Reimagining Gender: Artistic Strategies in Feminist Theatre Directing
- Submitting institution
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Royal Holloway and Bedford New College
- Unit of assessment
- 33 - Music, Drama, Dance, Performing Arts, Film and Screen Studies
- Output identifier
- 41182528
- Type
- T - Other
- DOI
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- Location
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- Brief description of type
- Collection of performances
- Open access status
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- Month
- September
- Year
- 2019
- URL
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- Supplementary information
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- Request cross-referral to
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- Output has been delayed by COVID-19
- No
- COVID-19 affected output statement
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- Forensic science
- No
- Criminology
- No
- Interdisciplinary
- No
- Number of additional authors
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0
- Research group(s)
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- Proposed double-weighted
- No
- Reserve for an output with double weighting
- No
- Additional information
- This portfolio brings together two professional productions staged at the Berlin Schaubühne between 2015 and 2020 to ask how gender can be reimagined through innovations in contemporary European theatre directing through a feminist practice.
Research Imperatives
Research questions: (Ophelias Zimmer) How can a feminist director stage a critique of longstanding sexist conceptualisations of Ophelia that permeate popular culture and mainstream productions of Hamlet? (Orlando) How can a feminist director be more inclusive of trans embodiment and experience through an exploration of live cinema?
Primary findings: (Ophelias Zimmer) By reimagining the social, cultural, and physical space inhabited by Ophelia and focusing on her subjectivity in its own terms rather than in relation to Hamlet, Mitchell’s staging provided a feminist critique of this canonical figure. As reviewers observed, this approach effectively combated entrenched interpretations of Ophelia that romanticise her experiences of mental ill health and patriarchal subjection. (Orlando) New forms of embodiment that work across the gender spectrum can be represented theatrically by employing ‘live cinema’, which is Mitchell’s original intermedial approach that integrates stage and cinematic technologies. This feminist artistic strategy enabled trans embodiment to be divorced from normative associations between sex and gender through multi-roling, shifts in perspective, and live editing.
Performance Contexts:
Significance is demonstrated through production and tours in major European theatres and reviews in mainstream media (2015-2020). Ophelias Zimmer was performed at the Schaubühne and the Royal Court. Orlando is part of Schaubühne’s current repertoire. The production toured to the Odéon – Théâtre de l’Europe, Paris. Further tours to the Barbican, Teatros del Canal Madrid, Göteborg’s Stadsteater, and São Luiz Teatro Municipal, Lisbon, have been postponed due to Covid-19.
The production recordings are submitted for assessment; additional contextual information includes interviews, extracts from journal articles, book chapters, and production reviews.
- Author contribution statement
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- Non-English
- Yes
- English abstract
- These performances (in German) are based around the Shakespearean character of Ophelia and Virginia Woolf's Orlando.