Adventures in the Skin Trade
- Submitting institution
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Aberystwyth University / Prifysgol Aberystwyth
- Unit of assessment
- 33 - Music, Drama, Dance, Performing Arts, Film and Screen Studies
- Output identifier
- 41645796
- Type
- I - Performance
- Venue(s)
- Cardiff
- Open access status
- -
- Month of first performance
- October
- Year of first performance
- 2014
- URL
-
-
- Supplementary information
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- Request cross-referral to
- -
- 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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0
- Research group(s)
-
-
- Proposed double-weighted
- No
- Reserve for an output with double weighting
- No
- Additional information
- This original stage adaptation of Dylan Thomas’ unfinished novel Adventures in the Skin Trade was commissioned for the Dylan Thomas Centenary Celebration 2014, produced by Theatr Iolo, and funded by the Arts Council of Wales and Welsh Government. The realised stage production toured nationally, being staged within a number of Welsh theatres, before being invited to the Melbourne Arts Centre and Sydney Opera House in Australia – where it was presented within the British Council’s Starless and Bible Black programme, a celebration of Dylan Thomas’ centenary, which showcased select Welsh work abroad in an effort to promote lasting intercultural relations. The resulting play text was published within the Bloomsbury Methuen Drama series in 2015.
The project expanded creative approaches to dramatic writing, to imagine and realise a contemporary stage adaptation of the literary source, with a particular focus on facilitating and increased awareness of Thomas’ creative and cultural legacy amongst 16-18 year olds within both national and international contexts. The work explored ways of opening out Thomas’ text for young audiences, proposing spatial dramaturgies that might provide a clear social context while drawing attention to the historicity of the text. The play text, and associated education resource materials, have since been adopted by the Melbourne school curriculum – providing young students an opportunity to interact with Thomas’ work in the context of Welsh culture.
Research questions include:
- In what ways might dramatic architectures be adapted and constructed to enable an appropriate transposition of literary works into stage environments?
- How might dramaturgical composition enable an opening out of the internal and reflective modes of a novel into the public space of a contemporary theatre event?
- How might a play text be anchored in order to make it specifically accessible to the young audiences it addresses?
- Author contribution statement
- -
- Non-English
- No
- English abstract
- -
