Unrehearsed Futures: Carcerality, Ritual and Spectatorship

Presenting Unrehearsed Futures: Carcerality, Ritual and Spectatorship livestreamed on the global, commons-based peer produced HowlRound TV network at howlround.tv Thursday 6 May 2021 at 6 a.m. EDT (New York, UTC -4) / 11 a.m. BST (London, UTC +1) / 12 p.m. SAST (Cape Town, UTC +2) / 3:30 p.m. IST (Mumbai, UTC +5:30) / 8 p.m. AEST (Hobart, UTC +10).

This discussion will cross over territory between experimental arts and applied theatre. James Brennan's work with prisoners in Australia and Poland, in particular creating rituals of reentry to their home communities, will provide talking points in relation to Asher Warren's work on the cultures and experience of people who watch and attend theatre, with a recent focus on Tasmanian contexts.

Curator: Amy Russell
Amy Russell is Founder and Pedagogic Director of Embodied Poetics, which offers exploratory workshops and three-month summer intensives on the pedagogy of Jacques Lecoq, Jacques Copeau and Suzanne Bing in London, U.K., internationally and online. She is the Pedagogic Co-founder of the London International School of Performing Arts (L.I.S.P.A.) and founder and Chair of the Naropa University M.F.A. in Lecoq-based Actor Created Theatre. She has taught theatre creation internationally since 2003, at schools and conservatories, theatre companies and festivals. She is also an award-winning playwright and a qualified and accredited Gestalt psychotherapist and group facilitator. Her doctoral research at the University of Tasmania, Australia, is focused on theatre devising as a practice of social space.

Speaker 1: James Brennan
Organization / School: Theatre-maker
Since graduating from VCA School of Drama (Acting) in 2000, James Brennan has worked, trained and researched with Teatro Vertigem (Brasil), Ridiculusmus (UK), Wooster Group (USA), Deborah Hay (USA) and renowned avant-garde Polish theatre company Gardzienice under Włodzimierz Staniewski, where he was company member and instructor between 2010 and 2014. In 2011 he became the first outside director to create a new work for Gardzienice in its 35-year history. The work – Znak Kaina – explored community response to violent crime, and marked Brennan’s directorial debut on the European stage. It was hailed by Poland’s TEATR publication as a “landmark event”. In 2020 Brennan’s latest work, Judith’s Return, a 3-channel video work created with Białołęka Prison, Poland, was screened for audiences both inside and outside prisons in Australia and Poland. Brennan’s work is created with support from Australia Council for the Arts, Creative Victoria, Arts Tasmania, Besen Foundation and RE ROSS Foundation.

Speaker 2: Asher Warren
Organization / School: Lecturer (Theatre and Performance) | University of Tasmania
Asher Warren teaches Theatre and Performance at the University of Tasmania, moving in 2018 to Launceston to be based at the Annexe Theatre in Inveresk. Asher completed a Bachelor of Creative Arts (Hons) and a PhD at the University of Melbourne, Australia. Asher’s research interests have been broadly shaped by the intersections of theatre and performance with new media and technologies – from student theatre experimental works exploring the technical capacities of sound and light and audience participation, to investigations into the theatricality of online social networks. His doctoral research expanded on these themes, to examine a wave of innovative, technologically mediated performances by Australian artists and companies through the beginning of the 21st Century. Emergent in this project was Asher’s interest in the capacity for audience interaction and participation, and a close focus on the contributions and reactions from participants, and the implications of regarding participants as co-creators. Asher served as a member of the Performance Studies International Future Advisory Board (FAB) from 2016-2020, and convened the cross-institutional group Performance Studies Melbourne from 2016-2018. Asher is also a Member of PSi, ITFR and ADSA, and has been a member of the IFTR Intermediality Working Group since 2015.

About HowlRound TV
HowlRound TV is a global, commons-based peer produced, open access livestreaming and video archive project stewarded by the nonprofit HowlRound. HowlRound TV is a free and shared resource for live conversations and performances relevant to the world's performing arts and cultural fields. Its mission is to break geographic isolation, promote resource sharing, and to develop our knowledge commons collectively. Participate in a community of peer organizations revolutionizing the flow of information, knowledge, and access in our field by becoming a producer and co-producing with us. Learn more by going to our participate page. For any other queries, email [email protected], or call Vijay Mathew at +1 917.686.3185 Signal/WhatsApp. View the video archive of past events.