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.
Social Movements, Performance and Democratic Practices (Indo-Canadian Dialogue): A Conference
Shastri-Indo Canadian Institute Golden Jubilee Online Conference
Social Movements, Performance and Democratic Practices (Indo-Canadian Dialogue)
Collaboration between: School of Arts and Aesthetics, Jawaharlal Nehru University, Department of Theatre, University of Ottawa, Theatre and Performance Studies, University of Warwick
The last decade has seen the rise of a range of social and political movements across the globe that have challenged the existing boundaries and imaginations of political and legal articulation of rights and justice, and notions of development. At the heart of these developments has been the interlinked phenomenon of populism and performative paradigm of politics that is based on a complex relationship between digital presence and bodies physically assembling in space. Taking forward the earlier collaborative projects between the universities, namely, the Gendered Citizenship: Manifestations and Performance and Cultures of the Left: Manifestations and Performance, the present conference foregrounds theatrical/performance exchanges and the need for cross-cultural dialogue and theorisation in re-examining populism. Opening up a dialogue on the under-explored Indian-Canadian experience, the conference seeks to explore the challenges to the practices of democracy and the potential of performance to offer alternative ways of reorganisation of the world.
The performance studies framework of the conference provides an interdisciplinary exploration of cross-cultural patterns of performance and the performative nature of political dissent, bringing together seemingly diverging experiential realms. It brings together the popular cultural performances and the practices of assembling and choreographing of bodies in the streets as well as in digital space. It also offers a lens to understand what might not otherwise be deemed as public displays, whether it be dissent and protests or ways of care of self and others as vulnerable bodies or not deemed to be able-bodied to articulate politics by the mainstream. The contemporary context of Covid19 pandemic has further brought into relief the specific challenges to understand the performative paradigm of politics. The conference takes the intense moment of pandemic looking both synchronically and diachronically into the practices of democracy, and what past experiences might have to offer to the languages and gestures of democratic practices in the contemporary. In doing so, the conference will foreground an aesthetic of resistance not only as a reactive practice, but as a way to sustain articulation of rights and the politics of inclusion, equality, care for the commons and social justice.
Click the link above to see the event's schedule.
RSVP for link: parameswaranameet@gmail.com
Commonwealth Shared Scholarships Available for MA Applied Theatre: Arts, Action, Change
Theatre and Performance Studies at Warwick is inviting applications from eligible students for Commonwealth Shared Scholarships to study our new MA Applied Theatre: Arts, Action, Change.
Candidates will need to have applied, and received an offer, for the degree by 26th March 2021. You can apply here https://warwick.ac.uk/study/postgraduate/taught/courses-2021/appliedtheatre/.
Selected applicants will then be nominated and work with us to draft their application for the scholarship, and will need to submit a separate application online direct to Commonwealth Scholarships by 9th April 2021 https://cscuk.fcdo.gov.uk/scholarships-filter-search/
Level of support provided
• Course fees will be covered
• Airfares to and from the UK (must be booked in line with CSC’s travel policy)
• Grant to contribute to study-related costs (exact amount to be confirmed)
• Tuberculosis test fees at a pre-determined amount set by the CSC where required by UK Visas and Immigration
• Excess baggage allowance on return home up to the specific rate as set by the CSC
• Disability Support Allowance for personal living costs (if eligible)
• For Scholars who are widowed, divorced, or a single parent, child allowance of £478 per month for the first child, and £118 per month for the second and third child under the age of 16 (at 2020/2021 rate)
• Stipend (living allowance) at the rate of £1116 per month
• Warm clothing allowance of £433
Candidate eligibility
Candidates are expected to hold a first degree at either first class or upper-second class level, or at lower-second class level plus a Master’s degree. The CSC cannot assess work experience in lieu of this minimum academic qualification. Pre-sessional English courses are not supported by this programme. Universities must therefore confirm that candidates are sufficiently fluent in written and oral English to pursue their studies immediately and ensure that they meet the English language requirement set by UK Visas and Immigration. To apply for these scholarships, candidates must:
• Be a citizen of or have been granted refugee status by an eligible Commonwealth country, or be a British Protected Person
• Be permanently resident in an eligible Commonwealth country
• Be available to start their academic studies in the UK by the start of the UK academic year in September/October 2021
• By October 2021, hold a first degree of at least upper second class (2:1) standard, or a second-class degree and a relevant postgraduate qualification (usually a Master’s degree).
• Not have studied or worked for one (academic) year or more in a high-income country (for CSC purposes this is classified as a country which does not appear on the DAC list of ODA recipients.
• Be unable to afford to study in the UK without this scholarship (note the university may be asked to state its procedures for verifying applicants’ financial status).
• Commit to return to their home country within one month of the end date of their scholarship
Please note These eligibility criteria are current as of October 2020 and are subject to minor changes.
Eligible countries
Bangladesh; Cameroon; Eswatini; The Gambia; Ghana; India; Kenya; Kiribati; Lesotho; Malawi; Mozambique; Nigeria; Pakistan; Papua New Guinea; Rwanda; Sierra Leone; Solomon Islands; Sri Lanka; Tanzania; Tuvalu; Uganda; Vanuatu; Zambia
Annual Clive Barker Award: Applications Open
Clive Barker was a pioneering theatre studies scholar. He worked with Arnold Wesker and Joan Littlewood and wrote influential book such as Theatre Games. He worked at Warwick from 1976 until he retired in 1993.
This award is designed to provide practical and financial support for Theatre and Performance Studies students who plan to create a piece of extra-curricular performance work in the department with a view to submitting this work to the Edinburgh Festival or a similar public platform. The recipients of this award will receive up to £600 to help mount the work and will be given access to rehearsal space and technical support (subject to availability and a maximum amount of 15 hours of technical support) to realise the project. It is anticipated that projects will be developed over the Easter break, post-summer exams and/or in the early stages of the summer break.
How to Apply
- Download and complete the short application from and return to Bobby - Bobby.Smith@warwick.ac.uk
- Please add ‘Clive Barker Award Submission’ in the subject line of the email.
- Deadline Friday 26th March 2021.
- Successful Applicants will be announced within 3 weeks.
- You can find the form here https://moodle.warwick.ac.uk/course/view.php?id=25249
Kenilworth's Talisman Theatre Partners with the African Women Playwrights Network
On 4 February 2021 the Leamington Observer reported that the Talisman Theatre in Kenilworth had reflected on its whiteness, and has reaffirmed its commitment to diversity. This commitment has included partnering with Dr Yvette Hutchison's African Women Playwrights Network so that it can begin to change its position as a venue which has 'a very white membership, choosing plays mainly about white people, by white authors, presented to a mainly white audience' (Leamington Observer).