Theatre & Performance Studies News
In Memoriam - Professor Jim Davis
It is with a very heavy heart that we write to let you know that Professor Jim Davis passed away on Saturday 4th November following a stroke. Everyone who had the pleasure of encountering Jim will appreciate that this is a huge loss for his family, friends, colleagues, collaborators and the wider research community. He was a fantastic scholar and unwavering champion for the discipline and theatre historiography. He was such an important part of the Theatre and Performance family at the University of Warwick and will be missed for his leadership, mentorship, friendship and unfailing sense of fun and mischief.
Jim Davis joined Warwick in 2004 as Head of Department (2004-2009) after eighteen years teaching Theatre Studies at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, where he was latterly Head of the School of Theatre, Film and Dance. In Australia he was also President of the Australasian Drama Studies Association and member of the Board of Studies of the National Institute of Dramatic Art. Prior to leaving for Australia he spent ten years teaching in London at what is now Roehampton University. He co-organised many conferences including for the International Federation of Theatre Research (IFTR) in New South Wales and at Warwick. He convened Historiography Working Groups for both IFTR and for TaPRA. He served as an editor for the journal Nineteenth Century Theatre and Film.
He published widely and with considerable critical acclaim in the area of nineteenth-century British theatre. His most recent bookComic Acting and Portraiture in Late-Georgian and Regency England (2015) won the TaPRA David Bradby Prize for Research in International Theatre and Performance in 2017 and was shortlisted for the 2015 TLA George Freedley Memorial Award. His other publications include Theatre & Entertainment (2016), Dickensian Dramas: Plays from Charles Dickens Volume II (2017) and European Theatre Performance Practice Vol 3 1750-1900 (editor, 2014). He was also joint author of a study of London theatre audiences in the nineteenth century Reflecting the Audience: London 1840-1880 (2001), which was awarded the 2001 Theatre Book Prize. He contributed numerous chapters including essays on nineteenth-century acting to the Cambridge History of British Theatre and on audiences to the Cambridge Companion to Victorian and Edwardian Theatre. He also published many articles in Theatre Journal, Theatre Survey, Theatre Notebook, Essays in Theatre, Themes in Drama, New Theatre Quarterly, Nineteenth Century Theatre, Theatre Research International and The Dickensian. He was also responsible for many of the theatrical entries in The Oxford Readers' Companion to Dickens and contributed to the Oxford Encyclopaedia of Theatre and Performance, The Cambridge Encyclopaedia of Stage Actors and Acting and the New Dictionary of National Biography. For several years he wrote an annual review of publications on nineteenth-century English Drama and Theatre for The Year's Work in English Studies.
An event to celebrate Jim’s life and work was held on 6 January 2024 12pm-4pm in the Studios in the Faculty of Arts Building on the University of Warwick's campus.
PhD researcher Carmen Wong receives funding to develop and document performances in Wong's 'Eating into Elsewhere' practice-research
Congratulations to PaR PhD Carmen Wong and her collaborators who have received funding from both the Public Engagement Fund and the Connecting Cultures GRP to develop and document the diptych of Wong's performances: “Breakfast Elsewhere” and “Unmade, Untitled”. Carmen's social practice work explores how belonging in an age of globalized migration might be affectively embodied and performed through translative, and convivial food-making practices. A set of performances, in preparation for Coventry City of Culture 2021, will be staged next year. Wong will work with Coventry community organizers who will host the performances in their home kitchens, inviting audience participants from diverse backgrounds to dialogue about food, place, memory, and migration.
Dr David Coates receives funding to run a Heritage Open Day at the Shelley Theatre in Boscombe, Dorset.
Congratulations to Dr David Coates, who has received £1000 from the Public Engagement Fund to run a Heritage Open Day at the Shelley Theatre in Boscombe, Dorset. This venue was originally built as a private theatre in the home of Sir Percy Florence Shelley, the son of Percy Bysshe Shelley, the poet, and the Mary Shelley, the novelist. The event is being run to pump-prime a larger project titled ‘The Legacies and Cultural Heritage of the Shelley family in Dorset’, which he hopes will be supported by the Heritage Lottery Fund. The Open day will include three expert-led interactive workshops on the Shelley family’s legacies, a rehearsed reading of two manuscript playlets written by Sir Percy Florence Shelley, and an introduction to the proposed two-year project.
AHRC M4C Studentships - Warwick Theatre & Performance Studies Call
The AHRC-funded Midlands4Cities Doctoral Training Partnership (M4C) brings together eight leading universities across the Midlands to support the professional and personal development of the next generation of arts and humanities doctoral researchers. M4C is a collaboration between the University of Birmingham, Birmingham City University, University of Warwick, Coventry University, University of Leicester, De Montfort University, Nottingham Trent University and The University of Nottingham.
M4C is awarding up to 80 doctoral studentships for UK/EU applicants for 2019 through an open competition and 11 Collaborative Doctoral Awards (CDA) through a linked competition with a range of partner organisations in the cultural, creative and heritage sector. The CDA partner organisations include the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust and the Nottingham Playhouse.
The Theatre & Performance Studies at the University of Warwick, is inviting applications!
Professor Jim Davis awarded £600,000 AHRC grant to research Theatre and Visual Culture in the Nineteenth Century
An AHRC grant of approximately £600,000 has been awarded to Professor Jim Davis as Principal Investigator and to Professor Kate Newey (Exeter University) as Co-Investigator for a research project on Theatre and Visual Culture in the Nineteenth Century. The project will be based at Warwick in Theatre and Performance Studies. Two named postdoctoral full-time research fellows will also be attached to the project for its three-year duration: Dr Pat Smyth, an art historian specialising in the relationship between art and theatre in nineteenth-century France, who will be based at Warwick, and Dr Kate Holmes (who has a specialist interest in circus and aerial performance), based at Exeter. Bristol University’s Theatre Collection and Exeter University’s Bill Douglas Museum will be project partners, collaborating in the mounting of exhibitions and conferences.