graduate school directory 2011/12 - Camberwell College of Arts ...

70 COLLINS Jane
COLLINS Jane
PROfESSOR
BiOgrAPhY Jane Collins is Professor of
Theatre and Performance at Wimbledon. She is a
writer, director and theatre-maker who works
all over the UK and internationally. She has a long
association with the continent of Africa; and
for The Royal Court, with the National Theatre of
Uganda, she co-directed Maama Nalukalala
N_dezze Lye (‘Mother Courage and her Children’)
by Bertolt Brecht, with a Ugandan cast in
Kampala. This production, which was the first
official trans l ation of a play by Brecht into
an African language, toured internationally. Her
AHRC-funded research into ‘performing identities’
resulted in a new work for the stage, The Story
of the African Choir, which was developed in
conjunction containing the Market Theatre Labora
tory in Johannesburg and performed at
the Grahamstown International Festival in 2007.
She co-edited Theatre and Performance Design:
a Reader in Scenography, published by Routledge in
March 2010. This book, with over 52 texts,
is the first of its kind in this field. In 2009, Collins
restaged the award-winning Ten Thousand
Several Doors for the Brighton International Festival
and her essay on this production will be
included in the forthcoming collection, Performing
Site-Specific: Politics, Place, Practice, edited by
Anna Birch and Joanne Tompkins, to be published
by Palgrave in 2012. She was one of a group
of artists who participated in re:SeARCHING –
Playing in the Ar chive, an exhibition at the
ING Bank in the city of London in May 2010,
in response to the Baring Archive. In 2010,
she also created the soundscape to accompany
the Space and Light: edward Gordon Craig
exhibition which opened at the V&A in London in
September that year. Edward Gordon Craig is
credited with being the founder of modern stage
design and to coincide with the exhibition,
Collins convened edward Gordon Craig: His Legacy,
a multidisciplinary conference at the Sackler
Centre. An edited version of this is now available
on http://ualresearchonline.arts.ac.uk. Space and Light
transferred to Galerie Jaroslava Fragnera in Prague
in May 2011 as part of the Prague Quadrennial of
Performance Design and Space 2011.
rESEArCh StAtEMENt My research continues
to focus on performance and practice-based
research methodologies which re-engage the ‘theatrical’
as a means of interrogating contem porary
society. In 2007, I wrote an article for Studies
in Theatre and Performance which examined the
efficacy of perfor mance as a means of investigating
the construction of post-colonial identi ties
through the ‘staging’ of an African ‘past’. One
aspect of this research was an analysis of the scenographic
framing of African performance
for western audiences. Among the many outcomes
of this process was the identification of a dearth
of material with which to critically interrogate the
visual aspects of performance and scenography
in general. Theatre and Performance Design, a reader
in scenography aims to fulfil this need and
continues to be the main focus of my research as
a practitioner and in my critical writing.
SELECtED OUtPUtS AND AChiEVEMENtS
SELECTED PERfORMANCES
2007 The Story of the African Choir, Grahamstown
International festival, South Africa.
2007 Devised and directed Ten Thousand Several Doors,
Brighton International festival. Best Production of
the festival joint winner.
2005–06 Wrote and directed The Voyages of Harriet
Herring, ING Bank.
2005–06 Wrote and directed workshop performance
The Story of the African Choir, The Market Theatre,
Johannesburg, South Africa.
2005–06 Bright Angel Point, selected finalist, The Croydon
Warehouse International Playwriting festival.
2003–04 Completed draft Bright Angel Point. Reading at
the Royal Shakespeare Company, ‘The Other Place’,
Lawrence Boswell, (dir.).
SELECTED CONfERENCE PRESENTATIONS
2011 Guest Speaker, Prague Quadrennial Performance Design
and Space.
2011 Indian Society of Theatre Research, Hyderabad.
2010 International federation of Theatre Research, Munich.
2009 International federation of Theatre Research, Lisbon.
2007 Guest Speaker, Rhodes University Summer School.
2007 Royal National Theatre ‘Agendas’ seminar with
John Carni.
2007 National Maritime Museum / Tate Gallery, Travel
and Narrative (paper).
2006 Theatre and Performance Research Association TAPRA
(paper).
2006 International federation of Theatre Research, Helsinki
(paper).
SELECTED AWARDS
2007 AHRC Practice-led and Applied Research grant.
2005 AHRB Small grant in the Creative and Performing
Arts.
SELECTED PUBLICATIONS
2010 Co-editor, Theatre and Performance Design: a Reader
in Scenography, London: Routledge.
2007 ‘“Umuntu, Ngumuntu, Ngabantu”: The Story of the
African Choir’, in: Studies in Theatre and Performance,
27.2.
SELECTED EXHIBITIONS
2007 ‘Stages Calling’ Ruphin Coudyzer, Thirty Years of Stage
Photography, The Market Theatre, Johannesburg;
Royal National Theatre (co-curated by Michael Pavelka).
Poster for V&A Exhibition and Day of Lectures
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