About the Project

AIMS AND OBJECTIVES

• To understand what strategies are employed by women in their writing practices and to analyse such strategies for their contestation of gender representation.
• To engage academic-practitioners and practitioners in the consideration of women's writing for performance.
• To make women's writing practices available through residential workshops, symposia, print and electronic media.
• A further aim of the project has been to enable younger scholars and practitioners to benefit from the contact, support and new research knowledge of a high profile feminist theatre community.

METHODOLOGY

The research questions have been explored through a regularly convened programme of practice-research events, undertaken in conjunction with international visits of the project leaders to archives and to practitioners. Details of each event have been archived on this website

Please click here to go to events archive

Practitioners for events have been selected on account of their: willingness to embrace an inclusive understanding of writing practice/s; understanding of gender as in some way significant to working processes and compositional strategies; their international standing in the field and as ‘subjects' of feminist performance research; tTheir experience of leading workshops on their writing practice/s.

Events have welcomed participants with an interest in theatre, performance, writing and women's studies in the interests of a rich cross-fertilization of expertise and perspectives in relation to issues of gender and performance. Many of the practice-research events have included the hosting of a public talk, in order for the event to reach a broader audience.

LEAD RESEARCHERS

Professor Elaine Aston

Elaine Aston is Professor of Contemporary Performance at Lancaster University, UK. She has published extensively on feminist theatre and performance. Her major works include An Introduction to Feminism and Theatre (1997) and Feminist Views on the English Stage (2003).

Professor Geraldine (Gerry) Harris

Based in the Lancaster Institute for Contemporary Arts, Geraldine Harris has published widely on female performance and performativity including Staging Femininities (1999). Her most recent book Beyond Representation focuses on the politics and aesthetics of television drama. Professor Harris also works as a devisor, writer, director and adapter.

RESEARCH PUBLICATIONS

The project has generated a number of research publications in both print and electronic media.

Please click here to go to information about publications

PROJECT RESEARCH STUDENT

Kerstin Bueschges has been attached to the project as a research student. The title of Kerstin's Performance as Research Phd thesis is On Hair, Fishtails and Voices - Resisting Femininities in Contemporary Performance Practice.

RESOURCES

The Nuffield Theatre, Lancaster University

Lancaster University's Nuffield Theatrehas been a major resource for this project, both as a laboratory space and for providing staff expertise to assist with events and their documentation. The contemporary experimental focus of the Nuffield programme and its commissioning of new works is important to generating a lively practice-research culture which has informed the Women's Writing for Performance project.

Please click here to go to the Nuffield Theatre website

Television Unit, Lancaster University

The project also has the technical support of the Lancaster University Television Unit: a team of two producers and two technicians who have the benefit of working together for 15 years, operating on broadcast digital formats as the University's in-house media production facility. LUTV will assist with the electronic documentation of the Women's Writing for Performance events.

PROJECT ADMINISTRATOR

The administrator for this project was Susie Wood

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