Blog Posts
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Notes from The Winter School (Vienna)
From 12-14 January 2024 Tanzquartier Wien, a centre for choreography and performance in Vienna, held its annual Winter School, on the theme of classism in dance and performance. I attended the three days of workshops and talks, offering a presentation as well as in the role of participant and audience for other’s contributions (I had to miss…
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Negotiating Academic Publishing Contracts
My post on academic publishing has been getting lots of reads recently. Serendipitously, I find I have more to add on this subject — since I wrote it, I’ve been putting my own advice into practice. Given that it is still quite rare for academics to share contract negotiating experiences, that (English) people hate talking about…
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Notes from the Rehearsal Room: Identity Politics
I was fortunate enough to shadow the hip hop theatre company Beats & Elements during their rehearsal process for the play High Rise Estate of Mind, which ran at the Battersea Arts Centre from 20th-29th March 2019, and at Camden People’s Theatre from 7-11th May 2019. This series of ‘Notes from the Rehearsal Room’ documents…
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Notes from the Rehearsal Room: In Defence of Rage
I was fortunate enough to shadow the hip hop theatre company Beats & Elements during part of their rehearsal process for the play High Rise Estate of Mind, which ran at the Battersea Arts Centre from 20th-29th March 2019. It will show at Camden People’s Theatre from 7-11th May 2019. This series of ‘Notes from…
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Notes from the Rehearsal Room: What’s it Worth?
I was fortunate enough to shadow the hip hop theatre company Beats & Elements during part of their rehearsal process for the play High Rise Estate of Mind, which ran at the Battersea Arts Centre from 20th-29th March 2019. It will show at Camden People’s Theatre from 7-11th May 2019. This series of ‘Notes from…
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Rights, copyright and exploitation: Five things academics can do to improve the experience of publishing
This is written from a UK arts and humanities perspective, and may not be entirely applicable outside of that context * This week, I was presented with yet another shitty contract by an academic publisher, and it was the final straw. The breaking point as I snapped under the weight of resentments that I’ve been…
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Some reflections on actor training, inequality, casting and industry
Recent debates about the acting industry and its (in)ability to deal with inequality resonate deeply with me. Not only as a theatre and performance scholar concerned with issues of class, race and gender representation, but as a former performer, and, perhaps more importantly, trainee performer. Reading the #DearWhiteCentral posts, the Labour party’s Acting Up…
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But, Andrew Adonis, I don’t want to work hard
Over on Twitter, if you move in academic circles, you’ll almost certainly have seen a whole load of controversy over some tweets that Andrew Adonis (the former Labour politician) sent out about the state of Higher Education. To summarise: He is upset that academics have ‘three months off’ over the summer. He thinks there should…
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Estate: A Reverie, Screening and Discussion
The University of Exeter Drama Department is hosting a free screening of Fugitive Images’ film Estate: A Reverie, please see below for details — and please share with friends and colleagues, especially those in the Devon area, who might be interested. Estate: A Reverie A film directed by Andrea Luka Zimmerman, produced by Fugitive Images Screening…
Katie Beswick 