Intermedial approaches to Staging Acts of Reading
- Submitting institution
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The University of Lancaster
- Unit of assessment
- 32 - Art and Design: History, Practice and Theory
- Output identifier
- 237198060
- Type
- I - Performance
- Venue(s)
- Premieres in Lancaster (AFTA) and Ancona (The Train), then AFTA toured to 9 venues in UK and Italy and The Train toured to Lancaster and Wellingborough after 30 performances in Ancona.
- Open access status
- -
- Month of first performance
- October
- Year of first performance
- 2015
- URL
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- Supplementary information
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- Request cross-referral to
- 33 - Music, Drama, Dance, Performing Arts, Film and Screen Studies
- Output has been delayed by COVID-19
- No
- COVID-19 affected output statement
- -
- Forensic science
- No
- Criminology
- No
- Interdisciplinary
- No
- Number of additional authors
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1
- Research group(s)
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- Proposed double-weighted
- Yes
- Double-weighted statement
- This substantial body of work comprises two touring theatre performances. Both performances required extensive research and development alongside scriptwriting before rehearsals. Overall, the project took nearly five years to realise; adaptation and writing took nearly two years and both projects required 12 weeks rehearsal. The project involved a significant investment in research activity including filming and editing video for the production's innovative fusion of video and film footage within the performance. New forms of stage design were invented, constructed and tested, original music was developed, and scripts adapted to conflate text and technology, to create highly ambitious theatre events.
- Reserve for an output with double weighting
- No
- Additional information
- This multi-component output comprises two intermedial theatre performance works by the company imitating the dog, with funding from Arts Council England (total £165k) and the first theatre venues of their tours (£25k, ϵ30k). A Farewell to Arms (AFTA, 2014) and The Train (2015), engaged new dramaturgical and scenographic strategies to explore ways to stage reading as dramatic and psychological action. Both works were co-written and co-directed with Pete Brooks.
Original projections, live camera technologies and immersive techniques, including surround-sound headphones, form the core dramaturgical innovation. Both works are mixed media, focusing on translating the experiences of reading a novel and of reading the mind (as therapy) into dramatic action. In AFTA research identified methods to re-enact the process of piecing the story together that reading entails – projections moved from text to image and back when words failed in their power to describe. Cinematic techniques and projection mapping were combined to replicate and reveal the limitations of the cinematic to describe reading and subjective experiences. This staging of subjective experience formed the core of The Train, which translated the act of therapeutic hypnotism into dramatic action by placing the audience as the camera in a film, taking the place of authority and meaning making. In this immersive work, audiences of 12 were seated in a moving auditorium that moved like a camera, tracking the train’s interior, following the experiences revealed during a devastating therapy session.
The significance of these works is in the original techniques successfully tested and utilised to dramatize the dynamics of reading and interpretation. Innovation in both works have been acknowledged through critical acclaim and the response achieved through touring to national and international audiences. The Train ‘breaks new ground’ (The Stage) and AFTA was ‘transferred to the stage with outstanding technical and dramatic flair’ (The Guardian).
- Author contribution statement
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- Non-English
- No
- English abstract
- -