Introduction
I’m currently an AHRC and President’s doctoral scholar at the University of Manchester, where I research spectatorship, stillness and music in Early Years Theatre settings. Early Years can mean anything from 0-6 years old, but at the moment I specialize in work created for 0-18 month olds.
With a long held fascination for the theatricality of and corporeal movements produced in the creation of sound, I’m most often drawn to theatre with music and musicians at its heart. I’ve found the work of Janet Cardiff and Heiner Goebbels to be particularly inspirational.
My research has brought me to describing and extrapolating from the process of infants ‘seeing sound and hearing movement’, which is very close to something that Tim Ingold has written brilliantly about from an anthropological viewpoint. But I’ll write more about this soon…
I currently teach part-time at the Martin Harris Centre for Music and Drama, University of Manchester, and in early 2017 became an Associate Artist (for Early years) at the egg, Theatre Royal Bath.
I’ve had the pleasure of working for many of the UK’s leading cultural organizations and am grateful for the generous support I’ve received over the years to develop my craft and thinking. There are lots of amazing schemes out there and I hugely appreciate the different kinds of support I’ve received from organizations including Edinburgh International Festival, Imaginate, Paul Hamlyn, the Goethe Institute, Esmee Fairbairn and the Federation of Scottish Theatre. Whilst I was working more frequently as a director, (2004–2012) I was generously supported by Creative Scotland to create annual touring productions, most of which were for young audiences.
I used to make and deliver a lot of creative learning work for Scottish Local Education Authorities and am happy to have received three COSLA nominations for that work with young people.
The work with LEAs lead on to me becoming a research fellow in the Education department of the University of Aberdeen and a resident artist in three Primary schools for Dundee Rep, from 2013-14.
At the beginning of 2014 I became a Leverhulme Scholar at the egg, Theatre Royal Bath and was mentored during that time by the brilliant dance producer Emma Gladstone. This intense period of developmental support gave rise to my touring production 16 Singers which was created as an integral part of my doctoral research and nurtured fiercely and lovingly by producer Kate Cross.
16 Singers is an in-the-round, through-composed performance for 0-18 months olds and their parents, composed by Paul Rissmann and audaciously performed, as the title suggests, by 16 singers. It was co-produced by Dance Umbrella and the egg, and nominated for a 2015 Family Arts Award. Though it’s resting and resettling whilst I write up my PhD, I think it’ll be back out on the road and touring internationally very soon!
There’s strong growth in the sector creating Theatre for Early Years audiences, both in the UK, Europe and Worldwide. Several university-based courses have sprung up to support artists wishing to specifically prepare for practice within TYA and EYT. The egg’s current cohort of Leverhulme scholars all has a focus on work for the ‘early years’ and I’m delighted to be mentoring one of those makers.
Since starting the PhD I’m pleased to have been invited to present my research at various national and international gatherings including:
• Practice as Research Symposium, (NWDTP) Manchester Metropolitan University. January 2015
• London Early Years Music Network, (LEYMN) Royal Albert Hall. March 2016
• Theatre & Performance Research Association, (TaPRA) University of Bristol. September 2016
• ASSITEJ International Congress, Birmingham. July 2016
• Polka’s Early Years Research symposium, Polka Theatre London. March 2017
• Small Size European Network, Galway. February 2018
• SEANSE Festival (keynote) ‘Silence is not a vacuum of understanding’. Norway. October 2018
As I write, I’m based in Edinburgh, and currently ‘writing up’ my thesis. Drop me a line if you’d like to know more about anything I’ve mentioned…
November 2018
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