Curious methods – pedagogy through performance

Abstract

This article focuses on the links between performance and pedagogy in the work of artists and scholars Leslie Hill and Helen Paris, co-directors of London based performance company Curious. Hill and Paris often tie the creation of a live performance to the development of performance-making workshops. This article examines three case studies: 1) the ‘Autobiology’ workshops which explore the generative potential of ‘gut feelings’, developed as part of making the performance ‘the moment I saw you I knew I could love you’; 2) the UpRoot, workshops created alongside the environmental performance Wild Longings; and 3) an online MOOC Paris and Hill taught out of Stanford University called Practice-Based Research in the Arts which 5000 national and international scholar-artists from 30 countries participated in, resulting in a massive online art gallery called Studio West. The article also references Hill and Paris’ new book, Devising Theatre and Performance: Curious Methods (forthcoming, LADA and Intellect, 2021) a practice-based methodology book with generative tools for artists designing interdisciplinary, solo and collaborative projects which can used by solo practitioners, collectives and companies and offers teachers creative exercises for students working on site specific, autobiographical and socially and politically engaged live art works.

Keywords:

• performance making
• devising
• live art
• curious
• pedagogy
• theatre

Notes

1 The performance premiered at Chelsea Theatre, London as part of Sacred in November 2009 with original cast members Helen Paris, Leslie Hill, Claudia Barton, Joseph Young, Rene Newby and Geoff McGarry. Soundscore by Graeme Miller. Filmscape created in collaboration with Andrew Kötting. Produced by Artsadmin, funded by the Wellcome Trust and Arts Council England.

2 The Wingate Institute is part of Barts and The London School of Medicine and Dentistry at Queen Mary, University of London.

3 Unbeknownst to us at the time, the word ‘autobiology’ is also used by the writer Bonnie Marranca to describe the work of Rachel Rosenthal who, according to Marranca, ‘transvalues the routinely autobiographical form in to what I call the autobiological, making a performance a life science.’ See Marranca (1993) ‘A Cosmography of Herself: The Autobiology of Rachel Rosenthal’, 59.

4 Including workshops at the Arnolfini in Bristol, at the Tramway, Glasgow as part of New Territories Winter School and twice at Toynbee Studios in London, which saw the pilot of Autobiology supported by the Live Art Development Agency’s DIY scheme.

5 University of Wisconsin at Madison and Stanford University.

6 The show premiered at The Norfolk and Norwich festival, May 2019 with original cast members Claudia Barton, Leslie Hill, Helen Paris, Sailor Hirst and musician Ollie Cherer. Funded by The Woods Institute for the Environment and Arts Council England. Produced by Artsadmin. curiousperformance.com

7 Further information on the Practice Based Research in the Arts MOOC can be found at https://www.curiousperformance.com/practice-based-research-in-the-arts/. Though the course is no longer live, much of the material is still available at: https://sucourses.novoed.com/#!/courses/pbr/flyer.

8 The format of this exercise follows the structure of an exercise we developed with Lois Weaver as part of a workshop designed for aging communities working on notions of ‘age fright’, called ‘Getting On: a Backstage Tour’. The template for ‘Getting On’ can be downloaded from our website: https://www.curiousperformance.com/getting-on-a-backstage-tour/

9 Here we invoke Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick’s provocation of the ‘beside’ (2003, 8) as well as the spirit laced throughout Performance Practice and Process by Elaine Aston and Gerry Harris (2007).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Leslie Hill

Leslie Hill is Professor of Theatre and Performance Making at the University of Roehampton, London.

Helen Paris

Helen Paris is Artist in Residence at Canterbury Christ Church. Paris and Hill are directors of Curious performance company, produced by Artsadmin, London. www.curiousperformance.com. Curious has an international reputation, appearing at high profile venues and festivals such as the Royal Shakespeare Company, the Cultural Olympiad, the Sydney Festival and the Sydney Opera House, the Edinburgh Festival and IFTR. Publications include Hill’s Sex, Suffrage and the Stage (Palgrave 2018) and Hill and Paris’ The Artist’s Borderpanic Compendium (Jerwood and LADA 2017), Proximity in Performance: Curious Intimacies (Palgrave 2014) and Performance and Place, (Palgrave 2006). Their new book Devising Theatre and Performance: Curious Methods is forthcoming 2021 (Intellect and LADA).