Theatre and Performance Studies News
PhD candidate Sky Herington wins the prestigious TaPRA Postgraduate Essay Prize
In December 2020, it was announced that Sky Herington has won the Theatre and Performance Research Association's prestigious Postgraduate Essay Prize. Sky's essay is called 'Grotesque Bodies & Subversive Healing: The Politics of the Belly in Two Plays by Sony Labou Tansi'.
Addressing Food System Issues through Drama and the Creative Arts': A Webinar
Registration now open for the second
Food Global Research Priorities webinar!
University of Warwick
Coventry, UK
Wednesday 16th December @ 8pm GMT
'Addressing Food System Issues Through Drama and the Creative Arts'
The Food GRP’s second webinar, focusing on the Food Cultures theme, features Mary Swander, Distinguished Emerita Professor of Liberal Arts and Sciences at Iowa State University and award-winning author of fiction and nonfiction. Swander is the Artistic Director of Swander Woman Productions, a theatre company that performs dramas about food and farming, and Executive Director of AgArts, a non-profit designed to imagine and promote healthy food systems through the arts.
In 'Addressing Food System Issues through Drama and the Creative Arts', Swander will highlight her success touring agricultural dramas throughout the United States, raising awareness about issues in the food system. She will discuss her plays Farmscape, Vang, and Map of my Kingdom that confront agricultural topics from livestock confinement to immigration to farmland succession. Currently, she is continuing her creative exploration of agriculture through a podcast called AgArts from Horse and Buggy Land, filled with storytelling about the Amish and interviews with farmers and others making artistic imprints on the rural environment.
The webinar will take place on Wednesday 16 December 2020, 20:00-21:00hrs via MS Teams and will be followed by a Q&A session. To register, please go to: https://warwick.ac.uk/research/priorities/food/webinars/maryswanderreg
Bobby Smith has edited a section in the latest issue of Research in Drama Education (RiDE) on theatre and development
Bobby Smith has edited a section in the latest issue of RiDE (vol. 25, No. 4).
Researchers and practitioners were invited to reflect on a range of issues and approaches. Their responses are varied and diverse, ranging from a consideration of Tiv Kwagh-hir performance in Nigeria as an alternative to dominant modes of practice, a project in Bangladesh exploring the climate crisis through Pot Gan, and reflections on issues of equality, global partnerships and networks. The section also includes a contribution from another member of Theatre and Performance Studies at Warwick, Dr Susan Haedicke. Her article examines how the Coalition of Immokalee Workers in the US is using theatre in popular education to support their wider work, which aims to improve conditions for migrant farmworkers and change agricultural practices.