Performance Studies Commons^™

The Dancing Between Two Worlds Project: Background, Methodology And Learning To Approach Community In Place, Anindita Banerjee, Shaun Mcleod, Gretel Taylor, Patrick L. West

Landscapes: the Journal of the International Centre for Landscape and Language

This article recounts the history to date of the Dancing Between Two Worlds (DBTW) project, which was initiated by a team of artist-scholars at Deakin University in 2018. DBTW’s brief was to engage the Indian community living in the western fringes of Melbourne in a project on civic belonging, cross-cultural artistic identity, and the performance of outer-suburban Indian diaspora. Working with the creative and community energies that are activated at the intersection of the creative arts and demographically inflected place, the Deakin researchers collaborated with local artists with an Indian background on a major performance in late 2019: …

Performer Training Evolutions: Nsp The Firstborn Son Of Smat, Chelsea Crothers

Theses: Doctorates and Masters

This study examined the Nobbs Suzuki Praxis (NSP), a performer training that evolved as an Australian variant of the Japanese Suzuki Method of Actor Training (SMAT). There has been little research on NSP up until now and this study seeks to establish its importance as a training approach that has the potential to be transformative for the performers who practice it. The study utilised a multi-modal approach that included traditional and practice as research methodologies. The origins of NSP in SMAT were traced to identify similarities and differences, and reveal NSP’s inspirations and the reasons for its subsequent divergent evolution. …

A Study On Performing The Hungarian Rhapsodies In The Liszt Tradition, Nicholas Mark Williams

Theses: Doctorates and Masters

Franz Liszt’s Hungarian Rhapsodies (1851, 1853) have long been among the most popular collections of piano music. They have also long garnered a reputation for “superficial brilliance and effect” which seems to have influenced the way that famous pianists play the works in public. But would a performer immersed in the Liszt tradition have approached them differently? This dissertation aims to promote a re-evaluation of the Hungarian Rhapsodies from this perspective: considering Liszt’s own ideas on music and performance, the writings and recordings of his pupils, and Liszt’s book Des Bohémiens et de leur musique en Hongrie (1859).

The Jekyll’S Hide Project. Devising Jekyll’S Hide: A Critical Analysis Of The Performative Elements And Working Methods Of Jerry Lewis And The Butoh Dancers Tatsumi Hijikata And Kazuo Ohno, Hugo Belviso

Theses: Doctorates and Masters

This practice-led research project explored the process of devising for performance for the stage via physical theatre workshops. The research was informed by Japanese butoh dance-theatre and its two creators, Tatsumi Hijikata and Kazuo Ohno, and by the work of American comic Jerry Lewis. I began with exercises in group workshops derived from butoh movement practice, followed by inspiration drawn from Jerry Lewis’s performance and directorial work in his films, and from Robert Louis Stevenson’s Strange case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. I developed a workshop exercise and devising process where ideas and methodologies from butoh and Jerry …

Giving Voice To The Extra-Normal Self With The Extra-Normal Voice: Improvised Exploration Through The Realms Of Shamanic Chaos Magick, Insight Meditation And Gender Performance, Sage Harlow

Theses: Doctorates and Masters

This thesis documents practice-led research exploring the intersections of, and tensions between, improvised invocation ritual within a chaos magick paradigm and Buddhist insight meditation. I explore the extra-normal self—those aspects of consciousness not usually present, or not usually accessible, in day-to-day life—by mean of improvised ritual work with the extra-normal voice and seek to maintain a Buddhist ‘witness’ consciousness throughout these explorations. I also explore the tensions between politics, aesthetics and spiritual practice; in particular, queer and trans politics, a timbre-centred vocal aesthetics and chaos magick, shamanic and Buddhist spiritual practices. This work constitutes part of a larger project of …

Su Dansi. A Dance Film – And – Dancing Elements: The Making Of Su Dansi - A Dance Film. An Exegesis, Johanna Omodei

Theses : Honours

This research project titled Dancing Elements explores choreographic conversations between the body and natural elements, specifically water on film. I question how natural elements when viewed in relation to the dancing body, can begin to be seen as a dancing entity. This research is divided between scholarship and the creation of a new dance film, su dansi which is Turkish for ‘water dance.’ su dansi is a collaborative and explorative outcome that plays with the dancing body and water through the art form of film. Drawing from author Sylvie Vitaglione (2016), I have adopted her term “natural elements’’ in reference …

I Am Here Now: A Play – And – Polyvocality, The Unhomely, And The Methods Of Mike Leigh In Playwriting: An Exegesis, Michael Mccall

Theses: Doctorates and Masters

The aim of the research was to investigate how the devising methods of theatre and film director Mike Leigh might generate material for a new play text and what the implications were in regards to authorship. Central to the research was an exploration of the collaborative devising processes of Leigh as a point of origin and how this might lead to an intended and deliberate case for a plurality of voices in a written play text. It was conducted with a focus on utilising many voices. In this instance the ‘voices’ were young participants from Perth’s African Australian community. The …

Only The Envelope: Opening Up Participation, Surveillance, And Consent In Performance, Vahri Mckenzie

Research outputs 2014 to 2021

As a citizen I have limited understanding of the large-scale data gathering performed through the Australian Government’s Data Retention Act, with which most of us are, perhaps unwittingly, involved. This sense of collective complicity was the main impetus for the research project Only the Envelope, which combines research methodologies to investigate the ways in which we share personal information in the public sphere. The performance stage of the project was a work of live art that offered visitors the intimate experience of viewing an original video while being monitored by a “scientist”—both performer and research assistant—who invited viewers to …

Cries From Within: The Struggles And Triumphs Of Creating A Singaporean Voice In Musical Theatre, Caleb Goh

Theses

This research explores the plausibility of replicating a Broadway-type musical theatre industry in Asia. What would it take to establish a similar standard of musical theatre in an Asian country? With the problem being a lack of Asian representation in the genre, my aim has unashamedly been to see whether it was possible to increase the visibility of Asian musical theatre in form and content, with greater representation for makers and audience. By exploring the viability of creating a strong musical theatre platform in Asia, this research aimed to empower student/emerging Asian performers in believing that the dominant paradigm of …

Sighting Circus: Perceptions Of Circus Phenomena Investigated Through Diverse Bodies, Katrina Lavers

Theses: Doctorates and Masters

This thesis is an investigation into modern circus from its beginnings in 1768 through to present day contemporary circus arts. Eight diverse bodies in modern and contemporary circus are explored. These eight bodies act as different lenses to focus enquiry into gaps or ruptures in the grand narratives of circus, to reveal previously missing voices and histories and to set in place new approaches to perceiving circus phenomena.

In The Political Body, the phenomenon of embodied protest is identified and explored in relation to contemporary circus works. The importance of the engaged spectator is identified in determining political, poetic …

Undefined Genre, Or, A Study Into Work Reliant On Visual Art Mediums To Transform The Protagonist Function Of The Human Body In Performance, Tony Currie

Theses : Honours

This thesis is a study into performance art, specifically examples of work in which the artist engages with a physical object or visual arts medium to create a work of art in the presence of an audience. The subsequent work of art created can vary from works on paper, to living structures, or any other physical and tangible structure. I have addressed the audience demographic of performance art, the genre’s conceptual genesis, its ephemeral nature, and its commoditisation to analyse its relevance to the current artistic climate. During my study, an importance has been placed on live performance, not on …

The Making Of Disgrace Kelly: Dragging The Diva Through Cabarets, Pubs And Into The Recital Hall, Caitlin Cassidy

Theses: Doctorates and Masters

This research project investigates the synthesis of cabaret and recital performance as a way to re-invigorate the recital as a performance platform. As a curious classical singer with a passion for cabaret, I have explored cabaret in my own creative practice as a classically trained opera singer through the employment of practice-led research methodologies. This project includes research manifested in rehearsals, performance and exegetical writing, including a unique self-reflexive voice in the writing style, to encompass a practice-led research methodology. The culmination of these approaches was a final performance program entitled Diva Bites the Dust. A study of the diva …

Diva Voce : Reimagining The Diva In Contemporary Feminist Performance, Dawn Albinger

Theses: Doctorates and Masters

This practice-led contemporary performance study investigates and invigorates the diva icon’s usefulness to feminist theatre praxis. It traces the research journey from an unexamined belief in the diva as an icon of empowered, independent and expressive womanhood, to a more nuanced conception of the diva as boundless feminist performer and philosophical subject. Two major questions emerge from and drive the process. The primary research question asks: How can the diva icon (in all her fury and glory and wretchedness and perversity and mastery and mortality) usefully inform a feminist theatre praxis? Early investigations give rise to a subsequent social query: …

An Evaluation Of The Instructional Practices In Voice Teaching At Australian Performing Art Institutions, Ann Adlem

Theses: Doctorates and Masters

The purpose of this study was to identify and evaluate the practices and techniques of vocal training for student actors at a tertiary level, through a survey of experienced voice practitioners in Australian performing arts schools, appropriate texts, consideration of contexts and my own professional experience. Vocal instruction starts with the basic training of ‘the instrument’ or the vocal capabilities of the body. Following this or concurrent with its teaching, more specific forms of training are addressed. This research project used qualitative research methods to compile a detailed description of the voice teaching practices currently used in Australia. It comprises …

The Synergy Of Visual Projections And Contemporary Dance, Hannah Molly Timbrell

Theses : Honours

Projections are becoming an increasingly common part of contemporary dance performance, however, I believe that choreographers do not always integrate the media to form a dependent synergy. My research addresses the principal question: What are the factors that indicate that there is a critical relationship (synergy) between projection, including art work, moving images or light and the dancer in a contemporary dance performance? A brief history explains the background and development of lighting technology, through to film and more recently motion capture technology. Through sources of pre-existing literature and my interpretation of video excerpts of contemporary dance, I explore various …

Dancing With Risk: Risk-Taking As A Performance Practice In Contemporary Dance, Gemma Dawkins

Theses : Honours

Why is risk intentionally cultivated in contemporary dance? What purpose does it serve, for performers, choreographers and audiences? This thesis explores the ways in which risk-taking affects the meaning and significance of a dance work. It seeks to question whether the use of risk can render a dance more powerful, affecting or confronting, or whether intentional risk overshadows and, thus, detracts attention away from the aesthetic content. I also ask how being 'at risk' affects the performer. Can it engender investment and authenticity? The risks explored in this thesis include both physical and emotional or intellectual risks. I refer to …

Oversight : Practice As Research In Australia, Lelia Green

Practice as Research in Performance (PARIP) 29 June - 3 July 2005

No abstract provided.