That Old Chestnut: Collaborations between Universities and Theatre Artists/Companies. What has been done? What could be done? Dan Barnard, 10 January 2016 Collaborations with Drama Departments There are models where a theatre company comes and works with a year group or class in the second or third years. This introduces the students to new practices, to working in a professional environment and allows the theatre company to earn some money and also potentially to develop their practice. Kiln theatre do this for example. This also can help students understand the merits in forming a theatre company. Wolverhampton work with Jasmine Vardimon company. De Montfort in Leicester have a close relationship with the Curve. The Curve find it creatively exciting to work with the large casts. There were comments from some theatre artists who had been asked to audition the students which felt odd for a devised project that all the students would end up being in anyway. Chichester university do lots of mutual support with theatre artists and could be sector leaders in this. They offer support, space, etc. For students’ final pieces each student has a professional mentor. They also pay professionals to go and see the students’ final showcases. There was discussion of setting up joint MAs. Some had found it “Kafkaesque negotiating the university system and it had taken 3 years. Others argued this was quick. We discussed how an MA could be made that might authentically represent a company’s process without it all having to be taught by the core company members themselves and how this might work. Collaborations with non Drama Departments Phelim McDermott has worked with some scientists and opera singers to teach avatars how to recognise and diagnose dementia from eye movements more quickly than was previously possible (check the exact details of this). Edinburgh university English department have worked with professional theatre directors and actors to reconsctruct past productions e.g from Tudor times e.g the Satire of the Three Estates – and learned a lot from both the rehearsals and performance and the practical insights the professionals brought to how the texts worked in performance. This was an Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) funded project. It was discussed how research council supported projects needed to demonstrate Impact, which people said had similarities to the Arts Council’s Public Benefit but could also be about affecting an industry or government policy etc as well a members of the public. A Sound and Fury project (Going Dark?) was discussed which had partly emerged from one of the artists spending 6 months embedded in a university so that the science they had learned flowed through the form of the show itself as well as the content. We discussed how important it was that they researcher and theatre artists felt equally that they would benefit/learn from a project and had respect for the importance of each other’s work e.g that the researcher didn’t just think of the theatre as a funky way to explain their research (like a glorified human graph) and that the theatre artists saw the collaboration as deeper than the researcher just coming in and giving one talk. We discussed the importance of discussing and planning how the collaboration would work. Nicola O’Shaunessey (spelling?) was mentioned as an autism expert in an academic context and Kelly Hunter from Flute theatre as someone who had done exciting work on Shakespeare with children who have autistic spectrum condition. Two fanSHEN projects were discussed – one in which a study of audience behaviour during an interactive piece with no performers (Invisible Treasure) had been studied by academics from Goldsmiths computing department (supported by Creativeworks London, an AHRC scheme) to feed into the next iteration of the show. Also a future project which is being made in collaboration with a neuroscientists, which will also be highly interactive. The time taken to build these relationships of mutual understanding was discussed. People Present at the discussion included: Dan Barnard Charles Craggs Gavin Thatcher Roisin Caffrey Ellie Griffits Grame Rose Antonio Ferrara Ollie Dawson Connor Nolan Gregory Thompson Anthony Lee Lucy Foster Giuseppe Belli J P Houghton Jo Crowley Caroline Horton Tags: Autism, universities, autism, AHRC, students, university, University, Welcome Trust, fanSHEN, Students, MA