This review-essay discusses George Brant’s play Grounded (2013) in the context of its production at the Gate Theatre (London). It begins with a critical examination of my own “mis-seeing” of the play’s protagonist as a version of the tragic Heracles. The analysis which follows compares key aspects of The Pilot’s narrative with Euripides’ Heracles…[Read more]

This essay explores how the early American stage functioned as an incubator for ideas about national identity, artistic expression, and masculinity. Reading four plays from the early years of the Republic – Royall Tyler’s The Contrast, William Dunlap’s Andre´, John Augustus Stone’s Metamora, and Robert Montgomery Bird’s The Gladiator, I demonstrat…[Read more]

Encounters with the Russian Avant Garde

Since the 1950s, Brigadoon has been accepted as a representation of Scotland. Brigadoon’s Scotland consists of a highland landscape with lochs, mists, castles populated by fair maidens, warlike yet sensitive kilted men and bagpipers. Much of this comes from the invented traditions of Scotland, particularly kilts and clan tartans; late n…[Read more]

In this article I demonstrate how listeners understand musical processes with their bodies, and how their gestures can be used to build analytical models. Specifically, I draw on the phenomenology of Maurice Merleau-Ponty to argue that situated, active listeners project their motor intentional gestures inside music, where they reconstitute the…[Read more]

This paper argues that Epicene, Jonson’s first public play after being made official court masque writer, is unusually optimistic about the possibilities of drama. The play explores the possibility of creating an authentic personality through performance, an idea that Jonson is often hostile towards. However, Jonson’s flirtation with this…[Read more]

This is the book of abstracts for the 2009 Theatre & Performance Research Association (TaPRA) conference, held at the University of Plymouth, UK. Over 200 delegates were welcomed at this conference, which took place from 7-9 September 2009 in the Roland Levinsky Building. International Guests: Professor Susan Bennett (University of Calgary) and…[Read more]

An essay that weaves historical perspectives with a unique interpretation of Kerensa Dewantoro’s performance art of Menjahit Marat Sade/ Sewing Marat Sade in Urban Kampong Dago Pojok, Bandung-Indonesia

Since the end of the prohibition of Chinese New Year celebrations, the night sky of towns and cities across Indonesia has been illuminated with fireworks on the eve of Chinese New Year. Most notably, the traditional street parades and accompanying festival on the fifteenth day of the New Year have been growing in size in a number of West…[Read more]

Since the end of the prohibition of Chinese New Year celebrations, the night sky of towns and cities across Indonesia has been illuminated with fireworks on the eve of Chinese New Year. Most notably, the traditional street parades and accompanying festival on the fifteenth day of the New Year have been growing in size in a number of West…[Read more]

This interview with Rachel Mars was originally published by The Lark on 19 April 2017 as part of a blog salon, curated by Caridad Svich, called “Stages of Resistance.” The series reflected on themes related to political and aesthetic resistance in the making work for live performance. http://www.larktheatre.org/blog/our-carnal-hearts/

This book chapter analyses the experience of seeing two performances – La Fura dels Baus’s production of XXX and Ron Athey’s Solar Anus – during the first half of 2003, through the lenses of eroticism, death and visual theatricality.

This text was written and presented to introduce a screening of Sarah Polley’s 2012 film, ‘Stories We Tell’ on 22 February 2016 as part of the Peninsula Arts Women & Cinema season. It was published as a blog by The Arts Institute at the University of Plymouth on 25 February 2016:…[Read more]

A blog post on the performing body, presence and toxicity, reflecting on the deaths of Prince, Amy Winehouse, G.G. Allin and Whitney Houston. Published on the University of Plymouth’s Arts Institute blog, 6 May 2016: http://blogs.plymouth.ac.uk/artsinstitute/2016/05/06/feature-performing-the-toxic-body/

A blog post for the University of Plymouth’s Arts Institute on the French circus company, Archaos (published 9 July 2016): http://blogs.plymouth.ac.uk/artsinstitute/2016/07/09/feature-remembering-archaos-circus-with-attitude/

This is the final manuscript version of a chapter about Lynn Hershman’s Roberta Breitmore project, published in Susan Broadhurst & Josephine Machon (eds.), Identity, Performance and Technology: Practices of Empowerment, Embodiment and Technicity (Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), pp. 126-141.

This essay explores the first appearance of actresses on the public stage in England and the Dutch Republic. It considers the cultural climate, the theaters, and the plays selected for these early performances, particularly from the perspective of public femininity. In both countries antitheatricalists denounced female acting as a form of…[Read more]

Part of a much larger project, this part of the book developed, for the fist time, a history of intellectual engagement with Greek tragedy and tragic theology in general and Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex in particular as one of the central intellectual contests in the 18th century Europe, from the early stages of the Quérelle des Anciens et des Modernes…[Read more]

This article investigates the tensions inherent within the ‘anti-modern’ element of early modernism and its relationship to Victorian and fin de siècle narratives of modernity. Using Sigmund Freud’s Totem and Taboo (1913), this essay examines how the primitive is represented in E.M. Forster’s short story ‘The Machine Stops’ (1909) and Stravinsky/N…[Read more]