Chairs and Speakers

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Chairs and Speakers

Day one - Thursday, 4 April

Keynote speaker - Professor Jonathan Pitches (University of Leeds)
Title - Mountainous Opportunities: Interrogating Place In Ritual, Theatre, and Performance Training

For Stanislavsky, the importance of place was made clear to the actor by asking one of his six famous ‘Ws’ (2008: 116)—“Where?”, the question always spiced with the stimulant of “if”. Practice simple exercises, he tutored, and then consider if each “happens on land, in Russia, Germany, France, England, Italy … in the woods … on a crag, at the foot of a mountain … at the aerodrome” (2008: 670). What does this ‘where’ contribute to our understanding of performance? To answer this question, Pitches sketches a path from his own favoured place (Cumbria), up mountains and climbing walls, by way of pansori (Korean sung drama) and the approaches employed by Jacques Lecoq, to consider what value there is in mountains as places from which to survey ritual, performance and actor training.

Day two - Friday, 5 April

Panel -

Maitland Schnaars (Yirra Yaakin Theatre)
Kate Champion (Black Swan State Theatre Company)
Matt Edgerton (WAAPA at ECU)
Chaired by Helena Grehan (WAAPA at ECU)

Title - Places of WA & Australian Performance: A Special S-Word / ADSA Plenary Panel

This plenary panel is sponsored by Australasian Association for Theatre, Drama and Performance Studies (ADSA), as part of ADSA’s commitment to decentring scholarship in our discipline and elevating the voices of First Nations, regional and other researchers, practitioners and students.

Day three - Saturday, 6 April

Keynote speaker - Professor Richard Gough (University of South Wales)
Title - A Special Presentation by Richard Gough, founder of the Centre For Performance Research

Keynote speakers

Professor Jonathan Pitches

Jonathan Pitches is Professor of theatre and performance and Head of the School of Performance and Cultural Industries at the University of Leeds in the UK. He is an influential scholar, author and editor of theatre training, digital pedagogy, and eco-criticism and the founding co-editor of the Routledge journal: Theatre, Dance and Performance Training. Hehas published several books including Vsevolod Meyerhold (2003/18), Science and the Stanislavsky Tradition of Acting (2006/9), Russians in Britain (2012) and Stanislavsky in the World (with Dr Stefan Aquilina 2017). He is sole editor of Great Stage Directors Vol 3: Komisarjevsky, Copeau, Guthrie (2018) and author of Performing Mountains (Palgrave 2020), supported by the Arts and Humanities Research Council. In 2023, he co-edited (again with Aquilina) the Routledge Companion to Vsevolod Meyerhold comprising27 essays by scholars and practitioners from all over the world. Most recently he has been working on a long book chapter mapping the relationship between Scottish literature and its extensive mountain landscapes (for the Routledge Companion to Scottish Literature).He will be offering as part of the conference a masterclass on Meyerhold technique (applications pending).

Professor Richard Gough

Richard Gough was the founding president of Performance Studies International (PSI) and developed the association between 1997 and 2001. He was the Chief Examiner, Theatre Arts (world-wide) for the International Baccalaureate Organization (IBO), 2002-05 and supervised the rewriting of the curriculum for that programme. As Artistic Director of Centre for Performance Research (CPR; 1987+), and its predecessor CLT (1979 – 86), he has curated and organised numerous international theatre projects, conferences, research projects, summer schools, workshop programmes, and international festivals, as well as producing nationwide tours of experimental theatre and traditional dance/theatre ensembles. He has directed over seventy productions many of which have toured Europe and he has lectured and led workshops throughout Europe and in China, Japan, India, USA, Australia, New Zealand Aotearoa, Colombia, Brazil, Philippines and Kenya. He is the general editor and co-founder of Performance Research journal (Routledge / Taylor and Francis).He is series editor and publisher of Black Mountain Press(a division of CPR) and founded Performance Research Bookswhich is an independent venture of Performance Research the journal. His own performance work in relation to performance, food and cookery continues to develop with a series of productions and installations based around the Last Supper and performance banquets for a variety of international events and conferences realised in America, Europe and Australasia.

Panelists

Maitland Schnaars

Maitland Schnaars is one of Western Australia’s premier Indigenous contemporary theatre artists. Schnaars was appointed artistic director of Yirra Yaakin theatre, Boorloo/Perth, in 2023. Before that, he co-founded the international theatre company Corazon de Vaca and has performed in and co-created a number of their productions, both in Spain and Perth. He has performed in productions for Black Swan and co-productions for Queensland Theatre and Griffin Theatre. He has worked with many independent theatre companies in Perth and continues to work with artists from various backgrounds such as dance, multimedia and music. In 2016 he won the Performing Arts WA Best Actor award. In 2021, he appeared in the sell-out productions of Hecate (Yirra Yaakin / Boomerang & Spear) and York (Black Swan). He is a long term member of Wadumbah Noongar Dance Group.

Kate Champion

Kate Champion is one of Australia’s leading directors and choreographers and was the founding Artistic Director of Force Majeure, a multi artform company dedicated to new Australian work. She has worked in theatre, dance, circus, opera, musical theatre and film with arts companies and institutes including Belvoir, Sydney Theatre Company, Melbourne Theatre Company, State Theatre Company of South Australia, The English National Opera and Opera Australia. Kate was a performer with companies DV8 Physical Theatre-London, Australian Dance Theatre and Dance North. Kate is currently artistic director of Black Swan State Theatre Company of Western Australia.

Matt Edgerton

Matt Edgerton originally trained as an actor with WAAPA, Edith Cowan University, and assumed the role of coordinator of acting at WAAPA in 2024. He is a multi award winning Australian theatre director and dramaturg with a diverse body of work across a range of contemporary and classical forms, styles and scales, cross-cultural collaborations, work for audiences of all ages and theatre projects promoting social development in marginalised communities. He has served as Head of New Work at Melbourne Theatre Company, Artistic Director of Barking Gecko Theatre (Western Australia), was a founding member of Moogahlin Performing Arts, and resident artist at Bell Shakespeare.

Helena Grehan

Helena Grehan was appointed Vice Chancellor’s Professorial Research Fellow with WAAPA, Edith Cowan University, in 2024, after 27 years as a leading researcher and teacher with Murdoch University (Perth). In 2023, Helena was elected as a Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities. She is recognised as an international leader on ethics and responsibility in, and in response to, contemporary arts practice. Her work also extends to major national and state research projects, and is deputy editor role of the journal Performance Research (published by the Centre for Performance Research, Wales), in addition to numerous books, chapters and articles.

S Word 2024