The Editors
Simon Murray is a performer, director and academic, currently working as Senior Lecturer in Theatre Studies in the School of Culture and Creative Arts at the University of Glasgow. He trained with Monika Pagneux and Philippe Gaulier and is author/editor of three books relating to the traditions, practices and histories of performer training: Jacques Lecoq (Routledge: 2003), and, with John Keefe, Physical Theatres: a Critical Introduction and Physical Theatres: A Critical Reader (both Routledge: 2007).
Jonathan Pitches is Professor of Theatre and Performance and Leader of the Practitioner Processes Research group in the School of Performance and Cultural Industries at the University of Leeds. He has published three books with Routledge, all pertaining to performer training (Vsevolod Meyerhold: 2003, Science and the Stanislavsky Tradition of Acting: 2006 and, most recently, as contributing editor, Russians in Britain: 2012). He specialises in the study of European, Russian and American traditions of training and is currently working on a cross-cultural study of Stanislavsky's system and its transformation across borders.
Training Grounds Editors
Laura Bissell is a Lecturer in Contemporary Performance Practice within the School of Drama at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland. Laura is a visiting lecturer on the MRes in Creative Practices programme at Glasgow School of Art and has taught at the Transart Institute MFA in Berlin. Laura’s research interests include: contemporary performance practices and methodologies; technology and performance; live art; feminist performance; and performance and journeys and she has presented her research on contemporary practices at conferences nationally and internationally.
Kate Craddock is a Senior Lecturer in Performing Arts at Northumbria University in Newcastle upon Tyne. As a theatre maker and practice-led researcher, Kate interrogates concepts of collaboration, and is co-artistic director of mouth to mouth, a group of globally dispersed performing artists who utilise domestic web-based technologies as tools for performance. Kate also has a solo performance practice, and has performed in a number of international theatre festival contexts. Kate is the founder and Festival Director of GIFT: Gateshead International Festival of Theatre.
Dick McCaw was co-founder of the Actors Touring Company in 1978, and of the Medieval Players in 1981. Between 1993 and 2001 he was Director of the International Workshop Festival. Since 2002 he has been an independent researcher and Senior Lecturer (part-time) at Royal Holloway, University of London. He is contributing editor of The LabanSourcebook (Routledge: 2011) and has been commissioned to edit the Complete Laban Toolkit (Nick Hern Books).
Thomas J.M. Wilson is a Module/Year Coordinator for BA European Theatre Arts at Rose Bruford College, and a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy. Initially training in Equestrian Vaulting, he competed at European-level in the mid-1990s. Subsequently he has engaged in practices rooted in the intersection between dance and theatre methodologies, working as both a performer and director/choreographer in a range of contexts. Thomas served on Oxford Dance Forum's Steering Group (2008–2010) and has regularly contributed to Total Theatre Magazine since 2001. He is an Associate of Gandini Juggling, working as their Archivist and Publications Author.
The Contributors
Nicole Bugeja is Lecturer in Drama and Theatre Studies at the Department of Performing Arts, University of Chester. Her PhD, awarded by the University of Malta, focused on improvisation dynamics in performance. Since 2003 she has been a performer and training session leader with Icarus Performance Project (www.icarusproject.info), and has also trained with international laboratory theatre masters, including in Italy, Poland and Sweden. Nicole is particularly interested in exploring possibilities of improvisation in performance. Her current PaR project focuses on mindfulness and movement meditation techniques for actor training.
Frank Camilleri is Associate Professor in Theatre Studies and Artistic Director of Icarus Performance Project (Malta). He is also Visiting Professor in Theatre and Performance at the University of Huddersfield, and was Senior Lecturer in Drama and Theatre Studies at the University of Kent from 2008 to 2013. He has worked with John Schranz (1989–2003), Ingemar Lindh (1994–1997) and Lech Raczak (1994, 1996). In 2001 he founded Icarus Performance Project (Malta), a research laboratory group that focuses on performance processes and actor training techniques. In 2007 he co-founded Icarus Publishing Enterprise with Odin Teatret and the Grotowski Institute with the aim of publishing English translations of texts by laboratory practitioners and scholars.
Tom Espiner studied Drama at Birmingham University and trained as an actor at the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School. He is a co-director of Sound and Fury Theatre Company. Since leaving theatre school in 1999 his acting credits have included: Twelfth Night, The Winter's Tale and Macbeth (Shakespeare at the Tobacco Factory and Barbican Pit), Anything Goes and Love's Labours Lost (National Theatre), The Firework-Maker's Daughter (Told By An Idiot/Lyric Hammersmith), Jason and the Argonauts (BAC). For Sound and Fury: War Music, The Watery Part of the World, Ether frolics. Tom has also worked as a Foley artist since 1996 providing sound effects for numerous Natural History films, animation films as well as TV and radio dramas.
Ian Maxwell is Associate Professor at the University of Sydney, Australia, where he teaches Sociology of Theatre, Theories of Acting and Critical Theory and Performance. Prior to embarking on academic work he majored in Directing at Victorian College of the Arts School of Drama.
Vladimir Mirodan is Professor of Theatre at the University of the Arts London. He trained on the Directors’ Course at the Drama Centre London and has directed over 50 productions in the UK as well as internationally. He has taught and directed in most leading drama schools in the UK and was, in turn, Director of the School of Performance at Rose Bruford College and Vice-Principal and Director of Drama at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama (now the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland). Between 2001 and 2011 he was Principal of the Drama Centre London and from 2010 to 2013 he was Director of Development at Central Saint Martins. Throughout his career he has taken a keen interest in director training and formulated a significant number of formal and informal training frameworks. He served for many years as Vice Chair of the Directors Guild of Great Britain, on the Drama Committee of the Scottish Arts Council and on the Board of the Citizens’ Theatre. He is currently the Chair of the Directors Guild of Great Britain Trust.
Ross Prior is Associate Professor and Subject Leader for Acting and Drama at the University of Northampton. He is founding editor of international Journal of Applied Arts & Health and Fellow of the Royal Society for Public Health. He has been closely involved with the Drama and Acting field as a researcher, teacher and practitioner.
Munjulika Rahman is a Visiting Lecturer in the Dance Department at University of Malaya in Malaysia. She received her doctorate from the Department of Performance Studies at Northwestern University (Illinois, USA). Her research, which focuses on the performance of nationhood through dance, is situated at the intersection of transnationalism, postcolonialism and identity formation in South Asia. She is currently developing her book project that explores performance festivals as ‘contact zones’, where state power and transnational political systems influence performances of national identity. Munjulika was a recipient of the Selma Jeanne Cohen Award by the Society of Dance History Scholars for excellence in dance scholarship in 2012.
Mark Seton was recipient of the 2009 Gilbert Spottiswood Churchill Fellowship to conduct a study tour of actor training healthcare practices in the UK. He teaches aspects of actor training at the International Screen Academy and Excelsia College, Australia. He is on the Editorial Board of the Journal of Applied Arts & Health.
Will Shuler is studying for a PhD at Royal Holloway, University of London. His research interests include theatre history, especially ancient Greek and early Western theatre; aesthetic and political philosophy, especially that of Jacques Rancière; and learning in the theatre, especially as it relates to culture and identity. While teaching at Brooklyn College CUNY, where he received his MA in theatre history and criticism, he taught undergraduates using the live-action role play pedagogy, ‘Reacting to the Past’, developed by Mark C. Carnes at Barnard College. Will is the co-editor of the postgraduate theatre journal based at Royal Holloway, Platform: Journal of Theatre and Performing Arts.
Kent Sjöström is Head of Artistic Research and an instructor at the Malmö Theatre Academy, and is a member of the board of the Swedish Academy for Artistic Research. He has also taught regularly at theatre academies in the Nordic countries, and at the Shanghai Theatre Academy. In 2007 he completed the first Swedish PhD in Theatre in the field of artistic research. He is author of the monograph The Actor in Action – Strategies for Body and Mind, and ’Reflection, Lore and Acting – The Practitioner's Approach’ (Nordic Theatre Studies, 20, 2008). His current research interest is how the working actor conveys ideology and theory, mainly with tools taken from Brecht’s theories.
Marianna Szabó graduated in both Psychology and Theatre and Film from UNSW. She is a senior lecturer at the School of Psychology, the University of Sydney, Australia. She teaches undergraduate units in mental health, and supervises research students in the broad areas of anxiety and depression. She is a clinical psychologist with a private practice in Glebe.