Theatre and Performance Studies News
TOP STORY: TaPRA 2025 Conference to be hosted at Warwick
We're delighted to announce that the annual Theatre and Performance Research Association (TaPRA) conference will be hosted by Theatre and Performance Studies at Warwick between 27 and 29 August 2025. The conference will mark both the 20th birthday of TaPRA and the 50th anniversary of Theatre and Performance Studies at Warwick. Our conference keynotes, plenary panels, artistic activity, conference dinner and programmed events will speak to the themes of milestones and markers, focussing on celebrations, festivities, spectacle and joy. We'll look forward to welcoming you to Warwick next year!
To keep up to date with the conference plans, please visit our dedicated TaPRA pages here.
PhD Student Eleanor Chadwick awarded grant to attend IUGTE Arts Oasis International Residency
PhD Student Eleanor Chadwick was awarded a grant from ArtUniverse to attend the IUGTE Arts Oasis International Residency for Performers at Monastero Santa Croce in Italy last May.
Led by theatre and dance practitioner Sergei Ostrenko, the residency involved working in a group of 17 international participants for 6 days on a retreat at Monastero Santa Croce in Tuscany, Italy. The course involved a mixture of traditional and contemporary techniques and ideas, including Thai Chi (Chuan Chen style), the physical action of Konstantin Stanislavsky, Vsevolod Meyerhold’s Biomechanics, and Contact and Structural Improvisation. There were also influences, links, or overlap with Mak Yong, Butoh, Qi Gong, Alexander technique, Pilates, Suzuki, Kinetic Environment, Viewpoints, and the work of practitioners Eugenio Barba, Jerzy Grotowski and Rudolf von Laban.
The annual residency brings together performers from all over the world: actors, dancers, teachers, and circus performers of various ages and nationalities. The IUGTE residencies foster intercultural collaborations and connections across the globe, and focus on exploring the coming together of traditional and contemporary approaches.
A key part of Ostrenko’s process was the idea of gaining new knowledge and understanding through the body, by using physical exercises with minimal verbal communication or text. It explored the way in which, in theatrical work, there is a kind of understanding that cannot be readily achieved through intellectual processes but is accessed more directly through the body. John J. Schranz speaks of the ‘unique “knowing”, which we call “embodiment”’:[1] a type of understanding of action that cannot be cognised or put into words, but which is known somatically. The Arts Oasis residency gives space to explore this kind of ‘knowing’: the emphasis is upon physical and tactile exploration, experimentation and understanding.
Eleanor is planning to attend the annual IUGTE International Conference at Retzhof Castle, Styria, Austria in December. The multidisciplinary conference is titled ‘Theatre Between Tradition and Contemporaneity’ and focuses on the bridge between tradition and contemporaneity in performing arts around the world.
For further info see: http://www.iugte.com/projects/theatretradition
[1] John J. Schranz, ‘A Rope Over an Abyss’, in Clelia Falletti, Gabriele Sofia and Victor Jacono (ed.), Theatre and Cognitive Neuroscience (London, Bloomsbury Methuen Publishing, 2016), pp.117-130 (p.118).