Drama, Theatre and Performance

Since October 2012 Passages Theatre Group has been exploring the performance of ageing.  Made up of around 20 performers over the age of 50 with varying experience, the group was set up to research, through practice, new performances of age and ageing, ones that might challenge cultural perceptions of ageing and old age, and explore attitudes to the ageing identity.  Drawing on models proposed by Anne Davis Basting (The Stages of Age: 1998) and Anca Cristofovici ('Touching Surfaces': 1999) this paper outlines the theoretical basis and methodology of the work so far and presents an evaluation of these performance experimentations.  It describes the strategies adopted to stage a performance of age and ageing by uncovering hidden aspects of early and changing identity and exploring the notion of identity through time.  Drawing on the work of Beverley Skeggs (Class, Self, Culture: 2004) the paper explains how this work was undertaken in an attempt to effect a re-inscription of the older body with characteristics other than those associated with the normative (largely negative) image of ageing.  In addition it puts forward the concept of future-value, problematising negative future-value as a stigma borne by the older body, which functions to ‘other’ older bodies in a system predicated on the notion of potentiality and productivity.  The paper works towards a description of how this was and might be further explored through performance.  The paper also interweaves the voices of the members of Passages Theatre Group together with the author's and those from the academy and elsewhere in a multi-vocal examination of both the work and the economic, cultural and political position of older people.

This paper concerns the one-to-one performance work of Passages-a group of performers aged between 60 and 90-founded to support Bridie Moore's PhD research into the performance of age and ageing. It analyzes how these performances challenge perceptions of the old person as "other," and uses audience feedback, together with performance and social theory to explore how the work achieves this. The group uses mask work, proximity and intimate performance as a form of quiet activism, to challenge structures of thinking in subtle and penetrating ways. The analysis refers to the performance The Mirror Stage, given at the University of Sheffield (UK) in September 2015, and the paper discusses the one-to-one performance form and the eight one-to-one performances that were presented in the show. It engages with de Beauvoir's ( /1972 and notions of the "other" in order to explore the way the perception of otherness Bridie Moore 3 plays out and is disrupted by the presence of the old person in one-toone performance. 1 The paper introduces the possibility that the contact facilitated by one-to-one could, as argued, reduce prejudice concerning individuals who are members of outgroups such as the "old" and, by extension, to other marginalized individuals and groups.

This paper examines Peggy Shaw’s performances Menopausal Gentleman (1997), Must: The Inside Story (2009) and Ruff (2013), employing notions of interoception, intersection and interruption in order to illuminate the ways Shaw has performed her border crossing into the position of ‘old woman’ by producing disruptive performances of the ageing female body.  In The Absent Body Drew Leder writes, from a phenomenological perspective, of the ‘interoceptive field’ (1990: 39), drawing distinction between perceptions of detailed sensations on the surface of bodies (‘exteroception’) and the more generalised impressions of the physical interior (‘interoception’).  Shaw’s vividly imagined journey into her physical interior, Must: The Inside Story, displaces the dominant image of ageing – when the interior veins and sinews show through the body’s surface – by reversing the focus, crossing from the external – the surface, where culturally constructed signs are at play – towards an imagined journey into the internal where the production or encoding of signs has not yet taken hold. 

Kimberle Crenshaw’s notion of ‘intersection’ is also employed in examining both Shaw’s Menopausal Gentleman, in which she presents the ways proliferating identities play out upon and within her female, butch, lesbian, menopausal body and her performance Ruff, which shows how the serious stroke she had in early 2011 unleashed a host of alter egos, personae and identities, from which she draws support.  This performance accommodates the limitations of Shaw’s post-stroke body by employing technical aids, interrupting the seamless quality of the performance by use of autocue and occasional deference to the director Lois Weaver about the next sequence or move.  The paper examines the way this interrupted performance makes explicit how Shaw’s 70-year-old body continues to labour in performance as she stands at the border of the ‘fourth age’.

In this paper, I look at the problematic staging of heterosexual desire in the ageing woman, focusing particularly on the title character in Jean Racine's Phèdre (1677), Blanche Dubois in Tennessee Williams's A Streetcar Named Desire (1947) and Hester Collyer in Terrence Rattigan's The Deep Blue Sea (1952). I draw on developments in cognitive research to explore how audiences-particularly ageing heterosexual women-might perceive these representations. As both a practice-based and traditional researcher I use autoethnographical methods to research how performances manifest an age-effect in my own body, exploring how my presentation of self in everyday life (Goffman, 1959) might be conditioned by, respond to, and challenge such age-effects.

This is a short unpublished paper that I gave at the American Comparative Literature Association conference in April 2021.  It was drawn from a larger chapter that I'm working on.

This chapter is part of a collection of essays that explores cultural narratives of care in the contexts of ageing and illness. It includes both text-based and practice based contributions by leading and emerging scholars in humanistic studies of ageing. The authors consider care not only in film (feature and documentary) and literature (novel, short story, children's picturebook) but also in the fields of theatre performance, photography and music. The collection has a broad geographical scope, with case studies and primary texts from Europe and North America but also from Hong Kong, Japan, Australia, Argentina and Mexico. The volume asks what care, autonomy and dependence may mean and how these may be inflected by social and cultural specificities. Ultimately, it invites us to reflect on our relations to others as we face the global and local challenges of care in ageing societies.
My chapter “Improvisation and Vulnerability: Circuits of Care in Performances of Age and Ageing” explores the notion of a circuit of care occurring in performance practices related to age and ageing, paying attention to how it operates regarding cognitive disability, particularly in Ruff (2012), performed by Peggy Shaw. This show was directed by and co-devised with Shaw’s long-time collaborator Lois Weaver; the pair is known as Split Britches. Here I explore how stroke survivor Shaw performs the complexity of ageing subjectivity and fragility and how her performance – and other activities inspired by her performative response to her stroke – sets up a circuit of care between audience, performer and dramaturg. I explore how Ruff explicitly acknowledges physical and cognitive fragility through the content and technical details of the performance and through Weaver’s interventions from the auditorium. I note how Shaw’s performance expertise, in spite of her cognitive difficulties, confounds
expectations of post-stroke dependency and how her duty of care as a performer extends to informing and educating audiences about the symptoms and effects of stroke, thus completing the circuit of care in Ruff. The chapter also examines other examples of theatre practice with old people, including my father, which, taken together, illustrate how circuits of care can be established by participatory and improvisatory performance practices. Such performative situations challenge the normative, binary notion of the carer as giver and the cared for as receiver, equalising the status of both. In order to explore this, I use James Thompson’s “aesthetics of care” (430) and Eva Feder Kittay’s notion of “taking up” (ethicsofcare.
org/eva-fedar-kittay/) in care relations and pay attention to the notion of vulnerability, a recent development in political and legal philosophy that challenges the focus on the situation of dependency in care ethics.

This thesis combines traditional and practice-based methods to research the representation of age and ageing in contemporary British theatre. My voice interjects intermittently in the thesis in acknowledgement of my culturally and historically situated position as a middle-aged female theatre-maker. In search of performances that might counter the normative narratives of decline and disappearance that pertain to age (Margaret Gullette, 2004: 13), I look, in Part I at professional performances, considering mainstream dramas and contemporary autobiographical performances. I conclude that the latter, presented in postdramatic rather than dramatic mode, have the potential to unsettle the identity position of ‘old’, especially that of ‘old woman’. In addition, drawing on Judith Butler’s notion of the ‘effect’ of gender as produced by cultural apparatus (2006: 199), I propose the notion of age-effects, noting production of these in performances I see and make. Part II discusses three prac...

A collaborative reflection on some of the approaches used by OBRA Theatre Co. in preparation for performing Gaudete as part of our March tour in the UK in 2017. Compiled and edited by Eilon Morris with contributions from Kate Papi, Oliviero Papi and Fabian Wixe.  This piece was originally posted on the Theatre, Dance and Performance Training Blog and was presented as part of the Performer Training Working Group at TaPRA 2017 in Salford.

This piece draws on my experiences of touring and performing Gaudete with OBRA Theatre Co in March 2017. This performance was rooted in a shared training and extended development process lasting more than seven years, mostly in residency at Au Brana Cultural Centre in Southern France. Growing out of this long duration of preparation, the experience of getting ready for each performance as a company took on strong significance - a space to connect back to our shared training as company, and a time in which to 'tuned' as an ensemble, finding the sensitivity and energy required to support the three hours of performance ahead of us.

Reflecting on the theme, ‘The End of Training’, here I consider these preparatory process as a liminal space operating somewhere between the training of the company and the performance itself. From here we looked forward in anticipation of the events, imminent on the horizon, and also back to the experiences, which built to this moment. We might choose to see this as a plateau marking the border between preparation and performance; the place where the company meet in order to collectively arrive at a state of readiness to perform; a time in which to (re)discover the ensemble in relationship to the particularities of the moment; a familiar ritual that marks the transition, from the technical process of getting ready, to a mode of being in performance.

In this paper, I reflect on the processes by which we 'warmed-up' to each performance and 'tuned' towards ensemble, discussing some of the ways these processes enabled us to both remember and relinquish our training in preparation for performance.

This paper examines the topic of play and its role within rhythm training for actors and performers. The aim of this research has been to explore the role of play and playfulness within rhythm training for actors and dancers. Building on the strong tradition of play-inspired actor training pedagogies, from the work of Jaques-Dalcroze, Stanislavski and Suzanne Bing through to Keith Johnstone and John Britton, this research is based in my own practical experiences of working with rhythm within the training of actors. In this context, games and improvisation are key approaches drawn on. Reflecting on my own observations, as well as the wider discussion of play within this field, a number of key themes emerge relating to the ways play is used as a tool for building a sense of ensemble and generating a stronger sense of immediacy and presence in the work of performers. This research opens out some of the ways that play both supports the learning process of performers and offers them valuable models for understanding and approaching rhythm within their training processes. While play is often dismissed as being superficial or simply a preliminary activity proceeding more serious training approaches, we can observe, in play, a collection of principles that are central to the processes of learning and engaging with rhythm in performance.

This thesis investigates the significance of rhythm to the actor, examining the ways it is approached, understood and embodied within a range of training practices. In what ways does rhythm facilitate and transform the practices of individual performers and ensembles, affecting their use of attention, physical coordination, qualities of connectivity, states of consciousness and emotions? The psychophysical mechanisms through which rhythm informs these key aspects of actor training are analysed here via a range of contemporary and historical psychophysical and cultural frameworks. Drawing on this body of research this thesis argues the case for a greater understanding of the pedagogy of rhythm within actor training, indicating a number of areas for further investigation and potential developments within this field. Beginning with Stanislavski’s use of “Tempo-rhythm” and progressing through the practices of Meyerhold and Grotowski, a number of key rhythmic principles will be discussed...

In this paper, I look at the problematic staging of heterosexual desire in the ageing woman, focusing particularly on the title character in Jean Racine's Phèdre (1677), Blanche Dubois in Tennessee Williams's A Streetcar Named Desire (1947) and Hester Collyer in Terrence Rattigan's The Deep Blue Sea (1952). I draw on developments in cognitive research to explore how audiences-particularly ageing heterosexual women-might perceive these representations. As both a practice-based and traditional researcher I use autoethnographical methods to research how performances manifest an age-effect in my own body, exploring how my presentation of self in everyday life (Goffman, 1959) might be conditioned by, respond to, and challenge such age-effects.

This is an unpublished paper given at the American Comparative Literature Association Conference in April 2021.

This thesis combines traditional and practice-based methods to research the representation of age and ageing in contemporary British theatre. My voice interjects intermittently in the thesis in acknowledgement of my culturally and historically situated position as a middle-aged female theatre-maker. In search of performances that might counter the normative narratives of decline and disappearance that pertain to age (Margaret Gullette, 2004: 13), I look, in Part I at professional performances, considering mainstream dramas and contemporary autobiographical performances. I conclude that the latter, presented in postdramatic rather than dramatic mode, have the potential to unsettle the identity position of ‘old’, especially that of ‘old woman’. In addition, drawing on Judith Butler’s notion of the ‘effect’ of gender as produced by cultural apparatus (2006: 199), I propose the notion of age-effects, noting production of these in performances I see and make. Part II discusses three prac...

This paper concerns the one-to-one performance work of Passages—a group of performers aged between 60 and 90—founded to support Bridie Moore’s PhD research into the performance of age and ageing. It analyzes how these performances challenge perceptions of the old person as “other,” and uses audience feedback, together with performance and social theory to explore how the work achieves this. The group uses mask work, proximity and intimate performance as a form of quiet activism, to challenge structures of thinking in subtle and penetrating ways. The analysis refers to the performance The Mirror Stage, given at the University of Sheffield (UK) in September 2015, and the paper discusses the one-to-one performance form and the eight oneto-one performances that were presented in the show. It engages with de Beauvoir’s (1953/1972) and Phelan’s (1993) notions of the “other” in order to explore the way the perception of otherness plays out and is Challenging the Otherness of Old Age throug...

In view of Judith Butler’s assertion that identity as an effect is generated by “cultural apparatus” (Gender Trouble 199), this article interrogates the age-ef- fects generated by early twenty-first century mainstream British theatre. To ana- lyze the complex ways in which age is played out on the British stage—which seem at once both to challenge and to reiterate long-standing assumptions about age—it examines five productions seen in the autumn/winter season of 2011/12. It considers to what extent these productions disrupt the generation of normative age-effects and explores the often contradictory consideration of age in the “multiple realities of performance” (Lipscomb “The Play’s the Thing” 117). This exploration enlists the theories of Butler and others, including Anne Basting, who proposes a model of performance that enacts the body in its “temporal depth” (Stages of Age 22); Anca Cristofovici, who offers a conceptu- alization of the aged body as “significant form” (“Touching...