Lunchtime Talk
Fri 11 Dec 2020 13:00-14:00 at YouTube Live
Ana Mendieta & us - exploring past and future performance
For our last Lunchtime talk of 2020 & the fourth in our series exploring Future Themes of the Studio. Studio Resident Ellie Chadwick of Sleight of Hand discusses the future of theatre & performance & how it is changing.
c/o Sleight of Hand
Speakers
Ellie Chadwick
Ellie is a MyWorld fellow and a Studio Resident with her experimental theatre company Sleight of HandAbi Zakarian
Abi Zakarian is a British-Armenian playwright based in London. Her plays have been produced at the Globe, Soho Theatre, Roundhouse & Southwark Playhouse among others. She regularly runs workshops and recently worked at Brit School as their 2020 commissioned writer. She's won a Fringe First, Vault People's Choice Award and MGCFutures Bursary. She is currently under commission with Shakespeare’s Globe and Jermyn St Theatre and developing one of her plays for television. Before beginning her writing career she worked as a picture editor for many leading newspapers and magazines. She studied History of Art with a specialism in Feminist studies and Anthropology.Gabriela Román González
Gabriela’s background is in Art History. She has been working as a creative art manager and curator, and in parallel developing her artwork since 2016. She has led multi- disciplinary live shows, music events, educational programs and exhibitions. Last year, back in Havana, Cuba, Gabriela founded 'Ensayo Cero', a cultural project focused on furthering the opportunities for emerging experimental artists from Latin America. She is fascinated by the possibilities of experimental arts to create interactive and emotive experiences for audiences, and how performances can redefine our relationship with complex concepts like time, failure and success (she has been exploring these concepts in her artistic practice). Gabriela is currently finishing her MA in Creative Entrepreneurship at Goldsmiths and researching about projects and creatives that are interested in experimental art, Latin American art and innovation in London.This Lunchtime Talk will be broadcast live on Watershed's YouTube channel.
Before the pandemic, Sleight of Hand had plans to R&D a new piece of experimental theatre at Warwick Arts Centre on the life and works of Ana Mendieta: the brilliant 1970s Cuban-American artist who created provocative work drawing on nature and the elements, utilising her own body, natural materials, as well as photography and film as an integral part of her practice. Her work simultaneously spoke to the past while being pioneering, and confronted ideas about violence, the female body, exile, primality, and ritual. Her creation of art outside traditional venues and her use of film/photography now seem extra relevant in regards to current dilemmas around how to continue to create meaningful collective artistic experiences without physical access to traditional theatre/arts venues: and with Future Themes funding the company are now researching via interdisciplinary labs - and via the repurposing of this project - what the future of theatre could emerge as in the wake of the pandemic.
In this talk, members of the project team consider worries about the future of theatre and performance, centring discussion around the value of breaking down genres and artistic boundaries in pursuing new ways of making work, and the value of technologies and of live bodily experiences in real space. They will ask not only what is possible to make in the near future but also how the situation might reveal exciting new ways of working.
Join us on Fri 11th December, 13:00-14:00 for the talk and to take part in the discussion afterwards.
