Research Interests

BACKGROUND

Andrew Quick studied English and Philosophy at Newcastle University and trained as a theatre director at the Sherman Theatre in Cardiff in 1984. Having worked professionally in making and touring experimental performance, he returned to academic study in 1989, completing a PhD investigating the histories and languages of contemporary British experimental performance at Bristol University. He has been teaching at Lancaster since 1991, where he runs undergraduate courses on Avant-Garde Theatre and Contemporary Experimental Performance as well as teaching on practical units. Together with Professor Elaine Aston he established the Centre for the Advanced Study of Contemporary Performance Practice in 2004 with funds from Lancaster University (CASCPP)). Quick is also a founder member of imitating the dog, an Arts Council funded performance company that tours nationally and internationally. His academic work is closely bound up with contemporary art practices and much of his writing on performance, photography and installation investigates concepts of space, play, documentation, scenography and performance ethics. He has edited a number of significant publications and has contributed chapters and articles to many books and journals on performance and related art practices. He was co-editor of Shattered Anatomies (ArnolfiniLive, 1997), Time and Value (Blackwell, 1998) and On Memory (Routledge, 2000).

Quick is currently a member of the AHRC peer review college and also a Panel member for the AHRC Fellowships Committee. In 2001-2002 he was Visiting Research Fellow at the AHRB Centre for Cultural Analysis, Theory and History, University of Leeds.

CURRENT RESEARCH

Quick researches into four main areas: contemporary experimental art practice, with an emphasis on performance, installation and photography; documentation and process in performance; performance ethics; and practice-based research. He has published on Forced Entertainment, Impact Theatre, The Wooster Group, Fiona Templeton, Yoko Ono, Robert Longo, Tony Oursler, Willie Doherty, Victoria Theatre, Ken Feingold, Dennis Oppenheim, desperate optimists, Richard Foreman and is currently completing two monographs: The Wooster Group Workbook (Routledge, August 2007) and The Event of Performance (Palgrave Macmillan, 2008). His work on The Wooster Group is the first major publication on this leading New York theatre company since David Savran's Breaking the Rules (1986). Funded with support from the AHRC and written in close collaboration with the group, the publication includes documentary sections on Frank Dell's the Temptation of St. Antony, Brace Up!, Fish Story, House/Lights, and To You, the Birdie, interviews with Elizabeth LeCompte and Kate Valk, and analysis of their performance works, theatre making process and company history. The Event of Performance focuses on the relationship between performance and ethics and argues that specific contemporary performance works open up new ways to consider the political in experimental art practice. Chapters focus on the work of Forced Entertainment, Gary Hill, Willie Doherty, The Wooster Group, Richard Foreman and Rachel Whiteread. Quick's practice-based research has primarily been pursued in collaboration with Leeds based theatre company imitating the dog. He has written and directed a number of works that include Five Miles and Falling (2002) and most recently, Hotel Methuselah (2006/7) (written and directed with Pete Brooks). This research interrogates contemporary notions of narrative and screen technologies and the relationships between live and recorded presences. Hotel Methuselah was selected by The Facility at London Metropolitan University and as part of the Beyond Drama: Post-Dramatic Theatre Symposium, held at the University of Huddersfield in 2006. It was also part of "Practice Reflected: middle, end, beginning: adventures in narrative", held in The Nuffield Theatre in October 06. Quick has supervised a number of PhDs to completion and is currently supervising three research students. He welcomes potential postgraduates interested in researching the following areas: contemporary performance, performance and documentation, the relationship between aesthetics and politics in experimental art practices, process and performance, practice-based research, performance and play, performance and space.

External Examining

2002-2006 External Examiner for the MA in Scenography, Central St. Martins College of Art and Design, London Institute.

2000-2003 External Examiner for the Degree in Contemporary Theatre Practice, Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama, Glasgow.

1999-2003 External Examiner for Department of Theatre Studies, Scarborough Campus, University of Hull.

Additional Information

Publications since 2001

Monograph

The Wooster Group Work Book, Routledge, London, 2007 (ISBN: 978-0415353342)

Performances/Practice as Research

Hotel Methuselah, imitating the dog (co-writer and director with Pete Brooks), 2006/7: funded by Arts Council England, Yorkshire Arts, Nuffield Theatre, Lancaster. The national and international tour includes West Yorkshire Playhouse, National Theatre of France, St Etienne, Reminiscence Festival, Krakow, Poland, Cochrane Theatre, London. Five Miles and Falling, imitating the dog (writer and director), 2002/3: funded by Arts Council England, Yorkshire Arts and commissioned by The Studio Theatre and Gallery, Leeds Metropolitan University. National tour included Riverside Studios, London.

Dramaturg: The Caretaker, Central Cultural Matacuna 100, Santiago, Chile, 2006.

Edited Books

Hotel Methuselah: A Document by imitating the dog, ed. Andrew Quick, Leeds, 2006. ISBN: 1-86220-176-5.

Five Miles and Falling: A Document by imitating the dog, ed. Andrew Quick, Leeds Metropolitan University, Leeds, 2003. ISBN: 1-86220-120-X (published as CD-ROM).

Chapters in Books

'Time to be Responsible', in Hotel Methuselah: A Document by imitating the dog, ed. Andrew Quick, Leeds, 2006.

'The Gift of Play', Contemporary European Theatre, eds. J. Kelleher & N. Ridout, Routledge, London, 2006, pp. 149-162.

'The Space Between', Performing Nature: Explorations in Ecology and the Arts, eds. N. Stewart & G. Giannachi, Peter Laing, 2005, pp. 147-163.

'Taking Place: Encountering the Live', Live: Art and Performance, ed. Adrian Heathfield, Tate Publishing, London, 2005, pp. 90-99.

'Bloody Play', Not Even a Game Anymore: The Theatre of Forced Entertainment, eds. J. Helmer & F. Malzacher, Alexander Verlag, Berlin, 2004, pp. 139-169.

'The Artist as Director', Art, Lies and Videotape, ed. A. George, Tate Publishing, London, 2003, pp. 81-91. 'Love's Fall', Five Miles and Falling: a Document by imitating the dog, Leeds Metropolitan University, Leeds, 2002. CD-ROM.

Articles in Journals

'Writing the Real', Nordic Theatre Studies, No. 13, Foreningen Nordiska Teaterforskare, Bergen, 2002, pp. 62-70.

Catalogues 'History in the Spinner: encountering the Wooster Group', To You, the Birdie! (Phèdre), London International Festival of Theatre, London, 2002.

'In Search of a Signature: The Experience of Bodies in Flight', Flesh and Text: A Document by Bodies in Flight, Far Ahead Publications, Nottingham, 2001. ISBN: 1-84233057-8.

Conferences Organised

The Wooster Group Symposium, London International Festival of Theatre, London, 2002. Forced Entertainment Symposium: "We are searching for a theatre that can really talk about what it's like to live through these times", CASCPP, Lancaster University, 2004. Organised the 'Placeless' panel for Live Culture at Tate Modern, 2003.

Selected Conference and Seminar Papers

Ethics in Performance Research', Performance Studies International, Queen Mary's, London, 2006.

'The Gift of Play: the gesture of performance', Simon Fraser University, Vancouver, 2006.

'Ghost Writings: narrative remains in the post-dramatic mise-en-scene', Beyond Drama: Postdramatic Theatre Symposium, University of Huddersfield, 2006.

In conversation with Richard Foreman, The Foreman Dialogues, Loughborough University, 2006.

'Practicing Responsibility: technologising narratives in a postdramatic mise-en-scene', Bristol University, 2006.

'Reverberating machines: the Wooster Group and the place of technology', The Interface: questions of agency in ICT and new media art, Centre for Science Studies, Lancaster University, 2004.

'On Survival', Forced Entertainment Symposium, Lancaster University, 2004.

'Directing Artists', IFTR, St Petersburg, 2004.

'Placeless', Live Culture, Tate Modern, London, 2003.

'The Moment of the Gesture: Infancy and the Event', Why Do We Play?, The Roundhouse, London International Festival of Theatre, 2003.

'History in the Spinner', The Wooster Group Symposium, London Institute, London International Festival of Theatre, 2002.

'Displacing Conflict: memory in Willie Doherty's traumatic landscapes', Theatre and Cultural Memory, IFTR World Congress, University of Amsterdam, 2002 .

'Prizing Art', Goldsmiths College, University of London, 2002.

'Dividing Lines: Willy Doherty and the Image of Conflict', Centre for Cultural Analysis, Theory and History, University of Leeds, 2002.

'The Gift of Adventure: Photography and the Art-Object' Photography and Memory, Lancaster University, 2001.