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.
Jim Davis and Anna Harpin short-listed for Book Awards
Two Warwick theatre and performance academics have been short-listed by the Theatre and Performance Research Association for book awards. Jim Davis’s monograph Comic Acting and Performance in Late-Georgian and Regency England has been shortlisted for the David Bradby TaPRA Award for Research in International Theatre and Performance. Anna Harpin’s Performance and Participation: Practices, Audiences, Politics, jointly edited with Helen Nicholson, has been shortlisted for the TaPRA Prize for Editing (Edited Collection or Special Issue).
Prof. Nadine Holdsworth guest edits a special issue of Contemporary Theatre Review on amateur theatre and performance
Contemporary Theatre Review, Vol. 27, No. 1 2017, a special issue titled 'Theatre, Performance and The Amateur Turn' guest edited by Nadine Holdsworth, Jane Milling and Helen Nicholson is now available on Taylor & Francis Online:
Dr. Susan Haedicke publishes an article on Friches Théâtre Urbain’s applied theatre project in the banlieues north of Paris that works with rival gangs in Research in Drama Education
Dr. Susan Haedicke published ‘Breaking a Legacy of Hatred: Friches Théâtre Urbain’s Lieu Commun’ in Research in Drama Education 21.2 (2016): 161-75. The article examines the innovative applied theatre project that resulted from a violent clash between rival gangs from Asnières and Gennevilliers in the banlieue north of Paris when a fifteen-year old boy was killed at the metro station Les Courtilles, the last stop on Line 13. Realizing the need for radically different approaches to halt an escalation of violence, city officials, asked Sarah Harper, Artistic Director of Friches Théâtre Urbain, a street theatre company in Paris, to develop a community-based art-making project that would augment attempts by the youth workers and others to defuse the volatile situation.
Prof. Janelle Reinelt and PhD candidate María Estrada-Fuentes co-edit special issue of Lateral
Professor Janelle Reinelt and PhD candidate María Estrada-Fuentes co-edited a special issue for Lateral, the online journal for the Cultural Studies Association (USA). Entitled 'Leveraging Justice', this special issue explores how best to use performance to leverage justice for victims of trafficking, child soldiers, illegal immigrants, the poor, and others who lack recognition and protection within the legal and social apparati of national governments and some non-governmental organizations (NGOs). This focus has emerged from a two-year UKIERI funded research project on Gendered Citizenship: Manifestations and Performance between scholars in theatre and performance in collaboration with politics colleagues at University of Warwick, UK and Jawaharlal Nehru University, Delhi.
Access the issue here: