Fiona Wright, 27 January 2013

Briefly written up by Fiona Wright.

(Session originally proposed by Mandy Colleran)

Attended by Fiona Wright, Lucy Shaw, Frances Rifkin.

The ‘destination or journey’ could have a question mark..

Or maybe it's not a question of either or…

Perhaps we can add questions around our own EXPERIENCE(S) of these issues

across TIME:

time passing, our own shifting perspectives, our own cycles of experience and aging,

evolutions, slow revolutions, repetitions, re-iterations, spirals, generations.

Connections were made to some general decline in awareness of being part of a

Union and this as related to supporting under-representation of artists. Much

discussion of histories of this - especially in terms of women in Theatre, as performers

and also as directors… Feminist testimonies within a male-dominated theatre

culture… Women in drama schools, parts for women in acting, experiences of casting

as type - across all areas of perceived ‘difference’…

A sense of inter-generational exchange present throughout the discussion.

The effects currently of AUSTERITY - possible tightening towards NORMATIVE

tendencies?

Body types - as in, many people graduating still told they are ‘difficult to cast’.

Lack of experimental thinking and trust that the material and the audience can

integrate difference in many ways.

Also, Theatre is TIME-BASED and many more discussions need to take into account

the capacity of performance forms to allow presence to transform and change over the

duration of the piece/event.

'Devised' contexts still significantly normative and restricted in terms of enacting more

representations of diversity and difference.

Perhaps the context of a Company can be better placed to foster and nurture ethics -

perhaps again under threat as Companies struggle to maintain themselves.

Is the notion of a Creative INDUSTRY also somehow de-humanising as the performer

e.g. actor / dancer, is an element in a product-based approach…

Where does the power reside in productions and projects..

How marginal and radical activity moves away from and also is subsequently

appropriated by the centre..

Independent strategies as necessary as ever before!

Tags:

Women in Theatre, feminism, Feminism, Diversity, Difference, Disability, diversity,

disability