THIS EVENT HAS BEEN POSTPONED
Speakers:
Dr Amanda Stuart Fisher Reader in Contemporary Theatre and Performance, Royal Central School of Speech and Drama
Kate Duffy-Syedi Co-Director Phosphoros Theatre and PhD Candidate Royal Central School of Speech and Drama
Respondents:
Professor Elleke Boehmer, Faculty of English and Centre for Life Writing, University of Oxford
This research seminar will explore how real personal narratives are deployed in two different performances that tell the stories of forced migration and resettlement – each are devised with refugee-actors and draw on their lived experiences. Focussing on Queens of Syria (Refuge Production and Developing Artists 2016) and All the Beds I Have Slept In (Phosphoros Theatre, 2021), researchers Dr Amanda Stuart Fisher and Kate Duffy-Syedi will consider how modes of self-narration used in both productions dramaturgically navigate the binary of self and other to enact a dynamic and affecting negotiation of the personal and the political. Drawing on theorisation developed in testimonial, autobiographical and socially engaged theatre and placing these ideas in dialogue with discourse drawn from the fields of life writing, migration and autobiographical studies, the seminar will consider how this weaving together of self and other might be conceived as a form of ‘life performance’. In these types of performance, it will be argued, the subject does not emerge as an autonomous self, who automatically has the capacity for self-actualisation. Rather, here the use of the autobiographical ‘I’ is adopted not to speak on behalf of a singular self but for and from within the collective, using personal stories to stage important acts of solidarity and resistance.
The event is free and open to all, run on relaxed principles, and refreshments will be provided midway through the event. We appreciate you registering in advance if possible.
