Performance, society and politics
Julian I’m not such a fan of ‘pretending’ any more. The style of naturalism in performance, that prevails particularly on TV is ultimately deceitful, in that it cloaks its own artifice. While it’s clever, and enjoyable in its way to lose yourself as an audience member in the piece, I often feel a little disconnected somehow, however stunning the performance.
If you’ve visited this site before, you’ll notice a change of theme. The time has come to make some changes; the old VLE site is about to disappear, and the best bits have been placed in menus here.
In Defense of Stage Managers; by Al Franklin – December 2012 issue of Equity News (USA) This article was reproduced on Tumblr, with the additional editorial explanation: On November 5, 2012, the Goodman and Steppenwolf Theatres along with the Central Stage Manager Committee hosted a Chicago Stage Manager Pizza Night. The event was a celebration of the … Read more
A recent query on LinkedIn by Jen Sumner asked for examples of hard evidence of the impact of drama programmes. In the light of current campaigns around the EBacc and the national curriculum, this material is important. The responses were encouraging; I include a precis here as a summary resource. DICE (“Drama Improves Lisbon Key … Read more
The Centre for Economics and Business Research has just published research into the economic value of arts activity, entitled Arts & culture’s economic contribution – An analysis of the macroeconomic contribution of the arts and culture and of their contribution through spillover effects (May 7, 2013).. The report was commissioned in November by Arts Council … Read more
Following the post about BSL, I’ve been alerted to a site dedicated to advice on theatre access: The See a Voice project was set up between October 2006 and March 2010 by the charities STAGETEXT and VocalEyes, who provide captioning and audio description respectively. The website is still live and has useful information. So, what … Read more
Just came across this performance, Imogen Heap using sensing gloves; close mics; a Kinect to control Ableton. Very impressive – two years of mapping to create a ‘human instrument’
A great project has just been published online, which is to translate some of the most important terms from technical theatre into British Sign Language (BSL). Lead by Ali Pottinger and funded by Arts Council England, the glossary comes as a series of short videos, each on subject area; each term is translated along with … Read more
The latest report on the state of arts education in the UK. Glad to see it supports the special funding for drama schools; but more importantly its recognition of the importance of the role of arts education today. The full report can be found here, but there’s a useful summary at the Cultural Learning Alliance: … Read more
Always a sucker for a dramatic management metaphor, I was delighted to come across this article about Star Wars. Having been suspicious about the Darth Vader approach to motivation, I stand corrected in that blame should be placed fair and square at the feet of the Emperor himself. And then run away very quickly. Five … Read more