reading: I’ve recently gone on a binge of texts dealing with Interculturalism spiralling out from Ric Knowles short but sharp theatre & interculturalism. I’ve also been reading a lot about performance that deals with medical issues for a course I’m teaching for the University of Auckland’s Medical Humanities. Arthur W. Frank’s The Wounded Storyteller is very provocative. Non-theatre related I’ve been dipping in and out of Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Harari which is quite a fascinating frame for thinking about our history. I love these sorts of big picture exercises that try to take account of where we are and how we got there.

Conferences/Seminars

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Call for papers – Symposium Announcement

International Applied Theatre Symposium: The Performance of Hope

  • November 9th, 10th & 11th 2015
  • Faculty of Education and Social Work, University of Auckland, New Zealand
  • Deadline for abstract submissions: Monday 11th May, 2015

The Critical Research Unit in Applied Theatre (CRUAT) at the University of Auckland sends a call out for you to join us at the International Applied Theatre Symposium: The Performance of Hope, November 9th – 11th 2015. The symposium celebrates and questions applied theatre’s potential to be a liberating and humanising process. The symposium includes confirmed keynotes from Professor Peter McLaren, Professor Peter Freebody, Associate Professor Penny Bundy and Dr Emma Willis, applied theatre performances, practical workshops and academic papers. As in previous symposia there will be a separate strand for postgraduate students to meet and work together (9th November). The last symposium in 2013 brought together 100 participants from around the world and nearly 30 postgraduate students from the Eastern seaboard of Australia and throughout New Zealand.

Symposium Themes

Hope, like freedom is an ontological need. Hope is the desire to dream, the desire to change, the desire to improve human existence. As Freire says, hopelessness is “but hope that has lost its bearings”. This fourth international symposium hosted by CRUAT continues our interrogation of the links between applied theatre and critical hope. We situate this debate within our understanding of the potential for applied theatre to create spaces for those regularly denied full citizenship. When applied theatre provides opportunities to participate in thinking and talking about the world to those denied these rights, it is a force against the anti-democratic practices of global capitalism; it is a performance of hope and resistance. This symposium celebrates theatre’s potential to realise hope and possibility in communities of despair, disenfranchisement and disadvantage. This symposium will bring together artists and professionals working in education, health, community and youth work, inviting them to share their research and practice.

Proposals are sought for:

  • Workshops (60 or 120 mins)
  • Research paper presentations (20 mins)
  • Performances (60 or 120 mins)
  • Symposia/roundtable discussions (60 mins)

Information for contributors:

  • Abstracts should be no more than 300 words and should address the conference themes
  • Proposals should be sent to m.mullen@auckland.ac.nz
  • Please include a biography of no more than 150 words that will be suitable for inclusion in the conference programme
  • This is a peer-reviewed conference
  • Closing date for submissions: Monday 11th May 2015
  • Conference website:http://www.education.auckland.ac.nz/en/about/events/events-2015/11/the-performance-of-hope.html

CRUAT (Critical Research Unit in Applied Theatre), University of Auckland

May Events 2015

CRUAT welcomes Curt L. Tofteland, Founder and Producing Director of Shakespeare behind Bars, USA, who will give public presentations in Auckland. Christchurch and Wellington. Full details can be found here: http://www.creativethinkingproject.org/curt-tofteland-fellow/#curt-events

These talks are accompanied by one-day symposia in each location that will showcase projects happening in New Zealand prisons and discuss issues around rehabilitation and reintegration with the arts and academic community. For more information contact: Associate Professor Peter O’Connor: p.oconnor@auckland.ac.nz

These events are being hosted with Arts Access Aotearoa with the University of Auckland Creative Thinking Project.

Creativity: The Possibilities of Hope – a Postgraduate Seminar

Meet with the Creative Thinking Project’s fifth Creative Fellow and fellow postgraduate students in theatre,  applied theatre and related disciplines. Curt L. Tofteland is the founder of Shakespeare Behind Bars, an internationally acclaimed personal transformation program which combines art, theatre, and the works of William Shakespeare to create Restorative Circles of Reconciliation in prisons. Shakespeare Behind Bars, is the subject of Philomath Films award-winning documentary which began its life at the 2005 Sundance Film Festival and traveled to more than forty film festivals around the world winning eleven awards.

  • Date: 18 May 2015
  • Venue: Faculty of Education, The University of Auckland.
  • Time: 2-3.30 p.m.
RSVP: This event is strictly limited in numbers. You will need to confirm early to reserve attendance
Please email: p.oconnor@auckland.ac.nz

Creativity in Corrections Symposium, Tuesday 19 May, 9am–4pm, University of Auckland

The visit of Curt L. Tofteland, the University of Auckland’s fifth Creative Fellow, provides an opportunity for Arts in Corrections practitioners, Corrections staff and the wider community to gather and talk about the role of creativity in making a difference in people’s lives. Curt L. Tofteland is the founder of Shakespeare Behind Bars, an internationally acclaimed personal transformation programme that combines art, theatre and the works of William Shakespeare to create Restorative Circles of Reconciliation in prisons. Shakespeare Behind Bars is the subject of an award-winning documentary that began its life at the 2005 Sundance Film Festival, has travelled to more than forty film festivals around the world and won eleven awards. The symposium also provides an opportunity to work practically with Curt. The symposium will also include a discussion panel featuring:

  • Curt Tofteland, University of Auckland’s Creative Fellow
  • Penelope Glass, prison artist, Santiago, Chile
  • Associate Professor Peter O’Connor, University of Auckland
  • Jacqui Moyes, Arts in Corrections Advisor, Arts Access Aotearoa
Venue: Room N356, The Faculty of Education, University of Auckland, Epsom Ave, Epsom.
For more information contact: Dr. Molly Mullen: m.mullen@auckland.ac.nz

 November 2015 Events

CRUAT International Symposium – Performance of hope: 9th-11th November

The Critical Research Unit in Applied Theatre (CRUAT) at the University of Auckland sends a call out for you to join us at our fourth international symposium. The 2015 symposium celebrates and questions applied theatre’s potential to be a liberating and humanising process. The symposium includes confirmed keynotes from Professor Peter McLaren, Professor Peter Freebody, Associate Professor Penny Bundy and Dr Emma Willis, applied theatre performances, practical workshops and academic papers. As in previous symposia there will be a separate strand for postgraduate students to meet and work together (9th November). The last symposium in 2013 brought together 100 participants from around the world and nearly 30 postgraduate students from the Eastern seaboard of Australia and throughout New Zealand.

Deadline for abstract submissions: Monday 25th of May, 2015

For more information and full call for papers see http://www.education.auckland.ac.nz/en/about/events/events-2015/11/the-performance-of-hope.html
or contact Dr. Molly Mullen: m.mullen@auckland.ac.nz

 

Performances

Do People Dance

Do People Dance When They’re Married?

Three short award winning plays by Angie Farrow and directed by Rachael Longshaw-Park, including ‘Leo Rising’, ‘Tango Partner’ and ‘Lifetime’. With a distinctive theatrical style that combines absurdity with lyricism, these short works each explore the themes of intimate relationships and lives left un-lived.

28th of May – 31 of May in the Drama Studio, Arts 1 (Building 206), University of Auckland, Symonds Street.

  • Adult $15
  • Concession $10
  • Student $10.
For all bookings email uoadramabookings@gmail.com.
Method of payment is CASH only on the night. All tickets must be paid for ten minutes before the performance or they will be resold.

 

 

 

 

Arts Out Loud – Albany Campus

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Arts Out Loud - Albany Campus

From Page to Screen

A presentation by scriptwriter Dr Matthew Harris and the screening of two films, Snooze Time (2014), and 43000 Feet (2012). Dr Harris will be talking about the genesis of the ideas for the films, the writing and revision process of the scripts, and elements of the production that bear on the translation from the page to screen. Dr Harris will also comment on the thematic link between the films: human perceptions of time.

About the Speaker

Dr Matthew Harris is a writer of short films and other fictions. His films have travelled the international festival circuit from Tribeca in New York to the Clermont-Ferrand Festival in France, accruing various awards and nominations, and his short fiction and poetry has been published variously in NZ and abroad. He graduated with a PhD in New Zealand fiction at Massey’s Albany campus in 2012, and tutors in the School of English and Media Studies. A sample of his work can be found here: http://www.matthewjamesharris.com

 

When:        A special lunch-time presentation on Wed 20th of May from 12:30-1:30

Where:      The Theatre Lab, Sir Neil Waters Building, Massey Albany Campus

 https://www.facebook.com/events/439733682867788/

Hippocrates Prize Commendation for Massey PhD Candidate

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Congratulations go to Johanna Emeney, a PhD candidate in the School, who has had a poem selected as “commended” in the prestigious UK-based Hippocrates Prize for Poetry and Medicine.  The poem, “And then it spreads“, is from her creative/critical thesis, which is focused on medical poetry.  Further details can be found at: http://hippocrates-poetry.org/hippocrates-prize/2015-hippocrates-prize-for/.

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Native Bird – Book Launch

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In his anticipated third collection, Native Bird, award-winning poet Bryan Walpert – who arrived here from the U.S. a decade ago – writes of what it’s been like to be an observer or “birdwatcher” in a land whose physical and cultural geographies he is still learning to name. With his trademark precision and insight, Bryan weaves meditations on the life and songs of birds into his observations on living as a new settler in wind-charged Manawatu. Working at the shifting borders between homes and hearts, prose and poetry, call and song, this is an arresting collection that speaks to us all.

If you’re in Dunedin this week, please join us at the Dunedin Public Library for launches of Bryan’s new poetry collection, Native Bird, as part of Makaro Press’s Hoopla Series, alongside collections by Carolyn McCurdie (Bones in the Octagon) and Jennifer Compton (Mr Clean & The Junkie).

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Dunedin invite.pdf

 

Leading Men

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School of English and Media Studies Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing Thom Conroy will be appearing at the 2015 Auckland Writer’s Festival.

Novelists Graeme Lay and Thom Conroy have written about two figures in New Zealand’s colonial past: Captain James Cook, the inspiration for Lay’s recently completed fictional trilogy; and Ernst Dieffenbach, the free-spirited German appointed as surgeon and naturalist on the New Zealand Company’s ship “Tory”, who is at the heart of Conroy’s novel The Naturalist. The two writers discuss their leading men and the process of mutating fact into fiction with Catriona Ferguson.

http://writersfestival.co.nz/writer/thom-conroy

Marvelly’s Villainesse media site launching soon

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CaptureShe’s been described as a national treasure, has toured internationally with opera star Paul Potts, and her pop music has sped up the charts.  Now gold-album-selling singer/songwriter and EMS graduate Lizzie Marvelly is calling all young creative writers and artists to be part of her ground-breaking new feminist media project, Villainesse.

Marvelly, who has credited her songwriting creativity to her English studies, will graduate in April with a Massey BA in English and Psychology.  Villainesse is her next big challenge.  She says “the basic idea of Villainesse is to create smart, no-filter media for young women aged 16-25”.

She hopes to build a global group of student writers whose work will be published on Villainesse, as well as branching out to include students’ videos, podcasts and other media. Villainesse will also feature the writing of well-known young women columnists and Marvelly is planning to create connections between student writers and established journalists/writers in the field.

She is looking for “smart, articulate, socially conscious students” who would be interested in writing about young women’s issues and perspectives and connecting with like-minded women around the world – and if that sounds like you, now is the time to get your creative work in to Villainesse for the launch in May.

“It’s very much at the start-up stage at the moment and the site won’t launch until May, but I’m putting the call out to writers and collecting articles now,” Marvelly said.

“I’m looking for a mixture of hard news, features, investigative features, opinion pieces, creative non-fiction, and hybrids of those forms. The idea is for writers to write about issues that they’re passionate about (that would be relevant to young women aged 16-25) from their own unique perspectives whilst upholding a code of ethics and aiming for sound and balanced journalism”.

Marvelly, herself just 25 years old, hopes the site “will grow to become a space to foster debate, creativity and, well, girl power”.  She says “For the project to be truly authentic to women in this age group it’s important to have young writers writing for their peers, with some older inspirational figures adding to the dialogue.”

Click through to the Villainesse website below to register your interest, see their page on Facebook, or contact the Villainesse team directly at editor@villainesse.com

Links:

http://www.villainesse.com/

http://www.facebook.com/TheVillainesse

Previous stories about Marvelly and Massey

http://www.massey.ac.nz/massey/about-massey/news/article.cfm?mnarticle=marvellys-songwriting-debut-a-credit-to-her-english-studies-21-07-2014

http://www.massey.ac.nz/massey/about-massey/news/article.cfm?mnarticle_uuid=98A2339A-0334-93FB-0434-F20415BB2FA3

 

NUTS NZ Issue #5

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Editorial

Welcome to the fifth edition of NUTS NZ – the Newsletter for University Theatre Studies New Zealand. The purpose of the newsletter is to help us communicate more effectively as a community of scholars interested in Theatre and Performance. We are glad to report that Sharon Mazer has kindly offered to be our PBRF Theatre Corespondent for NUTS NZ in 2015. Sharon will update us on important issues or developments related to PBRF over our next three issues of NUTS NZ. If you have any specific issues related to PBRF that you would like to raise please let us know.

In other big news Massey is planning to introduce a Theatre Minor next year. The School of English and Media Studies has a 52-year history of teaching theatre, currently teaches it in 10 papers and into 17 programmes, and employs a range of full time and casual theatre staff. Yet there is currently no named theatre studies programme at Massey University. The School is proposing to introduce a Minor in Theatre Studies in 2016. The plan to introduce the minor was tabled at the University Committee for Theatre and Performance Research NZ which was held at VUW in November last year. No doubt some of you will receive the CUAP application in the next couple of months where you will be invited to comment.

We have an interesting selection of stories and news items for you in this fifth issue of NUTS NZ. Please refer to the important dates below. News items for issue #6 are due by 1 May. As always, submissions should be sent to the NUTS NZ editor Jane Marshall:  j.g.marshall@massey.ac.nz

Newsletter Issue

Information Required by

Date of Circulation

Issue 5

6 March 2015

13 March 2015

Issue 6

1 May 2015

15 May 2015

Issue 7

31 July 2014

14 August 2015

Issue 8

30 October 2014

13 November 2015

Kind regards,

NUTS NZ editors: Jane Marshall and Rand Hazou.

 

Nuts People

University of Auckland Drama students are well represented in the Shortlist for the Adam Play Award this year. 2014 BA Hons student Michelanne Forster (featured in the NUTS NZ issue #2) was nominated for “The Gift of Tongues”, which was her Drama 720 project supervised by Murray Edmond. The shortlist also included 2004 MA alumnus Anders-Falstie Jensen’s most recent play “Centrepoint”. Congrats to Michelanne and Anders-Falstie and the team at Auckland Uni for an outstanding result. In each edition of NUTS NZ we want to be able to profile an academic and a postgraduate student to show case “our people” and their current research/interests. For this issue we are trying something a little different and have invited Massey student Rebekah Hines to submit a short piece on her experience being enrolled in the postgraduate paper 139.763 Community Theatre which is coordinated by Massey’s Asoc. Prof. Angie Farrow.

139.763 Community Theatre

November 17th, only ten days after completing my Bachelor of Arts I was locked and loaded to participate in my first Masters paper at Massey University, 139.763 – Community Theatre, taught by Dr. Angie Farrow. My experience with this paper can only be communicated in brief because the reality is, there was so much that we did and learnt that the only way you can fully understand it, would be to participate yourself. And the truth is, four students engaging in creativity to recreate the intimate truths of reality, is a beautiful mess only understood in fullness, in the moment. But let me give you a snippet of my contact course in December at the Palmerston North Campus.

After spending time engaging with Playback Theatre, watching documentaries and conversing about various theories and agencies of Community Theatre as a whole, my fellow students, Lyn, Hana Laurence and I were set the task of creating a piece of theatre for a community of our choosing, making sure we were engaging with and understanding the concepts we had been learning about. We quickly found ourselves at Palmerston Manor, a rest home, gleaning stories from various residents as inspiration.Gathering stories was not the most difficult task. Sure there were moments when we had to speak slower, repeat our questions, speak louder, lean closer or listen to the same story on repeat, but getting stories, getting any form of inspiration was not strenuous. The difficult task was choosing which characters to portray, what to stories believe, which bits to use knowing we had to somehow recreate those stories theatrically. We tried our hand at devising, with the help of our tutor Rachel, and while what we devised was poetic it was so abstract that Angie advised us our audience would not understand it. She reminded us that our performance was not for academics or avid theatre goers, but rather for a community riddled with alzheimers, dementia, deafness and partial comprehension, many of whom would never have been to a theatre before. So we started again. As we devised, there was a sudden realisation of self-imposed importance. In that moment, seemingly irrelevant bits of knowledge, hazy memories, unheard of locations and excessive lovers, gave life to nonsensical realities and we, who had considered them worthless were forced to relearn what it meant to be gracious; what it meant to live in someone else’s mind; what it meant to relinquish judgment on the recollected mishmash of falsified truths shared in heaven’s waiting room and to love that which wasn’t, that which was all which we would retell. This was probably one of the hardest lessons to learn, but it makes sense- it’s what we were there to do, that is what community theatre does, it presents a story on the community’s terms.

Performing for the residents is something I’ll be reluctant to forget. It was there, performing what we titled Truth and Lies that we got a real life glimpse at the agency of Community Theatre. It brought feuding couples together for just a moment as they laughed at the same joke, or held their breaths during a sad moment, gasped together and remembered together. I think, in a modern world in which the focus often seems to be on the individual first and the community second, theatre and specifically Community Theatre provides the rare opportunity to come together with other human beings to experience a sense of collective belonging. Working with that community I now understand how Community Theatre offers a chance to discover positive potential outside of society’s label. While the majority of society views rest-homes as sad, boring places, we saw a positive potential; we saw a range of personalities and were invited into a beautiful place of grace and wonder, which we then recreated.

ADSA Prizes

It is that time of the year again, when we call for nominations for ADSA’s many prizes to acknowledge outstanding achievements by members of the association.

In 2015, ADSA will seek to award the following prizes –

If you are eligible for a prize, or know someone who is eligible for a prize, we strongly encourage you to contact the convenor in the next few weeks, as the prize nominations will start to close from 30th March 2015 forward.

CALL FOR PAPERS

DEADLINE: 1 April 2015

IN-flux, IN-stability, IN-sensitivity: The Struggle of Performance in the Arab World

3 – 5 December 2015

The Global PSi 2015 event FLUID STATES is excited to announce that the IN-flux, IN-stability, IN-sensitivity: The Struggle of Performance in the Arab World symposium will be hosted at the Lebanese American University campus, Byblos/Beirut, from 3-5 December 2015.

IN-flux, IN-stability, IN-sensitivity coincides with the 5th anniversary of he historic Arab Spring events that have swept across the Middle East and North African (MENA) region. The Arab Spring brought a vast movement of both violent and non-violent demonstrations in the Arab region. History hasalways contained times of unrest in the MENA area but none as global as the Arab Spring. How has this movement affected the region and more particularly ‘art’ in the region? The answer to this question is one the symposium seeks to explore through paper presentations, panel discussions and workshops. We invite submissions of presentations that reflect on the impact that these political and infrastructural developments are having on performances and performers, and the ways in which both performers and scholars understand performance structures in political, ethnic and cultural terms in the MENA region.

SUBMISSIONS

Types of submissions:

  • Paper presentation (20 minutes)
  • Panel presentations (groups of three or more individual presenters – 60minutes)
  • Workshops (60 minutes)

We invite presentations that examine themes such as:

  • How the Arab Spring effect art and performance in the region
  • The function/role of art in such tumultuous times
  • How the exceptional circumstances are enacting upon the body
  • Forms performance acts and actions are art are taking
  • Implications of these acts/actions on our thinking
  • Ways in which the Arab Spring events are shifting the presence and visibility of performance in the region
  • How performance provides a means of recreation, empowerment, support, protest, display, provocation, pleasure or entertainment in the various locations and situations in the MENA region.
  • All submissions and presentations must be in English or Arabic.

Submissions require the following information:

1. Name, title, phone number, institutional affiliation (if applicable), e-mail address, and title of presentation.

2. An abstract (no more than 250 words in length) summarizing the topic, methodology and research to date, and indicating how the proposal relates to the symposium themes.

3. A brief presenter’s bio (no more than 150 words in length).

Submissions are to be sent electronically to Dr Rose Martin (rose.martin@auckland.ac.nz) no later than 1 April 2015. Notification of acceptance will be by 1 May 2015. All abstracts will be peer-reviewed.

SYMPOSIUM REGISTRATION

  • The deadline for all registrations will be 1 November 2015.
  • Registration fee: $250.00 USD
  • Note: Further details regarding accommodation, transportation, symposium schedule and keynote presenters will be circulated at a later date.
  • If you have any questions regarding the symposium or submissions please contact: Dr Nadra Assaf (nassaf@lau.edu.lb) or Dr Rose Martin (rose.martin@auckland.ac.nz)

 

Performances and Upcoming Events

Capturing Anzac Tales

 ‘Capturing The ANZAC Tales’

‘Capturing The ANZAC Tales’ is an inter-generational theatre project facilitated by Associate Professor Peter O’Connor, Director of the Critical Research Unit in Applied Theatre at the University of Auckland.

The performance will take place on Friday the 10th, Saturday the 11th, and Sunday the 12th of April – at the Bruce Ritchie Performing Arts Centre, Massey High School, Don Buck Road, Auckland.

Tickets are $10 Adults and $5 for Students.

  • Venue: The Bruce Ritchie Performing Arts Centre,
  • Massey High School, Don Buck Road, Auckland
  • Tickets: $10 Adults, $5 Students and FREE for Gold Card Holders.
  • Bookings: Phone (09) 626-5221 or Email stephen@appliedtheatre.co.nz

 

CRUAT (Critical Research Unit in Applied Theatre), Faculty of Education, University of Auckland

 Public events and activities 2015

May 2015

CRUAT welcomes Curt L. Tofteland, Founder and Producing Director of Shakespeare Behind Bars, USA, who will give presentations in Auckland. Christchurch and Wellington. These talks are accompanied by one-day symposia in each location that will showcase projects happening in New Zealand prisons and discuss issues around rehabilitation and reintegration with the arts and academic community. These events are being hosted with Arts Access Aotearoa with the University of Auckland Creative Thinking Project. See below for important dates. For more information contact: Associate Professor Peter O’Connor: p.oconnor@auckland.ac.nz

  • Monday 18th May, evening (Auckland venue t.b.c.) Public Lecture by Curt L. Tofteland,
  • Tuesday 19th May, 9am-3pm (Auckland venue t.b.c) Creative Corrections Symposium
  • Monday 25th May, evening (Christchurch venue t.b.c.) Public Lecture by Curt L. Tofteland
  • Tuesday 26th May (Christchurch venue t.b.c.) Creative Corrections Symposium
  • Wednesday 27th May (Wellington venue t.b.c.) Public Lecture by Curt L. Tofteland
  • Thursday 28th May (Wellington venue t.b.c.) Creative Corrections Symposium

 

333 Creativity in the Community at Massey

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This semester Massey has introduced a new paper called 139.333 Creativity in the Community. The paper has been mainly designed for Bachelor of Communication students majoring in Expressive Arts and Media Studies. It can also be taken as a useful elective in many other degrees. The paper offers students an opportunity for experiential learning by encouraging students to design and deliver group-based creative projects within a specific community setting. The paper is being offered at Massey’s Wellington and Albany campuses. At Wellington, students will be partnering with the Wellington rape crisis centre to explore issues around rape culture.

As part of the delivery of this pilot paper at the Albany Campus, we will be partnering with Aria Gardens, an aged care facility located adjacent to the Massey University campus. Together we will work towards delivering creative interventions that explore issues of positive ageing and dementia. According to Alzheimers New Zealand, two out of every three New Zealanders are touched by dementia. For a third of New Zealander’s dementia is one of the things feared most about ageing (See http://www.alzheimers.org.nz). By partnering with Aria Gardens on the delivery of 139.333 we are hoping to engage with some of the issues surrounding ageing and dementia, and find creative interventions that challenge negative stereotypes within the wider community. There are some interesting parallels between the aims of this paper and some of the initiatives being led by Associate Professor Peter O’Connor at the University of Auckland. The hope is that Massey students doing 333 in Auckland will attend the upcoming inter-generational theatre project ‘Capturing The ANZAC Tales’ which will be staged in April.

 

Publications

Applied Theatre

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Applied Theatre: Research: Radical Departures

By Peter O’Connor and Michael Anderson (Bloomsbury Methuen Drama, 2015)

Blurb from the Publisher: Applied Theatre: Research is the first book to consolidate thinking about applied theatre as research through a thorough investigation of ATAR as a research methodology. It will be an indispensable resource for teachers and researchers in the area. The first section of the book details the history of the relationship between applied theatre and research, especially in the area of evaluation and impact assessment, and offering an examination of the literature surrounding applied theatre and research. The book then explores how applied theatre as research (ATAR) works as a democratic and pro-social adjunct to community based research and explains its complex relationship to arts informed inquiry, Indigenous research methods and other research epistemologies. The book provides a rationale for this approach focusing on its capacity for reciprocity within communities. The second part of the book provides a series of international case studies of effective practice which detail some of the key approaches in the method and based on work conducted in Australia, New Zealand, Singapore and the South Pacific. The case studies provide a range of cultural contexts for the playing out of various forms of ATAR, and a concluding chapter considers the tensions and the possibilities inherent in ATAR. This is a groundbreaking book for all researchers who are working with communities who require a method that moves beyond current research practice. See more at: http://www.bloomsbury.com/us/applied-theatre-research-9781472513854/#sthash.atAey65Q.dpuf

 

And the winner is…

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First prize of $500 in the fifth annual Caselberg Trust International Poetry Prize for 2015 has been won by Dunedin poet and graduating Massey University Masters of Creative Writing student Sue Wootton, for her poem ‘Luthier’. Second prize ($250) was awarded to Jessica le Bas, of Nelson, for ‘Four Photographs from a Window’.

Alexandra poet Michael Harlow, who judged the competition, said in his report that ‘Luthier’ was ‘a poem alive in its language’ and ‘a fine pleasure to read aloud’; and he described the second-prize-winning poem as ‘a poem of celebration, accurate to its truth-telling’.

Mr Harlow listed six further entries as highly-commended. The poets are Carolyn McCurdie (Dunedin), Jillian Sullivan (Omakau), Michael Morrissey (Auckland), Karen Zelas (Christchurch), and Pat White (Fairlie).

The two winning entries will be published in the literary journal Landfall in May, and all of the award-winning poems will then appear on the Caselberg Trust website.

Around two hundred entries are received each year for the Caselberg Trust International Poetry Competition, from writers working in a number of different countries. Entries are judged ‘blind’, with the judge being completely unaware of the poets’ identities until after the final decisions have been made.

The prize-winning poems and the judge’s report will be published in the May issue of Landfall, and along with the highly commended poems, will be posted on the Caselberg Trust web-site. Awards will be presented at a function in Dunedin in April.

Past winners of the Caselberg competition include Massey tutor Mary McCallum from Wellington, and Massey University PhD student Tim Upperton from Palmerston North.

For more information visit http://www.caselbergtrust.org/sue-wootton-wins-2015-international-poetry-prize/

Holidays, what holidays?

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Didn’t spot your lecturers on the beach this Summer?  Yes some of us were there hiding under our floppy hats and reading novel after novel … but others were still keeping the EMS ship afloat!  As well as teaching Summer School, many EMS staff have been busy on the research front over the break. Here’s a few examples of what we’ve been up to!

• Dr Jenny Lawn presented a conference paper at the Space, Race, Bodies: Geocorpographies of the City, Nation and Empire conference held at the University of Otago between the 8 and 10 December. Titled “Antigone as Male Hysteria: Pakeha Settler Masculinity and the Spectacular Corpse in Carl Nixon’s Settler’s Creek,” her paper explored Settler’s Creek alongside Sophocles’ Antigone as the springboard for an inquiry into the politics of Pakeha cultural nationalism and, speculatively, a consideration of the relationship between kinship bonds and state legitimacy.
• Also at the Space, Race and Bodies conference, Dr Kevin Glynn co-presented with Dr Julie Cupples of University of Edinburgh a conference paper on Postcolonial Spaces of Discursive Struggle in the Convergent Media Environment, focusing on case studies about Maori Television and Air New Zealand.
• Dr Sy Taffel presented a sole authored paper entitled Invisible Bodies and Forgotten Spaces: Materiality, Toxicity and Labour in Digital Ecologies to the Space, Race, Bodies conference. His paper explored social and ecological costs attributable to digital technologies which are borne by bodies and occur in spaces largely excluded from public discussions, from the Congolese children responsible for mining coltan, to the Chinese migrant workers who assemble brand-name products in informational sweatshops, and Ghanaian electronics waste workers who earn US$1 a day treating highly toxic e-waste.
• Dr Simon Sigley gave a conference presentation at Visible Evidence 21, the annual scholarly conference on documentary film, media, culture and politics, held in New Delhi, India from December 11 to 14 2014, and co-hosted by Jawaharlal Nehru University and Jamia Millia Islamia. Titled Adaptations and Relocations, his paper discussed the National Film Unit, Mythic Visions and Historical Conditions in New Zealand.
• A/Pro Angie Farrow launched her book ‘Together All Alone’: 6 shorts plays – at the PNCC Library on 8 December followed by production of plays at the Globe Theatre PN on 10, 11 and 12 December.
• A/Pro Elspeth Tilley co-published with Adult Literacy and Communication research team members Frank Sligo (first author), Margie Comrie and Niki Murray a journal article on young adult literacy learners and their experiences of the text–orality nexus in Text&Talk 2015; 35(1): 101–121.  Based on interviews with young adults in literacy training, the article argues that print literacy training cannot and does not happen in a vacuum from young people’s deeply oral world, and that an understanding of literacy, whether for teaching or research, necessarily must encompass an understanding of the oral-experiential context in which it occurs.
• Dr Kevin Glynn travelled to the USA, Costa Rica and Nicaragua to carry out field work associated with his Marsden-funded project between 13 December 2014 and 30 January 2015.
• Dr Rand Hazou travelled to Sydney to participate in ‘Connecting from a Distance’ which is a theatrical collaboration between Australia and Palestine to facilitate the transfer of skills and knowledge between theatre-makers and performers from both countries.
• Dr Ian Goodwin attended the Dangerous Consumptions Colloquium in Brisbane 11 and 12 December where he presented a work-in-progress piece derived from Marsden research project entitled ‘Precarious Popularity: Exploring Young people’s accounts of Facebook drinking photos’.
• Dr Erin Mercer presented a paper on R H Morriesons’s novel The Scarecrow at the 2015 Gothic Association of NZ and Australia (GANZA) conference in Sydney 21-22 January 2015
• Dr Sy Taffel had a sole-authored journal article entitled Perspectives on the Postdigital: Beyond Rhetorics of Progress and Novelty published in Convergence: The International Journal of Research into new Media Technologies, a peer-reviewed journal published by Sage.
• The Nielsen Bookscan 2014 Overall Bestseller’s Chart ranked Dr Thom Conroy’s novel The Naturalist as number six for the 2014 year.
• Tutor Dr Rhana Carusi was invited to speak on TV3 and write a follow-up op-ed piece as an expert on gender in regards to the effects of gendered and non-gendered toys on children, in response to the AU & NZ Green Party’s No Gender December campaign.
• The Aotearoa Creative Writing Research Network (ACWRN), directed by Thom Conroy, launched its website, featuring an introductory video, a Twitter feed on national Creative Writing news and events, a member’s directory, and online resources. Check it out at http://acwrn.ac.nz/
• A/Pro Lisa Emerson was invited to give a keynote address and workshop at the 7th Conference for Teaching and Learning in Higher Education http://www.cdtl.nus.edu.sg/tlhe/
• A/Pro Angie Farrow was invited by the organisers of the Short and Sweet Festival in Sydney to contribute to a workshop on ‘Writing the Short Play’ as well as to attend a production of her play between 26 – 31 January.