Nina Kane
Dr Nina Kane -
MA Cantab, English Literature (King's College, Cambridge 1994)
University of Huddersfield:
Master's with Distinction in Writing for Performance (2008)
PGCE in Lifelong Learning with QTLS - English, Communications and Expressive Arts - Pass, fully qualified teacher, 2011.
PhD - Drama and English, 2013.
Disclaimer, 23rd May 2024: Due to unprecedented toxic trolling in recent weeks, I have had to take some of my online work down for my own personal and professional safety. If you need a copy of something from this site which was previously there and now isn't, likewise if you have gone to the Cast-Off Drama blog and found it deactivated, please accept my apologies, and message me so I can send you what you need for your research.
Disclaimer by scholar:
My understanding is that Academia.edu is a university site and therefore is intended for over-18s. As such some of the work featured here is intended for adult research, and has been put online specifically for scholarly and arts purposes only.
If you are using this profile to find personal information to use against its author and not for researching the scholarly and arts fields their work represents you are using it inappropriately and must desist.
Phone: 900 44)07590 388770
Address: www.castoffdrama.blogspot.com
MA Cantab, English Literature (King's College, Cambridge 1994)
University of Huddersfield:
Master's with Distinction in Writing for Performance (2008)
PGCE in Lifelong Learning with QTLS - English, Communications and Expressive Arts - Pass, fully qualified teacher, 2011.
PhD - Drama and English, 2013.
Disclaimer, 23rd May 2024: Due to unprecedented toxic trolling in recent weeks, I have had to take some of my online work down for my own personal and professional safety. If you need a copy of something from this site which was previously there and now isn't, likewise if you have gone to the Cast-Off Drama blog and found it deactivated, please accept my apologies, and message me so I can send you what you need for your research.
Disclaimer by scholar:
My understanding is that Academia.edu is a university site and therefore is intended for over-18s. As such some of the work featured here is intended for adult research, and has been put online specifically for scholarly and arts purposes only.
If you are using this profile to find personal information to use against its author and not for researching the scholarly and arts fields their work represents you are using it inappropriately and must desist.
Phone: 900 44)07590 388770
Address: www.castoffdrama.blogspot.com
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Videos by Nina Kane
Mezzista – an old word used to describe a male opera singer whose voice can sing the Mezzo-Soprano part traditionally ascribed to female singers. It was frequently applied to castrati and defines a higher range sung by many counter-tenors today. Comprising two short ‘tableaux vivantes’ and a weekend ‘durational’, the work extends my passion for the gender binary and my concern to trace the voices (physical and political) of transgender people like myself across cultures and histories. In the last 20 years, through Cast-Off Drama, I have grappled with the conundrum of being a transgender gay man living with a female body, and pursued a quest to build and define a trans* morphology of art. Mezzista explores my response to months of lockdown and to ‘pandemic preoccupations’ with cleaning, screening, waiting, passing time, losing time, grief, lo
Books by Nina Kane
Deadline for Abstracts: 6th September 2024
Notification of Acceptance or Otherwise: 15th September 2024
First draft submission: 1st May 2025
Please include a full title and brief author biography with your abstract.
Send to: ninakanephd@outlook.com by 1st August 2024 and contact editor by this email for any queries.
Proposals must focus on the UK Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence and might include (but are not limited to) any of the following connected areas:
- The UK OPI /SPI – history, origins, practices, ‘Sistory’
- LGBTIQA, lesbian and gay, queer theories
- British queer history – the Gay Liberation Front, the Molly House, C19th protestant cultures and Catholic iconography
- Feminist and gender theories
- Performance, street-theatre, drag, queer theatres, community theatres (UK/Europe)
- Queer theology, sacred clowning
- Radical religious drag
- Sex positivity, fetish, activism, pleasure
- British social politics, youth politics of the 1990s, LGBTIQA activism; Act-Up, OutRage!, Age of Consent, anti-war activism
- HIV & AIDS activism, cultures, performances, chronopolitics, viral dramaturgies
- Religious symbolism and vestiary politics
- Relationship of the British OPI to the Australian OPI, to the Canadian OPI, the European SPI and American SPI
- Language, ‘lavendar languages’, Polari
- Catholicism in popular culture; cinematic nuns, nuns on TV, comedy nuns
- Feminist and Queer Saintings – the canonisation activity of the Sisters
- Derek Jarman and the Sisters
- Pink Therapy, LGBTIQA counselling, welfare and support
- Emerging ecologies, environmental activism and the Sisters
- Music and song
- Archiving, queer archiving projects, drag in museums, galleries and libraries
- Education
See attached doc for more
The book includes contributions from speakers who participated in the Agender: Female and Transgendered Masculinities Conference (Leeds Art Gallery, June 2014) and performers, artists and theorists interested in the queer and gender politics opened up by the theme. It focuses primarily on the development of queer cultures of art, dance, theatre and performance arts in Europe in the C20th, and current issues of concern in the C21st, and will contextualise this in a wider history of gender. Most of the submissions focus explicitly on the gender binary and explore constructions of masculinity, femininity and issues relating to Transgender or Transsexual experience as mediated through the arts. It also contains a number of chapters pertaining to the work of artists Marlowe Moss and Claude Cahun - exhibited in the 'Parallel Lives' exhibition held at Leeds Art Gallery (April - Sept 2014), and the impetus for the original conference. There is a focus on galleries and the presence (or absence) of queer work in gallery practice and programming, and in the wider cultural canons of art history and performance. The book has been commissioned by Cambridge Scholars Publishing and is co-authored / co-edited by Dr Nina Kane,and Jude Woods as part of the conclusion to the PoMoGaze project and Queer Eye Partnership (Leeds Art Gallery and Cast-Off Drama, 2013-2015). Published 1st June 2017.
Chapters and Journal Articles by Nina Kane
This chapter contextualises playwright Sarah Kane’s work dramaturgically within the socio-historical and cultural milieu of Britain in the 1970s-1990s period, charting the varied feminist theatres dealing with sex, gender, race, class and embodiment at the time. It considers her oeuvre in the context of her life and work as a director, performer and playwright with brief reflection also on the ‘journalistic fabric’ of her writing heritage. It situates Kane as sharing affinity with black, lesbian and Irish theatre-makers and argues that her plays, in their representation of desire, negation and agency, are indicative of a radical theatrical optimism.
Indulgence in the UK in the early 1990s.
Anthology editors: Mark Edward, Stephen Farrier and Garjan Sterk.
This co-authored chapter serves as an exploration into the relationship between drag queens and kings and their own religious beliefs. Chris Greenough provides the contextualisation for exploring queer individual life stories as a form of theology. He sets out the parameters for discussion in the continuing and burgeoning fields of queer theologies and theologies of sexualities. Nina Kane offers an extended case study in relation to this, exemplifying the personalisation of embodied theology through .performance work. A theatre-maker and a Black Veil Sister with the Manchester Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence (SPI), Kane is also a trans* man and develops gallery-based drag performances centred in feminist and queer community activism. Her project Caul (York Art Gallery, 2017) focuses on song and lip-synching, and proposes that drag involving these is a form of ‘placental’ economy (Irigaray, 1993) which enables queer people to share nurturing breath with one another and to grow into their own queer power and subjectivity
If citing this chapter, please do so as follows: N. Kane, 'Trans*tastic Morphologies: Life-Modelling Theatre and The Lady of Shalott.' In N. Kane and J. Woods (eds.), Reflections on Female and Trans* Masculinities, Newcastle, Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2017.
Nina Kane is a freelance dance writer, administrator and theatre maker. She is a former administrator of Janet Smith & Dancers.
Dramaturgy and Directing Projects by Nina Kane
https://youtu.be/pLbCaCsXwsk
Video interview with Tomoco Kawaguchi on the 4.48 Psychosis project
Japan-Britain Contemporary Theatre Exchange dramaturgy project
Short film made by Tomoco Kawaguchi and Mitu Kitagawa for the Coronet Theatre Inside: Out project, August 2020
Theatre director Tomoco Kawaguchi shares a taste of her original 4.48 Psychosis: A Contemporary Punk Opera.
Based on English playwright Sarah Kane’s extraordinary work, 4.48 Psychosis, and created with input from Kane expert Dr Nina Kane, this experimental punk-rock-opera features a cast of five: a dancer, an opera singer, an actress and two musicians.
4.48 Psychosis was Kane’s last play, though she died at the age of 28 without ever seeing it performed. Made up of 24 vivid and raw scenes, it was her most fragmented work and one for which she gave no indication of the number of actors required.
Additional Information
Tomoco Kawaguchi studied under playwright and theatre director Makoto Satoh, starting her career as a director in 2008.
In 2003–17, Tomoco and Cheuk Cheung, a film director in Hong Kong, launched a cultural exchange project they named Absolute Airplane, which involved young artists from different backgrounds in Tokyo and Hong Kong, including traditional performing arts.
In 2018, Tomoco presented a pilot version of 4.48 Psychosis: A Contemporary Punk Opera in collaboration with British dramaturg and Sarah Kane expert, Dr Nina Kane. Then in 2019, the year of 20th anniversary of Sarah Kane’s death, they toured a second version of the work internationally prior to the current version being staged at The Coronet Theatre
Kawaguchi is also a part-time Lecturer at Tokyo Gakugei University and Artistic Associate of the Wakabacho Wharf theatre outside Yokohama.
`` 4:48 Psychosis
Written by Sarah Kane
Translated by Takehiko Tanioka
Direction, art, subtitle text: Tomoko Kawaguchi
Music: Kosuke Suzuki
Dramaturg: Nina Kane
Cast: Naoko Takimoto
友 Yusuke Ono
Seishi Nakanishi
光 Kosuke Suzuki
出演 Hana birch / voice appearance
Sound: Takeshi Shima
Lighting: Yusuke Yokohara
Movie: Mirai Kitagawa @ Taiyo Nobata
Costume decoration: Miwa Tsunoda
Stage Director: Tatsuhiko Ito
Advertising Art: Yusuke Ota
Acoustic operation: Risa Kawasaki
Subtitle operation: Mirai Kitagawa
Rehearsal room assistant: Yohei Noda
Trailer video: Isao Kinmaki
Recorded photo: Akira Endo
Support Ticket / Record Video Coordination: PARADISE AIR
Recorded video: Ryohei Tomita
Recording: Wataru Shoko
Organizer: PAIR Grant: Arts and Culture Promotion Fund Cooperation: PARADISE AIR / Junpei Mori 森 Isao Kanemaki Moe Fujisue Aki Miyatake Shin Goto 藤 Wataru Shoko Kanoko Tamura Mei Miyauchi Emitsu Honmachi Shopping Street Iron Theater / Keiichi Jung Support: Wakaba Town Wharf Reception support: Takumi Osawa @ Kaori Suzuki −− Tokyo performance March 21 (Sat)-March 23 (Mon) 2020 space EDGE (Shibuya) Kitakyushu Performance March 27 (Fri)-March 28 (Sat) 2020 Edamitsu Honmachi Shopping Street Iron Theater
Coronet Theatre, London - https://www.thecoronettheatre.com/whats-on/japan-2020/is-a-contemporary-punk-opera/
https://castoffdrama.blogspot.com
コンテンポラリー・パンク・オペラ
『4時48分 精神崩壊』
作：サラ・ケイン
翻訳：谷岡健彦
演出・美術・字幕テキスト：川口智子
音楽：鈴木光介
ドラマトゥルク：ニーナ・ケイン
出演：滝本直子
小野友輔
中西星羅
鈴木光介
葉名樺／声の出演
音響：島 猛
照明：横原由祐
映画：北川未来 野畑太陽
衣裳装飾：角田美和
舞台監督：伊東龍彦
宣伝美術：太田裕介
音響操作：川崎理沙
字幕操作：北川未来
稽古場助手：野田容瑛
トレイラー映像：金巻勲
記録写真：遠藤晶
応援チケット・記録映像コーディネート：PARADISE AIR
記録映像：冨田了平
録音：庄子渉
主催：一般社団法人PAIR
助成：芸術文化振興基金
協力：PARADISE AIR／森純平 金巻勲 藤末萌 宮武亜季 五藤真 庄子渉 田村かのこ 宮内芽依
枝光本町商店街アイアンシアター／鄭慶一
応援：若葉町ウォーフ
受付応援：大澤拓己 鈴木香織
−−
東京公演
2020年3月21日(土)～3月23日(月)
space EDGE (渋谷)
北九州公演
2020年3月27日(金)～3月28日(土)
枝光本町商店街アイアンシアター
https://castoffdrama.blogspot.com
Interview on the newly-opened Wakabacho Wharf Art Centre in Yokohama with Tomoco Kawaguchi, Nina Kane and Naoko Takimoto
6th February 2018
Click on link to see Japanese version - click the translation link that says EN for English version
https://magcul.net/topics/97334
Mezzista – an old word used to describe a male opera singer whose voice can sing the Mezzo-Soprano part traditionally ascribed to female singers. It was frequently applied to castrati and defines a higher range sung by many counter-tenors today. Comprising two short ‘tableaux vivantes’ and a weekend ‘durational’, the work extends my passion for the gender binary and my concern to trace the voices (physical and political) of transgender people like myself across cultures and histories. In the last 20 years, through Cast-Off Drama, I have grappled with the conundrum of being a transgender gay man living with a female body, and pursued a quest to build and define a trans* morphology of art. Mezzista explores my response to months of lockdown and to ‘pandemic preoccupations’ with cleaning, screening, waiting, passing time, losing time, grief, lo
Deadline for Abstracts: 6th September 2024
Notification of Acceptance or Otherwise: 15th September 2024
First draft submission: 1st May 2025
Please include a full title and brief author biography with your abstract.
Send to: ninakanephd@outlook.com by 1st August 2024 and contact editor by this email for any queries.
Proposals must focus on the UK Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence and might include (but are not limited to) any of the following connected areas:
- The UK OPI /SPI – history, origins, practices, ‘Sistory’
- LGBTIQA, lesbian and gay, queer theories
- British queer history – the Gay Liberation Front, the Molly House, C19th protestant cultures and Catholic iconography
- Feminist and gender theories
- Performance, street-theatre, drag, queer theatres, community theatres (UK/Europe)
- Queer theology, sacred clowning
- Radical religious drag
- Sex positivity, fetish, activism, pleasure
- British social politics, youth politics of the 1990s, LGBTIQA activism; Act-Up, OutRage!, Age of Consent, anti-war activism
- HIV & AIDS activism, cultures, performances, chronopolitics, viral dramaturgies
- Religious symbolism and vestiary politics
- Relationship of the British OPI to the Australian OPI, to the Canadian OPI, the European SPI and American SPI
- Language, ‘lavendar languages’, Polari
- Catholicism in popular culture; cinematic nuns, nuns on TV, comedy nuns
- Feminist and Queer Saintings – the canonisation activity of the Sisters
- Derek Jarman and the Sisters
- Pink Therapy, LGBTIQA counselling, welfare and support
- Emerging ecologies, environmental activism and the Sisters
- Music and song
- Archiving, queer archiving projects, drag in museums, galleries and libraries
- Education
See attached doc for more
The book includes contributions from speakers who participated in the Agender: Female and Transgendered Masculinities Conference (Leeds Art Gallery, June 2014) and performers, artists and theorists interested in the queer and gender politics opened up by the theme. It focuses primarily on the development of queer cultures of art, dance, theatre and performance arts in Europe in the C20th, and current issues of concern in the C21st, and will contextualise this in a wider history of gender. Most of the submissions focus explicitly on the gender binary and explore constructions of masculinity, femininity and issues relating to Transgender or Transsexual experience as mediated through the arts. It also contains a number of chapters pertaining to the work of artists Marlowe Moss and Claude Cahun - exhibited in the 'Parallel Lives' exhibition held at Leeds Art Gallery (April - Sept 2014), and the impetus for the original conference. There is a focus on galleries and the presence (or absence) of queer work in gallery practice and programming, and in the wider cultural canons of art history and performance. The book has been commissioned by Cambridge Scholars Publishing and is co-authored / co-edited by Dr Nina Kane,and Jude Woods as part of the conclusion to the PoMoGaze project and Queer Eye Partnership (Leeds Art Gallery and Cast-Off Drama, 2013-2015). Published 1st June 2017.
This chapter contextualises playwright Sarah Kane’s work dramaturgically within the socio-historical and cultural milieu of Britain in the 1970s-1990s period, charting the varied feminist theatres dealing with sex, gender, race, class and embodiment at the time. It considers her oeuvre in the context of her life and work as a director, performer and playwright with brief reflection also on the ‘journalistic fabric’ of her writing heritage. It situates Kane as sharing affinity with black, lesbian and Irish theatre-makers and argues that her plays, in their representation of desire, negation and agency, are indicative of a radical theatrical optimism.
Indulgence in the UK in the early 1990s.
Anthology editors: Mark Edward, Stephen Farrier and Garjan Sterk.
This co-authored chapter serves as an exploration into the relationship between drag queens and kings and their own religious beliefs. Chris Greenough provides the contextualisation for exploring queer individual life stories as a form of theology. He sets out the parameters for discussion in the continuing and burgeoning fields of queer theologies and theologies of sexualities. Nina Kane offers an extended case study in relation to this, exemplifying the personalisation of embodied theology through .performance work. A theatre-maker and a Black Veil Sister with the Manchester Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence (SPI), Kane is also a trans* man and develops gallery-based drag performances centred in feminist and queer community activism. Her project Caul (York Art Gallery, 2017) focuses on song and lip-synching, and proposes that drag involving these is a form of ‘placental’ economy (Irigaray, 1993) which enables queer people to share nurturing breath with one another and to grow into their own queer power and subjectivity
If citing this chapter, please do so as follows: N. Kane, 'Trans*tastic Morphologies: Life-Modelling Theatre and The Lady of Shalott.' In N. Kane and J. Woods (eds.), Reflections on Female and Trans* Masculinities, Newcastle, Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2017.
Nina Kane is a freelance dance writer, administrator and theatre maker. She is a former administrator of Janet Smith & Dancers.
https://youtu.be/pLbCaCsXwsk
Video interview with Tomoco Kawaguchi on the 4.48 Psychosis project
Japan-Britain Contemporary Theatre Exchange dramaturgy project
Short film made by Tomoco Kawaguchi and Mitu Kitagawa for the Coronet Theatre Inside: Out project, August 2020
Theatre director Tomoco Kawaguchi shares a taste of her original 4.48 Psychosis: A Contemporary Punk Opera.
Based on English playwright Sarah Kane’s extraordinary work, 4.48 Psychosis, and created with input from Kane expert Dr Nina Kane, this experimental punk-rock-opera features a cast of five: a dancer, an opera singer, an actress and two musicians.
4.48 Psychosis was Kane’s last play, though she died at the age of 28 without ever seeing it performed. Made up of 24 vivid and raw scenes, it was her most fragmented work and one for which she gave no indication of the number of actors required.
Additional Information
Tomoco Kawaguchi studied under playwright and theatre director Makoto Satoh, starting her career as a director in 2008.
In 2003–17, Tomoco and Cheuk Cheung, a film director in Hong Kong, launched a cultural exchange project they named Absolute Airplane, which involved young artists from different backgrounds in Tokyo and Hong Kong, including traditional performing arts.
In 2018, Tomoco presented a pilot version of 4.48 Psychosis: A Contemporary Punk Opera in collaboration with British dramaturg and Sarah Kane expert, Dr Nina Kane. Then in 2019, the year of 20th anniversary of Sarah Kane’s death, they toured a second version of the work internationally prior to the current version being staged at The Coronet Theatre
Kawaguchi is also a part-time Lecturer at Tokyo Gakugei University and Artistic Associate of the Wakabacho Wharf theatre outside Yokohama.
`` 4:48 Psychosis
Written by Sarah Kane
Translated by Takehiko Tanioka
Direction, art, subtitle text: Tomoko Kawaguchi
Music: Kosuke Suzuki
Dramaturg: Nina Kane
Cast: Naoko Takimoto
友 Yusuke Ono
Seishi Nakanishi
光 Kosuke Suzuki
出演 Hana birch / voice appearance
Sound: Takeshi Shima
Lighting: Yusuke Yokohara
Movie: Mirai Kitagawa @ Taiyo Nobata
Costume decoration: Miwa Tsunoda
Stage Director: Tatsuhiko Ito
Advertising Art: Yusuke Ota
Acoustic operation: Risa Kawasaki
Subtitle operation: Mirai Kitagawa
Rehearsal room assistant: Yohei Noda
Trailer video: Isao Kinmaki
Recorded photo: Akira Endo
Support Ticket / Record Video Coordination: PARADISE AIR
Recorded video: Ryohei Tomita
Recording: Wataru Shoko
Organizer: PAIR Grant: Arts and Culture Promotion Fund Cooperation: PARADISE AIR / Junpei Mori 森 Isao Kanemaki Moe Fujisue Aki Miyatake Shin Goto 藤 Wataru Shoko Kanoko Tamura Mei Miyauchi Emitsu Honmachi Shopping Street Iron Theater / Keiichi Jung Support: Wakaba Town Wharf Reception support: Takumi Osawa @ Kaori Suzuki −− Tokyo performance March 21 (Sat)-March 23 (Mon) 2020 space EDGE (Shibuya) Kitakyushu Performance March 27 (Fri)-March 28 (Sat) 2020 Edamitsu Honmachi Shopping Street Iron Theater
Coronet Theatre, London - https://www.thecoronettheatre.com/whats-on/japan-2020/is-a-contemporary-punk-opera/
https://castoffdrama.blogspot.com
コンテンポラリー・パンク・オペラ
『4時48分 精神崩壊』
作：サラ・ケイン
翻訳：谷岡健彦
演出・美術・字幕テキスト：川口智子
音楽：鈴木光介
ドラマトゥルク：ニーナ・ケイン
出演：滝本直子
小野友輔
中西星羅
鈴木光介
葉名樺／声の出演
音響：島 猛
照明：横原由祐
映画：北川未来 野畑太陽
衣裳装飾：角田美和
舞台監督：伊東龍彦
宣伝美術：太田裕介
音響操作：川崎理沙
字幕操作：北川未来
稽古場助手：野田容瑛
トレイラー映像：金巻勲
記録写真：遠藤晶
応援チケット・記録映像コーディネート：PARADISE AIR
記録映像：冨田了平
録音：庄子渉
主催：一般社団法人PAIR
助成：芸術文化振興基金
協力：PARADISE AIR／森純平 金巻勲 藤末萌 宮武亜季 五藤真 庄子渉 田村かのこ 宮内芽依
枝光本町商店街アイアンシアター／鄭慶一
応援：若葉町ウォーフ
受付応援：大澤拓己 鈴木香織
−−
東京公演
2020年3月21日(土)～3月23日(月)
space EDGE (渋谷)
北九州公演
2020年3月27日(金)～3月28日(土)
枝光本町商店街アイアンシアター
https://castoffdrama.blogspot.com
Interview on the newly-opened Wakabacho Wharf Art Centre in Yokohama with Tomoco Kawaguchi, Nina Kane and Naoko Takimoto
6th February 2018
Click on link to see Japanese version - click the translation link that says EN for English version
https://magcul.net/topics/97334
‘Nina Kane: Artist-in-Residence Daily Log, 29 January - 10 February 2018, Wakabacho Wharf, Yokohama, Japan. Japanese translation by Tomoco Kawaguchi’, Academia. Edu, 18 January 2019, https://www.academia.edu/38163823/Artist-in-Residence_Daily_Log_Japan-Britain_Exchange_on_Sarah_Kanes_Theatre, (access date).
From 28th January-9th February 2018, Nina Kane undertook a dramaturgical residency at Wakabacho Wharf, Yokohama, Japan at the kind invitation of directors Tomoco Kawaguchi and Satoh Makoto. The residency was funded by the Kanagawa Prefecture (many thanks to them). The aim of the trip was to further dramaturgical exchange on staging Sarah Kane's plays in Japan and the UK - a research relationship that has existed between Tomoco Kawaguchi and Nina Kane since 2012. The daily log here was written and published on Wakabacho Wharf's facebook page as part of a public record of the visit for the Kanagawa funders' evaluation purposes. It also formed an artistic record for the wider research project. This particular trip focused on a staged, in-house reading of 4.48 Psychosis by Sarah Kane, and initiated a two-year project between the partners on ths play.
This document can also be found online at https://www.tomococafe.com/posts/3698759.
From 2002-2018 the Cast-Off Drama updated its activities in a blog which it has now archived. It offers a useful record of community theatre-making and performance art in municipal art galleries, and of contemporary theories and practices of life-modelling and life-drawing exchange. The archive is still being updated and most sections are incomplete, nevertheless it offers a significant body of work for scholarly and practitioner consideration.
About Cast-Off Drama
The Cast-Off Drama Project (known generally as Cast-Off Drama) is a respected pioneer of 'life-modelling theatre' offering new roles to life-models as perfomers and to artists as 'notators' and audience members. It recognises life-modelling and life-drawing as interdependent art forms involving both model and artist in dynamic creative exchange. It is the initiative of Dr Nina Kane and has progressed under her artistic and strategic direction since 2001.
"We see life-modelling as a theatre-based art form, and the life-drawing space as a space for theatre. In addition to life-modelling theatre, we work with street and community theatres, creating powerful, people-centred productions. We work with live performance art interventions in public gallery spaces, and are developing new methods of making work with actors internationally using digital technologies."
Artistic Director
The project began as a self-funded community research exploration of female life-modelling and the theatre potentials of the life-drawing space. It drew initially on Nina's experiences as a life-model, community theatre-maker and women's sexual health worker and centred on the theories of Augusto Boal (theatre) and Luce Irigaray (feminist philosophy). Inspiration for the project came to her during a 'dreamtime' meditation session with the artist group Naga.
Based in Holmfirth, UK, Cast-Off Drama works with itinerant and community art in galleries, studio theatres, community centres, festivals, outdoor locations and in cyberspace. It operates as a not-for-profit arts umbrella relying on small public arts and community grants, commissions from galleries, workshop fees from schools and community clients, voluntary donations from participants, partnership working, resource sharing and volunteer time to offer workshops and performances to the public free-of-charge. The project commits to making new theatre and maintains an innovative and ever-growing repertoire of performance works, dramaturgies, devised texts and original playscripts. We also stage works written by published authors.
Our partnerships in community and education seek to maximise use of municipal, public and community resources, enabling access to arts-making opportunities for all. We maintain an active relationship to diverse communities in the North of England through our dynamic participatory programme; successfully engaging new audiences, whilst extending existing ones. We create exciting education work for schools, colleges, universities and community centres.
Since 2013, the project has provided space for internships and 'artist-in-residence' places on our workshop programmes for people looking to develop careers in arts education in collaboration with gallery partners. See under 'community and education' for more on this.
In 2017, Cast-Off Drama was made a core partner alongside Pyramid of Arts, the WEA and East St Arts (Community) of Leeds Art Gallery Learning and Access team.
"Our all cannot be projected or mastered. Our whole body is moved. No surface holds. No figure, line or point remains. No ground subsists. But no abyss either. Depth for us is not a chasm. [...] We have so much space to share. Our horizon will never stop expanding; we are always open. Stretching out, never ceasing to unfold ourselves, we have so many voices to invent in order to express all of us everywhere, even in our gaps, that all the time there is will not be enough. We can never complete the circuit, explore the periphery; we have so many dimensions."
Luce Irigaray, Philosopher, 'When Our Lips Speak Together' in This Sex Which Is Not One
"We have an active commitment to generating arts research"
Artistic Director, Cast-Off Drama
Cast-Off Drama in and of itself is a major piece of action research under continual practice-based development by its lead artist Dr Nina Kane. True to its Irigarayan parametres 'our horizon will never stop expanding'; it is, in feminist philosophical terms, 'a kiss between women'.
To progress our overall enquiry, we structure the arts practices and questions we wish to explore into smaller, time-bound projects, grouped and numbered under the acronym PACE - Public Arts and Community Education. PACE projects usually last from 1-5 years, and combine performances, workshops and the ongoing presentation of findings in public forums. They are usually undertaken with at least one key collaborating partner. We have an international relationship with artists and theatre makers in Japan, China, Germany, Italy and France, and collaborate with partners in those countries to develop exchange productions and research opportunities. The project creates new platforms for research through developing conferences and symposiums with our arts and education partners, and we disseminate new ideas through artist talks, seminars and publications. See under 'Bookshelf' for more on this.
Beyond performance-making and education outreach, our dramaturgical approach offers a unique way of reading artworks differently through uses of the body and drama and this has proved a useful tool for art historians and curators charged with cataloguing and developing public gallery collections.
WILMA - Women into Life-Modelling Arts
Cast-Off Drama offers a unique and specific programme for female and male life-models which is run solely on a volunteer basis. WILMA - Women Into Life-Modelling Arts exists as an advocacy, networking and creative development service for life-models. It is not an agency. WILMA is Trans*-welcoming and we support any participant's self-definition of their gender and choice of workshop programme.
Ocarina Nina Street-Theatre and Singing
The project has a commercial arm - Ocarina Nina Street-Theatre and Singing - which provides singing walkabout acts for festivals and fortune-telling for cabaret gigs. The Ocarina Nina performances are not grant-supported and use no public or community funds. Ocarina Nina operates solely as a fundraiser to support the wider costs of the Cast-Off Drama research.
Artistic Director Statement:
"Our aesthetic and dramaturgy moves from the sublime, lyrical, physically engaging and beautiful to the naff, ridiculous and frankly, at times, embarrassing. It embraces a broad spectrum of human emotions and experiences, challenging the viewer with both seduction and alienation. Our work is deeply crafted; it comes from dwelling in and on spaces, places, artworks, texts and people. We embrace the open space of the gallery and the auric fusion of art objects and visitors with impulsive bodies. 'What the fuck am I doing? Why am I doing this? I don't have a clue what I'm doing but I'll do it anyway!' Such is our initiation into performative action. We are clowns and nude performers. We're weird and queer. We take risks. Our work succeeds brilliantly and fails beautifully in ways we don't expect. It comes from a place of love. It's promiscuous, polyamorous, earnest, flippant, political. At times, it's painful to watch. We only ever offer a fragment of the wider performance - the rest is created by the audience; a dramaturgy of encounter. Everyone is welcome. It's fine to come and go."
Dr Nina Kane
CONTACT US
For all enquiries, please email: castoffdrama@outlook.com
1. To investigate rehearsal strategies and staging options for Cleansed with young women.
2. To explore the question of generational difference and its impact on considering the gender and social politics of Cleansed with young women.
3. To begin to shape a viable rehearsal process that can accommodate both performance art and conventional theatre processes side-by-side.
4. To build on my understanding of Irigarian theory and to explore whether Irigarian elements and world views naturally occur when young women work on a text such as Cleansed using interdisciplinary performance methods.
Ultimately, the workshops have sought to divine traces and moments of Irigarian theory, performance art, and the nexus (web) of drama history performed and problematised when young women follow an interdisciplinary (Feminist-inflected) approach to staging Cleansed (Sarah Kane, 1998). A contemplation of these traces - discernible, articulate, unwitting, covert, partial and contradictory – will form the next part of my research. I am also considering my own role as an older woman, mother, theatre-maker and research-facilitator in the process and examining whether generational difference (if occurring and agreed upon as present / relevant) impacts on the revelation and performing of these traces.
This formed an early part of my PhD research on the play and most of the notes here were made and lodged with supervisors in January 2010, as a possible Appendix to the thesis. I'm disseminating it now in 2019 with small edits as it offers a useful document for anyone staging the play, also to those interested in using Irigaray's philosophies in theatre, in reflecting on generational differences between women and in exploring dramaturgical processes with a combined drama/performance art/making approach. Though the young women involved gave permission for me to use their names at the time (and I have used them when discussing selected examples in the PhD and other publications), I am mindful of a ten year gap and as such have anonymised the names in the body of the text to preserve privacy.
(Search link through Google not Bing.)
The Cast-Off Drama Project works with dramaturgy and performance-making in theatres, galleries, life-drawing studios, cabarets, festivals and cyber spaces. Based in Holmfirth, UK, it is the initiative of Dr Nina Kane and has progressed under her artistic and strategic direction since 2001.
The project is a respected pioneer of 'life-modelling theatre' offering new roles to life-models as performers and to artists as 'notators' and audience members in studio and gallery spaces. We see life-modelling and life-drawing as interdependent art forms involving both model and artist in dynamic creative exchange. We have extensive experience of gallery education and co-curation, using drama to stimulate new thought on artworks, collections and uses of space.
The project also works in more conventional theatre arenas. We are dramaturgical specialists with a strong knowledge of theatre practices and forms, and offer new ways in to understanding and staging theatre texts. Since 2012, we have worked with theatre-makers in Japan on staging the works of playwright Sarah Kane. We maintain an innovative and ever-growing repertoire of theatre characters, performance works, new dramaturgies, devised texts and playscripts.
See Cast-Off Drama Public Arts and Community Education project (PACE 1) for more on this - www.castoffdrama.blogspot.com
The Will You, Won't You? pilot project was held over two weekends. A two-day workshop for life-models, supported in the afternoons by artist-notators, was held on Saturday 6th July and Sunday 7th July 2002 at Leeds Art Gallery Education Studio and the Swarthmore Education Centre, Leeds. The workshop centred around Paula Rego's 1988 work, The Dance.
On Sunday 14th July 2002, the first performed work arising from this workshop was presented to life-drawers at Leeds Art Gallery Education Studio, supported by artist-notators. The piece was called 'Will You, Won't You... Join the Dance?' and whilst presented by the newly-formed WILMA - Women Into Life-Modelling Arts, constituted the first work in Cast-Off Drama's repertoire having successfully tested the performative model envisaged and established by Nina Kane in the planning and delivery of the project. The project also formed the blueprint and part of the research agenda for The Art of the Life-Model course (Leeds College of Art / Leeds Art Gallery) which ran from Oct 2002 - July 2011 and was developed and delivered by Nina Kane.
Errata - PLEASE NOTE: There is a formatting error on Appendix 5, also some of the photos have shifted from their original pages. Please ensure there are no photographs printed out at the top of the appendices' handouts if you are using them as teaching materials. . The box which is out of synch on Appendix 5 should read 'Verbal Direction. Tutor / Lead artist tells the model how to place their body.' There is a correctly-formatted copy of this spider graph in the appendices of the 2007 'Embodying the Other' report, also available to download here.
Also please note - this paper is reproduced in Talks above.
Further info:
The session will invite participants to reflect on their own experiences and/ or perceptions of the functions, conventions and practice of working with life-models in a life-drawing situation. It will introduce teaching materials used on The Art of the Life-Model course to explore the conventions of life-drawing, the shape-shifting histories of the life-model, also a range of practices used to 'pose' the model. It will also introduce materials used on a concurrent programme WILMA - Women Into Life-Modelling Arts - a series of community workshops in which life-models explored the profession and discussed how their role is configured and presented to life-drawing students and artists. The session introduces discussion of the role of the life-model in the teaching of life-drawing, and notes her/his conventional marginalisation as a creative agent in the making of images. This marginalisation extends to the historical treatment of the model as an abject and monstrous figure whose body and presence is regulated by the tutor and life-drawers in the processes of life-drawing, and through the conventions of robing, screening and fixing, also by stillness, silence and distance. The model is a shape-shifter in the life-drawing space and convention demands that s/he is fixed. The session will discuss the development and experience of model-led teaching, discussing the monstrous implications of moving between the conventionally discrete positions of 'model' and 'tutor' and the effects of combining these roles. It will discuss how nudity is managed and negotiated with learners in this context. It will also discuss innovative ways of mark-making and drawing from the model for the life-drawing student working individually or collectively.
The session will also invite discussion on the role and practice of life-drawing in public gallery spaces. The Art of the Life-Model was held at Leeds Art Gallery and each session started from an artwork in which the presence of both visible and invisible bodies could be traced. Students were encouraged to 'step into the picture' and to empathise with the world of the model through a mixture of drama-based and storytelling activities before engaging with life-drawing. The sessions involved teacher and learners in experimental life-drawing sessions using both the education workshop and the public spaces of the gallery. This took the negotiation of the roving, shape-shifting, chattering, naked and theatrical body of the life-model beyond the life-drawing space and into a public arena - a movement that raised questions about the performance of the grotesque, the marginalised, the visceral and the abject in the gallery space - its possibilities and its limits. It also took the act of drawing out of the closed world of the studio and into the public space raising questions about the changing function of the gallery as a process-based and 'making' space' and the implications for viewing inherent in this. The session will introduce sessional documents, photographs and examples from practice inviting new ideas on the role of the model in both closed and public life-drawing practice.
The research paper offered here includes photographs from sessions at Leeds Art Gallery including a collaboration with Raphaelle de Groot, participants on The Art of the Life-Model and Cast-Off Drama projects at Leeds Art Gallery, UK between 2002-2012."""
Abstract:
This thesis uses studio practice, scholarly research, close reading of text, performance observation and conversation with practitioners to establish diverse readings of Sarah Kane’s Cleansed. It includes original material from the 2012 productions of Cleansed in Japan (Kamome-za Fringe Theatre), and in Ireland (Bare Cheek Theatre). It notes practice on Cleansed in gallery spaces (Cast-Off Drama, UK). It offers a dramaturgical approach to workshopping the play from a feminist and queer position, informed by theories of gender and transgender, and the marginalised, loving and delinquent practice of clowning. The research discusses principles of breath, voice and sexuate difference drawing primarily on the philosophies of Luce Irigaray, on the voice practice of Cicely Berry and the clown teaching of Sue Morrison.
The work challenges the ‘in-yer-face’ theatre discourse on Kane arguing that it represents a McDonaldization of its subject matter, and an insidious trivialisation of her texts. It offers new thinking on the opening night of Blasted (1995), suggesting that the ‘furore’ was fuelled by collective male hysteria and superstition; its roots centred in mourning. Analysing Cleansed in relation to Edward Bond’s Saved and Lear, it explores tropes of ghosts, stitching and the silent scream, and argues that Kane militates for gynocentric time and becoming. It analyses the symbol of the perimeter fence as a feature of 1980s Britain, noting the strength of binary associations configured in it with reference to both English football hooliganism (male) and the Greenham Common Women’s Peace Camp (female). It argues that Kane sets up heteronormative binaries in Cleansed to debate and contest them.
A key conclusion of the thesis is that Cleansed politically addresses and dramatises issues of transgender experience presenting accounts of gender violence, mutability, transitioning, the sharp fractures and silences of gender dysphoria, but also, ultimately, queer desire, love and optimism.
On Tuesday 31st January 2017, we will be holding a symposium at York Art Gallery in response to the Flesh exhibition as part of a launch day for LGBT*IQ History Month. We invite abstracts of up to 300 words for papers on the theme of Flesh and Queer. Papers can be from any discipline and on any subject relating to the intersection of flesh with LGBT*IQ art, aesthetics, lives, science, histories, literature or politics. Topics might include ideas on flesh and queer in relation to:
- the body
- gender
- hybridity
- figurative or body art
- fine arts and photography
- film
- the haptic and haptic visualities
- anatomy
- Trans* politics or lives
- sexuality
- eroticism
- cyber space
- crime
- performance, theatre, music, dance
- fiction, poetry, creative writing
- circus, burlesque
- religion and spirituality
- skin
- the law
- fashion
- decay
- medicine and illness
- HIV/AIDS
- race and ethnicity
- ecology
- health
- the grotesque, monstrosity or freak
- animals
- technology
- philosophy
- art and activism
- queer histories
Please send abstracts to Dr Nina Kane via email: ninakane@btinternet.com by Midnight on Thursday 1st December 2016.
From Summer 2015 the Queer Eye project will run solely through Cast-Off Drama and the company is looking for new partners to progress the initial vision. The three-year plan nevertheless stands as a testament to two years' successful LGBT*IQ community arts workshop and production programmes and a vision of co-curatorial research and queer arts development potential which could serve as a blueprint for future planning. The document and its ideas continues to inform the Community Engagement Queer Culture project at Leeds Art Gallery, and Cast-Off Drama's queer community activities and study schools.
This workshop presents findings from research in the area of contemporary life-model studies. Life-Modelling Theatre is an interdisciplinary arts form involving life-models and life-drawers in dynamic and interdependent creative exchange. It works in a cross-over of fine art and theatre practices, positing the life-model as a performer in the life-drawing space, and life-drawing artists as 'notators' in shared, negotiated, image-making. Life-model theatre works with inherited sources, re-inventing and embodying fragmented moments from culture, and performing these in situ to create new figurative works. It challenges the artists' prerogative on conventions of silence, stillness, nudity, space and time. Centrally the theatre is built through improvisation, instinct, spontaneous play with artists and the documenting of durational moments through drawing. More recently, this form has been used to create new texts for theatre writing. For the latter part of this workshop, writer and life-model performer Nina Kane will discuss the development of 'Bride-Cake, Bride-Bones' - a theatre script written through life-modelling / life-drawing exchange with artists at Leeds City Art Gallery in July 2008. She will explore her role as writer-performer in the creation of the text, offering reflection on collaboration, on physicalising imagination and on the peculiar puppetry of theatre-writing through the body.
'Recognising Institutional Racism as an Equality & Diversity Issue When Teaching Drama Theory to Young Black Women – Reflections on Seminar Approaches for Dealing With the Problem of White Possession and Self-Segregating Groups, and the Importance of Recognising The Desire of Young Black Women For Education and For High Achievement in the Field.'
In this paper, I argue that young black women potentially face experiences of institutional racism and possible exclusion when studying Arts subjects in Higher Education. Drawing centrally on current research from the NUS Black Students' Campaign, the work of theorist Heidi Safia Mirza, and observations from teaching young black women in a number of UK institutions (both FE and HE) I propose that lecturers (white lecturers in particular) need to be alert to the issue. My paper offers account of strategies I have used when tackling issues of self-segregation along ethnic lines and issues of white possession within the seminar room. I offer illustration of the positive benefits of using group work, presentation formats, assessment processes, syllabus models and curriculum content to counter instances of institutional racism, and to acknowledge the desire for achievement present and expressed amongst black women students in UK education at the present time."
"This paper explores something of the connection between Edward Bond's and Sarah Kane's theatres. It recognises the importance of ghosts in Bond's 'Lear' and Kane's 'Cleansed', and asks what we can infer from their substantive presences on the stage. It also recognises the importance of language as a political tool for each playwright, and applies some working principles of breath to the reading of these plays. The paper concludes with some reflections on gender, and on the political implications of crude stitching in both 'Cleansed' and 'Saved'."
'Heroes and Monsters: extra-ordinary tales of learning and teaching in the Arts and Humanities'
The session discusses the role of the life-model in the teaching of life-drawing, and notes her/his conventional marginalisation in making images and in teaching art. Frequently regarded as an abject and monstrous figure whose body and presence is regulated by the tutor and life-drawers, the life-model is a naked, roving, chattering shape-shifter. Taming and containing the monstrous model is a key function of the tutor. But what happens when the life-model teaches the class? This paper discusses findings from The Art of the Life-Model at Leeds Art Gallery/ Leeds College of Art, 2002-2009 noting the shape-shifting benefits of model-led pedagogy.
Errata - PLEASE NOTE: There is a formatting error on Appendix 5, also some of the photos have shifted from their original pages. Please ensure there are no photographs printed out at the top of the appendices' handouts if you are using them as teaching materials. . The box which is out of synch on Appendix 5 should read 'Verbal Direction. Tutor / Lead artist tells the model how to place their body.' There is a correctly-formatted copy of this spider graph in the appendices of the 2007 'Embodying the Other' report, also available to download here. Please note this paper is also reproduced below - due to techno issues with the site I ended up making a double entry!
Further details:
The session will invite participants to reflect on their own experiences and/ or perceptions of the functions, conventions and practice of working with life-models in a life-drawing situation. It will introduce teaching materials used on The Art of the Life-Model course to explore the conventions of life-drawing, the shape-shifting histories of the life-model, also a range of practices used to 'pose' the model. It will also introduce materials used on a concurrent programme WILMA - Women Into Life-Modelling Arts - a series of community workshops in which life-models explored the profession and discussed how their role is configured and presented to life-drawing students and artists. The session introduces discussion of the role of the life-model in the teaching of life-drawing, and notes her/his conventional marginalisation as a creative agent in the making of images. This marginalisation extends to the historical treatment of the model as an abject and monstrous figure whose body and presence is regulated by the tutor and life-drawers in the processes of life-drawing, and through the conventions of robing, screening and fixing, also by stillness, silence and distance. The model is a shape-shifter in the life-drawing space and convention demands that s/he is fixed. The session will discuss the development and experience of model-led teaching, discussing the monstrous implications of moving between the conventionally discrete positions of 'model' and 'tutor' and the effects of combining these roles. It will discuss how nudity is managed and negotiated with learners in this context. It will also discuss innovative ways of mark-making and drawing from the model for the life-drawing student working individually or collectively.
The session will also invite discussion on the role and practice of life-drawing in public gallery spaces. The Art of the Life-Model was held at Leeds Art Gallery and each session started from an artwork in which the presence of both visible and invisible bodies could be traced. Students were encouraged to 'step into the picture' and to empathise with the world of the model through a mixture of drama-based and storytelling activities before engaging with life-drawing. The sessions involved teacher and learners in experimental life-drawing sessions using both the education workshop and the public spaces of the gallery. This took the negotiation of the roving, shape-shifting, chattering, naked and theatrical body of the life-model beyond the life-drawing space and into a public arena - a movement that raised questions about the performance of the grotesque, the marginalised, the visceral and the abject in the gallery space - its possibilities and its limits. It also took the act of drawing out of the closed world of the studio and into the public space raising questions about the changing function of the gallery as a process-based and 'making' space' and the implications for viewing inherent in this. The session will introduce sessional documents, photographs and examples from practice inviting new ideas on the role of the model in both closed and public life-drawing practice.
Conference Registration now open: http://www.heacademy.ac.uk/arts-humanities-conf-2014
""
- http://chirb.it/LqfGyK
"The paper draws on dramaturgical enquiry into Sarah Kane's 1998 play Cleansed, carried out in a university studio space and a public gallery setting. The enquiry applied the philosophies of Luce Irigaray and Judith Butler, positing Cleansed as a theatrical meditation on gender - one that requires actors to develop an ethics for the performing of sex, desire and violence. The research found that Irigaray's and Butler's ideas can be usefully applied to explore and contest binary constructions of gender, and provide vital philosophical frameworks for staging sexuate difference and transgender becoming in Kane's text. Cleansed centres its trajectory on an investigation of clothing and bodies which implicates and indicates the gender binary as a site of contestation, violence, desire, making, unmaking, resistance and mucosity. It encodes significant lesbian aesthetics of butch-femme play and languour in its performance structure. Its focus on sexuate difference, 'one of the major philosophical issues, if not the issue of our age' (Irigaray), and its movement between genders is supported with dramatisations of touch and breath at key gestic moments. The paper discusses how actors chose to stage these moments, analysing the choices made with reference to The Forgetting of Air, Sexes and Genealogies, The Marine Lover of Friedrich Nietzsche, and This Sex Which Is Not One (Irigaray). It discusses the nature of speech and desire - particularly female and lesbian desire - and the denial or erasure of this, with reference to Antigone's Claim (Butler). It reflects on the aesthetics of female and queer authorship at the Greenham Common Women's Peace Camp, and the traces of this historical moment in Cleansed. Finally, it contextualises Kane's representations of gender violence with reference to Frames of War (Butler) and notes how philosophical discussions of time and irreducible difference can assist inter-generational dialogue in the rehearsal room."
Thank you for those who have enquired re: a copy of this - I have now uploaded this here and in the 'papers' section. Please click on the Chirbit link to hear 3/4 of the paper given at York, also questions from the audience - http://chirb.it/azfwxh
This paper explores the recent case of Gemma Barker, a young British woman prosecuted for sexual assault and fraud having represented herself as male in relationships with younger women. Queer and transgender activists observed layers of homophobia and transphobia in media reporting and critics note that such cases frequently reflect processes of ‘de-authorization’ for the young transgender subject in court, also contributing to the ‘erasure’ of lesbian sexual experience. Languages used in court and the media evoke a paradigm of ‘predator-prey’, and the image of the young transgender subject as a ‘wolf in sheep’s clothing’ frequently emerges. Inherent in this is a deep suspicion of performance, and a disregard for the role performance – online and off-line - plays in shaping queer sexualities and identities. The Barker case raises issues of concern for cyber-performance activity and the construction of a gendered self through social networking for young people, and this paper asks - can political and community theatres provide a defence and a reflective space for young LGBT* people exploring presentations of a queer self in cyberspace and in everyday performance? Drawing on the ‘My Name Is...’ initiative from Cast-Off Drama, which invites young LGBT* people to explore and build online personas through mask-making, drama and scriptwriting, the paper suggests that theatre can.
Se under 'talks' for details of the BERA Conference at which the paper was presented.
"This paper explores something of the connection between Edward Bond's and Sarah Kane's theatres. It recognises the importance of ghosts in Bond's 'Lear' and Kane's 'Cleansed', and asks what we can infer from their substantive presences on the stage. It also recognises the importance of language as a political tool for each playwright, and applies some working principles of breath to the reading of these plays. The paper concludes with some reflections on gender, and on the political implications of crude stitching in both 'Cleansed' and 'Saved'."
For an updated and extended copy of this paper, please see my PhD thesis at the University of Huddersfield Repository (check profile for link to this).
within its 'cage'. Turning then to Irigaraian notions of echo, mucus and breath, I consider the Greenham Common Women's Peace Camp and the perimeter fence as a site (exterior) of potential agency, of feminine (and feminist) questionning, resistance, restraint and making (unmaking). Recognising the fence as a binary divider within this economy of gender relations, I argue that in placing us fully within the fence (the masculine sphere) and in her playing with a crude intersexing of bodies, Kane ultimately enacts a transgressive spectacle of gender violence in Cleansed. As such it militates for a queer and feminist space of social critique pertinent to the moment of its making. The question for any cast working with Cleansed in the C21st is to ask how this spectacle is relevant to a consideration of gender today, what the value of its volatility is, and how best can we work with it in rehearsal for the ethics sitting under its critique to be considered adequately.""
Exploring food stuffs, feathers, flesh, getting basted - working from extracts of Beloved by Toni Morrison
Performed live Sunday 19th March 2017.
See vimeo link here - https://vimeo.com/805219608
Created and performed by Nina Kane.
Artist statement:
It was a work about trans experience, menstruation and self-harm working from a painting ‘Samson and Delilah’ (1642) by Pieter Claesz Soutman. It’s called ‘Cut it like a man’. When I first put the video on youtube it sat there for a year and had 139 views. Then some trans-hating bigots in Romania and Hungary came across it, and left lots of comments urging me to kill myself. They also tried to get it taken down by youtube who age-restricted it. Within two days the views had increased to over 22,000. The work itself was part of my emergence as a trans man into the gallery field where I had worked using my naked female body as a laboratory for exploring the conundrums and constructedness of gender for 15 years.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-npjBDfPwTI&feature=emb_logo
See below for additional website text on the project.
アートにエールを！東京プロジェクト（個人型）事務局
受付時間：10時～17時（土日祝日除く）
メールアドレス：info@cheerforart.jp
電話番号：03-4570-1366
パンクオペラ工房
公開日 2020.08.26
視聴回数 42回
07その他
コンテンポラリー・パンク・オペラ『4時48分 精神崩壊』（作：サラ・ケイン）。2020年3月に東京で初演を迎え、現在イギリスでの上演が延期になっています。演劇、現代音楽、オペラ、ダンス、映像、美術のアーティストが参加している本作の創作プロセスについて、それぞれの目線から紹介します。
Punk Opera Studio Release date 2020.08.26 42 views 07 Other Contemporary punk opera "4:48 Mental Collapse" by Sarah Kane. It premiered in Tokyo in March 2020 and is currently being postponed in the UK. From the perspective of each, we will introduce the creative process of this work, in which artists from theatre, contemporary music, opera, dance, film, and art participate.
撮影協力（『4時48分 精神崩壊』における役割／所属）
鈴木光介（作曲・出演／時々自動）、中西星羅（出演）、ニーナ・ケイン（ドラマトゥルク／キャスト・オフ・ドラマ）、葉名樺（振付・声の出演）、横原由祐（照明）、北川未来（映像・字幕）、角田美和（アートジュエリー）、藤末萌・宮武亜季（クリエイション・パートナー／PARADISE AIR）
Shooting cooperation (role/affiliation in "4:48 Mental Collapse")
Kosuke Suzuki (composition/appearance/sometimes automatic), Seira Nakanishi (appearance), Nina Kane (dramaturg/ cast off drama), Kaha Hana (choreography/voice performance), Yusuke Yokohara (lighting), Mirai Kitagawa (Video/Subtitles), Miwa Tsunoda (Art Jewelery), Moe Fujisue/Aki Miyatake (Creation Partner/PARADISE AIR)
川口智子・滝本直子・小野友輔
【川口智子】
演出家。コンテンポラリー・パンク・オペラ『4時48分 精神崩壊』企画・演出。今後の演出作品に「くにたちオペラ」（2022年くにたち市民芸術小ホール）など。https://www.tomococafe.com/
【滝本直子】
俳優。劇団黒テント所属。近年の出演作に『亡国のダンサー』（劇団黒テント、佐藤信演出）、『あらしのよるに』(日生劇場、立山ひろみ演出)、『夜ヒカル鶴の仮面』（くにたち市民芸術小ホール、多和田葉子作、川口智子演出）、など。
【小野友輔】
テノール歌手。愛知県立芸術大学大学院博士前期課程音楽研究科声楽領域を修了。第19回日本演奏家コンクール一般Aの部奨励賞。これまでに声楽を佐々木朋也、二神二朗、大槻孝志の各氏に師事。
Tomoko Kawaguchi, Naoko Takimoto, Yusuke Ono
[Tomoko Kawaguchi]
Director. Planning and production of a contemporary punk opera "4:48 Mental Collapse". "Kunitachi Opera" (2022 Kunitachi Citizens Art Small Hall) and other works will be directed in the future. https://www.tomococafe.com/
[Naoko Takimoto]
Actor. Belongs to the theater company Black Tent. Recent appearances include "Kotokuni no Dancer" (Theatrical company Kuro Tent, directed by Shin Sato), "Arashi no Yoruni" (Nissei Theater, Hiromi Tateyama directed), "Yuka Hikaru Tsuru no Kamen" (Kunitachi Civic Art Small Hall, Yoko Tawada, Tomoko Kawaguchi directed), etc.
[Yusuke Ono]
Tenor singer. Aichi Prefectural University of Arts Master's program Completed the vocal music field in the Graduate School of Music. Encouragement prize for the 19th Japanese Performers Competition General A section. He has studied vocals with Tomoya Sasaki, Jiro Nigami and Takashi Otsuki.
Public talk on Sarah Kane and British Culture, as part of the Artist-in-Residence programme, Wakabacho Wharf, Yokohama, Japan held 1st February 2018. Japanese and English. Funded by Kanagawa Prefecture Visiting Artists Fund. Topics discussed include Greenham Common, Middle England, Thatcherism and Hillsborough.
Public talk between Dr Nina Kane, Masters student Momoyo Niimi and director Tomoco Kawaguchi on Sarah Kane, clothing and gender. Artist-in-Residence programme, Wakabacho Wharf, Yokohama, Japan, 31st January 2018. Talk in Japanese and English. Funded by the Kanagawa Prefecture Visiting Artists Fund.
Broadcast 27th May 2005.
My talk looks back on 13 years of play in gallery spaces with community and education groups and with the general public passing through. Using as example my theatre company Cast-Off Drama, and our workshop and performance activities in Leeds and York, I will introduce some key ideas in the development of life-modelling theatre, and the reasons why working with the body and nudity is essential to public art spaces. My talk discusses the importance of adults having fun with drama and art and discusses politically why it is beneficial to involve gallery-goers in forming alternative canons of art from gallery collections. It notes the feminist and queer values of working with the body in art and the fun that can be had with getting naked in gallery spaces! It concludes with a summary of our current projects and invites you to get involved.
The powerpoint accompanying the talk is uploaded here. For a video recording of the talk, please click on the following link: http://vimeo.com/117382201
importance of mirrors, weaving and song in queer readings of the work.
The attached document is a copy of the powerpoint presentation I gave accompanying the hour-long talk on the 17th June at the AGender Conference, Leeds Art Gallery, UK. I am currently converting the talk into a chapter that will be published in a forthcoming anthology on the conference by Cambridge Journals. The slideshow reproduced here is offered as a visual document of the presentation for educational research purposes only. Much of it constitute original photographs from Cast-Off Drama performances at Leeds Art Gallery, also at York Art Gallery in the UK. Please see copyright notice below. For questions on the slides, please contact Nina Kane - ninakane@btinternet.com
COPYRIGHT: Please read before opening the document.
© All slides in this presentation and images of gallery working except for slides 24 and 51 are copyrighted to Cast-Off Drama – www.castoffdrama.blogspot.com and images must not be reproduced or redistributed without prior written agreement from the company. Images of individual artworks are also copyright to individual artists and to various public and private museums and gallery collections and are reproduced here for educational purposes only. For further questions on this please contact Nina Kane: ninakane@btinternet.com
Dr Nina Kane would like to express thanks to the Education Officer and Department of Leeds Art Gallery for support of this work over the years. She also thanks all staff of Leeds Art Gallery who have assisted with the work, and would like to extend an extra thanks to the Assistant Community Curator for the AGender Conference and for ongoing support of Cast-Off Drama"
"The paper posits that conventional life-drawing in Western art practice can be rejuvenated and enriched by processes of change that centre on the life-model articulating an active subject position for her or himself; and through applying paradigms of sexuate difference to practices of figurative arts-making. It suggests that the life-drawing space, its conventions and activities, are marked by a phallocentric and ocularcentric topology of sameness, that proves oppressive and reductive to all concerned, in particular the life-model. It argues that it is possible to reconfigure the topology of the space to one of difference and becoming through model-led figurative making that articulates the irreducible differences inherent (but frequently disregarded) in the practice and conventions of the life-drawing room; and which prioritises breath, voice, embodiment, touch, movement, listening and mimetic intervention. Drawing on 13 years' experience of experimental life-modelling in UK galleries, colleges and workshop studios, the speaker illustrates how an application of Irigaray's philosophies on gender, breath and irreducible difference has contributed positively to the development of practices that prioritise relational and horizontal ethics in the life-drawing space.
For details of the conference, please follow this link: http://www.rmit.edu.au/topologies2014"
""This paper explores the recent case of Gemma Barker, a young British woman prosecuted for sexual assault and fraud having represented herself as male in relationships with younger women. It draws parallels with the case of Jennifer Saunders in 1991. Queer and transgender activists and scholars have observed layers of homophobia and transphobia in media reporting and in the judgements passed on Barker and Saunders. Anna Marie Smith notes that such cases frequently reflect processes of ‘de-authorization’ for the transgender subject in court, and contribute to the ‘erasure’ of lesbian sexual experience. In analysing the languages used, it is clear that a dichotomy of ‘predator-prey’ is strongly invoked, and in the final charges of ‘gender-fraud’ and ‘assault by deception’ the paradigm of the ‘wolf in sheep’s clothing’ fable emerges marking the prosecuted as the duplicitous ‘wolf’, their girlfriends as the unwitting sheep and the law courts and media as the good shepherd. This has implications for scholars concerned with gender and sexuality, raising questions about the performance of gender and the legal limits placed on this. Inherent in these judgements is a deep suspicion of performance, and a disregard for the role performance plays in shaping queer sexualities and identities. The Barker case in particular raises issues of concern for cyber-performance activity and the construction of a gendered self through social networking. The paper asks therefore – what modes of performance can be identified in the presentation of a gendered (male) self by Gemma Barker and Jennifer Saunders? At what point did these performances become transgressive (and by whose definition), and at what point did the transgressive or ‘transgressions’ become criminal? Centrally, can queer performance studies or political theatre provide a defence for young transgender people exploring presentations of a gender-queer self in cyberspace and in everyday performance?
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"This paper explores Sarah Kane's writing processes and how the form of her work reflects a gender politics sympathetic to feminisms of the 1990s. It examines how Kane navigated a path between naturalism and magical realism, offering scenography as a means by which gender binaries can be contested, and patriarchy challenged. Making links to the art of Francesca Woodman the paper reflects on the influence of performance art in Kane's theatrical vision. Drawing on Irigaray's views on architecture, it also argues that Kane's work draws the actor, reader and audience into a 'corps a corps' relationship with the theatre text, in ways that are loving, explosive and ultimately subversive."
This paper was also given at a Drama Research Seminar, University of Huddersfield, 8th June 2011.
The seminar posits that it is possible to trace a double heritage of influence on Sarah Kane's work. One is rooted in theatre - the other, less recognised, is in performance art. The seminar analyses each of Sarah Kane's five published plays and sets them, through a process of visual mapping, in a context of performance art works from the 1950s - 1990s. The visual maps developed for each play trace themes, ideas, politics and sometimes concrete stage images born of performance art precedent in their construction. The seminar suggests that the influence of performance and body art on British theatre-making of the 1990s merits further enquiry, and that recognising the effect of this heritage on Sarah Kane's work enables us to read each of her plays differently."
COPYRIGHT NOTICE - please read before you download the document. All photographs contained in this slide-show presentation are under full copyright restriction from Cast-Off Drama - www.castoffdrama.blogspot.com Please do not reproduce or distribute any of these images without obtaining written permission from the company. For further questions on this please contact Nina Kane - ninakane@btinternet.com Thank you."
Please see upload B for copy of powerpoint presentation I was due to give to accompany the talk.
I'm happy to provide a copy of the lecture notes to anyone interested after the event for connected research.
Amendment. I did not give this talk at this event in the end due to extenuating circumstances. However, given the interest in this topic and requests for copies, I will upload instead a copy of a working report written by myself on The Art of the Life-Model in 2007 for the Leeds College of Art & Design, the findings of which were presented at a research seminar at the college on the 31st January 2008. Extracts of this were also presented at the Textual Revolutions Conference, University of Stirling, May 2008.
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Saturday 6th March 2021 –‘Duchess’ – a tableau vivante – from 1pm, Cast-Off Drama Youtube Channel.
Sunday 7th March 2021 – ‘Letters to my M.P. / Portraits of an 80s Boyhood’ – a tableau vivante, from 1pm, Cast-Off Drama Youtube Channel.
Saturday 13th and Sunday 14th March, ‘Sonnets to a Small Room/Stray Pup’ – a weekend durational, 1-4pm each day, Cast-Off Drama Youtube Channel.
For more info, contact us - castoffdrama@outlook.com
Links will be uploaded later.
Mezzista – an old word used to describe a male opera singer whose voice can sing the Mezzo-Soprano part traditionally ascribed to female singers. It was frequently applied to castrati and defines a higher range sung by many counter-tenors today. Comprising two short ‘tableaux vivantes’ and a weekend ‘durational’, the work extends my passion for the gender binary and my concern to trace the voices (physical and political) of transgender people like myself across cultures and histories. In the last 20 years, through Cast-Off Drama, I have grappled with the conundrum of being a transgender gay man living with a female body, and pursued a quest to build and define a trans* morphology of art. Mezzista explores my response to months of lockdown and to ‘pandemic preoccupations’ with cleaning, screening, waiting, passing time, losing time, grief, loss of touch, creating space, masking up, neighbour noise, nature walks and the retreat into interior worlds of social networking, fetish communities, 80s pop nostalgia, zoom drag shows, political activism, haptic intimacy and filling every inch of wallspace with art that ‘takes me away’. For many trans people, lockdown has meant being forced back into living with our assigned gender, and as such, Mezzista asserts the tension of this position, whilst drawing on the power and playfulness of the transgender voice as it moves provactively and promiscuously between scenes and screens.