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.
Guest Editor for this issue
Maria Kapsali is Lecturer in Physical Performance at the University of Leeds. She trained in a number of psychophysical disciplines, such as Kalaripayattu and Tai Chi with Phillip Zarrilli, Body Mind Centering with Linda Hartley, Feldenkrais with Richard Cave, and Iyengar Yoga with Silvia Prescott, and is herself a qualified Iyengar Yoga teacher. Her PhD thesis both examined the use of yoga by key theatre practitioners and practically experimented with ways in which yoga can be used towards pre-performative as well as performative purposes. Alongside her teaching she is currently working on a co-authored DVD-Booklet on yoga and actor training (Routledge 2015).
Training Grounds Editors
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 JM 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 (2008–10) 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
Claudia Brazzale holds a PhD in Culture and Performance from the University of California, Los Angeles, and MA in Performance Studies from New York University. She is the recipient of the American Association of University of Women International Postdoctoral Fellowship. She has held positions as a Visiting Lecturer at the Lewis Center for the Arts, Princeton University, and as a Global Scholar at the Institute for Research on Women, Rutgers University. Claudia is currently a Lecturer in Dance at Liverpool Hope University and a Visiting Scholar at the Weeks Centre for Social and Policy Research at London South Bank.
Phillipa Burt is currently completing her PhD under Professor Maria Shevtsova at the Department of Theatre and Performance at Goldsmiths, University of London, where she also works as an Associate Lecturer.
Broderick DV Chow is Lecturer in Theatre and Drama at Brunel University, London. His research applies an auto-ethnographic and practice-as-research lens to the intersection of physical performance practice and political theory. He has written articles and presented papers about professional wrestling, parkour (free-running), and actor training. With collaborator Tom Wells, he is one half of the dance and physical theatre duo The Dangerologists. His present research focuses on performance and sport, and he is currently at work on an ethnographic project on masculinity, the fitness industry and the neo-liberalisation of work. He is co-editor of the collection Žižek and Performance (forthcoming Palgrave 2014), and is preparing his first monograph, Self-Made Men: Fitness, Self-Fashioning and Masculinity, 1859–2012.
Mark Evans is Professor of Theatre Training and Education in the School of Art and Design, Coventry University, where he is also Associate Dean (Student Experience). He trained originally at the École Jacques Lecoq, and with Philippe Gaulier and Monika Pagneux, in Paris. His research interests are in the movement training of actors and performers, the creative use of reflective writing, and creative enterprise education and he has published on all these topics. As well as teaching and researching theatre practice he has over 15 years’ experience of directing and performing new plays, site-specific performances, and community projects.
Zack Fuller is a doctoral candidate in Theatre at The Graduate Center of the City University of New York, and an adjunct lecturer at Baruch College in New York City. His doctoral dissertation is on the dance practice of Min Tanaka, with whom he has performed on many occasions. His own original dance works frequently involve collaboration with cutting edge musicians, and have been presented at venues such as CAVE's New York Butoh Festival, Plan B in Tokyo, The Dance Hakushu Festival, and Movement Research at Judson Church.
Becka McFadden received her PhD in the Department of Theatre and Performance at Goldsmiths, where she is currently an Associate Lecturer and member of the Sociology of Theatre and Performance Research Group. She is also Research Facilitator for the Department of Drama, Theatre and Performance at the University of Roehampton. Her research interests include contemporary Czech physical and dance theatre and she is the winner of the 2014 David Bradby Award for an Early Career researcher in European theatre. She works internationally as a performer and director in the areas of physical theatre and new European playwriting in translation. She is associate artistic director of LegalAliens International Theatre Company and has also collaborated with Parrabbola, Cornucopia, Theatre Lab Company, Goossun Art-illery, Theatre Exile (Philadephia, USA) and Divadlo Letí (Prague, CR).
Charlene Rajendran is an Assistant Professor in the National Institute of Education, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore and also a theatre practitioner who directs, teaches, writes and performs. Her current teaching ranges from ’Aesthetics and Theatre in Southeast Asia’ to ’Directing Youth Theatre’, ’Theatre and Gender’ to ’Dynamics of Theatre Spaces’. Charlene has been involved in Youth Theatre since she was a teenager and was recently Co-Curator of the Asian Youth Artsmall produced by Five Arts Centre, Malaysia and supported by Arts Network Asia. Her current research interests are in Malaysian theatre, Southeast Asian aesthetics and the semiotics of location. Charlene is currently working towards a PhD and her research examines the theatre work of the late Krishen Jit, renowned Malaysian theatre director.
Liza-Mare Syron is a descendent from the Birripi people of the mid-north coast NSW and currently the Indigenous Research Fellow at the Department of Media, Music, Communication and Cultural Studies at Macquarie University NSW Australia. She has published in the areas of actor training; Indigenous theatre practice; inter-cultural performance; theatre and community development; and arts in the community. Her publications include; The Challenges of Benevolence: the role of the Indigenous Actor (2005), The Bennelong Complex (2008), Protocols of Engagement: Community Cultural Development and Encounters an Urban Aboriginal Experience (2009).
Calvin Taylor holds the Leeds University Chair in Cultural Economy. His specialist interest is in the social and economic value of the cultural economy. He works internationally with project experience in Colombia, Croatia (Post Balkans Conflict Re-development), Brazil, Argentina, Mexico, and most recently Pakistan. In 2005 he, with collaborators, was invited by the UNESCO Institute of Statistics to form a team to develop recommendations for the revision of the UNESCO Framework for Cultural Statistics. These recommendations were adopted by UNESCO in 2009. In addition to current fieldwork in Pakistan, he is a holder of an AHRC Cultural Value award in which he is examining the entanglement of economic and aesthetic theory in the period 1700 to the present.
Training in a Cold Climate Contributors
Catherine Alexander is a Reader in Theatre Making at the Royal Central School of Speech & Drama where she runs the BA (Hons) Acting: Collaborative and Devised Theatre. She trained at L'Ecole Jacques Lecoq and participated in the National Theatre Studio Director's Programme. She is an Associate Director for Complicite, Artistic Director of Quiconque and works nationally and internationally as a performer, director and teacher.
Alison Andrews began working in theatre in the mid 1980s, touring devised work around the UK and as a development worker in theatre for young people. Between 2002 and 2010 she was Performing Arts Officer in the Yorkshire region of Arts Council England. She recently completed a teaching fellowship in the School of PCI at the University of Leeds. She currently collaborates with other artists on site specific performance projects in the city.
Tom Cornford is a Lecturer in the Department of Theatre, Film and Television at the University of York, a co-director of the Common Ground Theatre Ensemble and a core member of the Michael Chekhov Centre UK. A trained actor (LAMDA) and director, he has taught in the UK, Germany and the USA. His practice-led research focuses on the processes of theatre-making, their development through the twentieth century and in contemporary contexts.
Matt Hargrave is a Senior Lecturer in Performing Arts at the University of Northumbria, specialising in Applied Theatre and Drama. As a writer and theatre practitioner he has worked with many leading theatres and cultural providers including: Northern Stage, Mind the Gap, National Association of Youth Theatres, Creative Partnerships, Sheffield Crucible, and ACE. Matt has over 15 years experience of managing projects, short courses and Higher Education programmes and has also taught in Germany, Romania, Netherlands and Brazil.
Struan Leslie is a director, movement director and choreographer. He was Head of Movement at the Royal Shakespeare Company from 2009 to 2013. Recent work includes directing and choreographing Guys and Dolls for Theatre Bielefeld, Germany, movement direction on the world premiere of James Macmillan's Opera The Sacrifice at WNO and Women of Troy and Much Ado About Nothing for the National Theatre.
Kylie Walsh is Co-founder, Performer and Outreach Director for West Yorkshire based theatre company, The Paper Birds.