This thesis investigates witchcraft during the reign of King James VI and I when belief in witchcraft was widespread in Scotland and England, and there was a growing tendency for dramatists to use witchcraft materials in their plays. The writings of Reginald Scot and King James I, alongside modern scholarly work by Keith Thomas, Allen Macfarlane, Diane Purkiss and others, will be considered to analyse beliefs about supernatural power and, in particular, witchcraft and witches’ activities. This study is principally concerned with the staging of drama at the Blackfriars theatre, especially from the time that the King’s Men leased it in 1609. The thesis examines Jacobean plays which were staged at the Blackfriars, in comparison to Elizabethan (e.g., Dr Faustus, Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay, and Mother Bombie), and post-Jacobean plays (e.g., The Late Lancashire Witches) which were also performed there. The nature and status of stage directions in these plays will also be investigated, paying particular attention to the status of stage directions in printed texts, and whether these were originally written by the playwrights themselves or were revised or supplied by editors, scriveners or members of the theatre companies. Finally, five case studies consider thematically-related plays performed by the King’s Men at the Blackfriars. Several questions will be investigated. Why is it particularly important to look at the visual depiction of witches in theatre? What is the difference when a supernatural character ‘enters’ the stage via flying or platform traps and does it make any difference to the audience when supernatural characters use one form of entrance rather than another? The thesis will also evaluate how the technology of the Blackfriars playhouse facilitated the appearance of spirits, witches, magicians, deities and dragons on stage. The last chapter deals with native witches and ‘cunning women’ on stage and also considers why elderly women in early modern England were more prone to accusations of witchcraft than the young, and why a number of harmless women were tortured, including midwives and healers.

This thesis is driven by two central concerns about contemporary actor training in the UK, namely the merger of the conservatoire approach with that of the university drama department, and the increasing dominance of screen-based media (particularly television) in the working life of the professional actor. The key tensions examined in the thesis relate to the issues created by wider cultural shifts, on the one hand in the entertainment industry, and on the other within Higher Education. The thesis argues that the conservatoire approach to actor training is based on a largely oral tradition, creating material differences between it and the more evidence-based, and largely written, university approach to drama. The thesis argues that this distinction has not been fully acknowledged, and the differences between the two approaches need to be considered, alongside wider cultural shifts, in planning the future of professional actor training in the UK. Chapter 1 sets out some significant methodological challenges, and indicates how the thesis uses them to conceptualise the practical processes of acting and actor training. The chapter concludes by proposing that a new discipline, "Acting Studies", is needed to fully integrate the conservatoire point of view within academic discourse. Chapter 2 employs case studies of Theatre WorkshoplEast 15 Acting School and the Group Theatre/Actors Studio to examine training methodologies in the UK and the USA, and Chapter 3 employs archival research (some of the first research work to make use of the ACGB Archive) to assess how the industrial landscape of the professional actor in the UK has changed over the last 40 years. Chapter 4 interrogates what actor/practitioners mean by the term "truth", and Chapter 5 proposes ways of analysing screen acting from the point of view of the proposed discipline of Acting Studies. The thesis concludes with some proposals on the way Acting Studies could combine the approaches of the university and the conservatoire, in new and fruitful ways.

This thesis examines how perfonnance knowledges illustrate and define the power relations that are enacted when an individual claims political asylum from the state. It brings together two bodies of literature, from Refugee Studies and from Performance and Theatre Studies and places these within a framework of discussions on identity. It shows how, by combining these discourses, it is possible to create a better understanding of the theatre and performance practices made about, with and by refugees and asylum seekers in the UK. The study suggests that theatre and performance practices connected to refugees and asylum seekers can be arranged under three categories, theatrical perfonnance, cultural performance and performances of activism. All of these are conditioned by bureaucratic perfonnance which is defined as the legal/political operation by which claiming asylllm and being granted refuge are differentiated. Mistrust, and suspicion that develop as a result of this, is fuelled by a xenophobic press and this has generated a feeling of 'crisis'. The research is based on mapping and ethnographic methods which have been combined with practical research. Understanding the operations of bureaucratic performance creates greater levels of comprehension about the theatre and performance that is created about, by and with refugees and asylum seekers in the UK. Theatre practice tends to function as an educational tool, and is largely aimed at raising awareness in a British audience, explaining why people seek refuge and dispelling some of the myths that have developed around asylum seekers in recent years. Cultural performance with refugees is created within community and participatory arts and takes on the structUral and historical problems and dilemmas of these practices. Activist performance depends on the individual refugee and, of the three categories considered, is the least mediated by non-refugees although it is still heavily influenced by competing political agendas. The growth in theatre and performance around refugeeness since the early 1990s had been heavily conditioned by political debates concerning the authenticity of claims for refugee status. \V'hile forming a necessary first step, this approach is limited. Falling numbers of asylum seekers and the inevitable passage of time make it necessary to look beyond the crisis to a more considered practice which places questions ofhome and belonging at its centre.

The intention of this thesis is to reconsider and redefine how emotion in acting is understood and practiced. This thesis addresses the problematic notion of the separation of emotion and action in performance practice. It begins by pointing out how inherent in this separation are the dualistic and hierarchical understanding of body and mind and subjectivity and objectivity, from which stems the unnecessary issue in and around ‘acting emotion’. From the perspectives of the Buddhist understanding of Mind and Heidegger’s ontology of Being, the complex nature of thought, action, emotion and self is examined and reconsidered. Through the three practical projects I examine, from the perspectives of the director and/or the actor, my process of utilising ‘simple’ task-based actions as a means of creating appropriate condition(s) that may allow the actors to directly enter into an ‘emotional’ state of being doing. The first project –ing; playing (no)self focuses on playing emotion in the context of a devised performance; the second project, (Playing) The Maids focuses on playing emotion in the context of ‘character acting’; and the third project Mother Project; playing a ‘foreign’ emotion focuses on a particular Korean emotion, han. This thesis is accompanied by three DVDs, which contain clips of selected scenes of the performances as well as full-length recordings of the performances.

The question that this thesis engages with is under what circumstances and through which lens(es) the Anastenaria in Langadas, Greece, can be considered as a ritual performance which survives despite signs of elimination. This question is examined through: 1) theatrical reflection and practice, in dialogue with an investigation of the ecstatic dimension of the Anastenaria – Part A – and 2) the investigation of changing ritualistic practices in their relation to the forgotten and the dynamic method of a ‘co-performer witness’ – Part B. This thesis draws upon the Anastenaria as observed in Langadas in May 2009, 2010 and 2011. It will contribute to the existing bibliography on the Anastenaria in the following ways. First, the Anastenaria, qualified as a ritual performance, is understood as dynamic, including not only practices that are repeated, but also others that disappear and re-emerge. Second, the ethnographic model of what Dwight Conquergood called ‘the coperformer/witness’ is deployed in order to reflect upon a ritual performance of return. My returns to the field involved entering into a dialogue with the community of the Anastenarides through participation. In following the particular strand of performance studies that focuses on ritual performance, a new way of engaging with the Anastenaria is suggested, through the provision of a flexible methodological tool for its understanding each time. Visiting Langadas more than once and interviewing the same people, enabled me not only to respond “in the moment” with the Anastenarides, but also to challenge my own observations on a phenomenon that is repetitive and changing. Third, the Anastenaria is related to theatrical performance through an exploration of its ecstatic dimension. Such exploration is based upon certain observations that can offer a better understanding of the relation between inspiration, consciousness and technique. Such a stance enables the thinker/practitioner to shed new light on specific performative aspects of the ritual (such as the lyrics of the songs) and re-think the relationship between witnessing the ritual and performing for the stage. This route to understanding shares something with a Performance Studies tradition of ethnographic interest, while reasserting the dialogue with stage practice. There are some understandable caveats one might bring to such an ambition but establishing the following principles serves as a framework for discussion. Theories emphasizing theatre’s ritualistic origin, and theatrical avant-garde claims that a ‘return’ to the ritual would reinvigorate the stage have received considerable criticism. However, the extensive amount of studies that have co-examined ritual and theatre, together with my field work, led me to the conclusion that the two are distinct yet kin forms. This particular ritual has a potential for reading across to stage work in which I am involved and academically engaged. It was through the above lenses that survival (of the participant, of the community, of the ritual performance itself) was sought. In the Introduction I present the aim of my research and discuss the basic concepts. I begin with a survey of recent approaches to the Anastenaria, containing three main points of disagreement. The first point of disagreement can be traced in the attempts to address the association of firewalking with the participants’ belief in saints and supernatural power. The second point of disagreement stems from the use of firsthand as opposed to secondhand information when witnessing. The third point of disagreement concerns the discourse which has been called the “search for continuities in Greek culture. Through them the three starting points of this thesis are triggered. The first starting point consists in an investigation of the relation of the Anastenaria to an ecstatic state and performance aspects for the stage. The second starting point examines the co-performer witness of the Anastenaria. The third starting point consists in understanding the Anastenaria as a ritual performance of return (meaning: repetitions within the Anastenaria, in that sense returns from one year to the next, but also from one day to the next as well as within the same day and within the same practice; and the researcher’s return to the field, who is thus becoming part of a chain of witnesses). The first starting point will be developed in Part A: Chapters Two and Three. Chapter Two is based on observations made in Langadas in May 2009. It consists in an introductory description of the Anastenaria ritual performance. The reader is introduced for the first time to the location, the participants and the Anastenaria practices. The term ‘ecstasy’ is approached here on the basis of specific observations that were made in the field and have to do with the body of the participant and her/his actions in the frame of a more or less precise sequence of ritualistic practices. Through such observations I define a specific Anastenaria technique that leads to an ecstatic state. Chapter Three makes use of the examples of a ritual practice to question some stage assumptions. I maintain that what we may call an ecstatic state on stage does not mean abandonment to the irrational but rather a reinforcement of consciousness and control, through a methodology routed in ritualistic and theatrical theory and experience and through the introduction of the ‘fiery actor’ metaphor, therefore entering a dialogue with the realm of the ‘non-verifiable’. The second and the third point will be investigated in Part B: Chapters Four, Five and Six. Part Two asks the question: in what ways the survival of this ritual can be detected with the help of the methodology of the co-performer witness of the Anastenaria, which, as argued, consists in a ritual performance of return. In these three chapters I deploy a critical framework based on Esposito, Benjamin and Stengers’s eliminated practices in order to enter a dialogue with three narratives. These narratives include the story of attending the Anastenaria as a first-time coperformer witness in May 2009, then returning in May 2010 and taking part in a community of witnesses in May 2011. Chapter Seven is the concluding chapter, which includes a synthetic summing up of what has been argued in the thesis and what the work’s broader implications and contributions to existing knowledge are.

This thesis proposes a relationship between Queer Theory and the development of performance conventions in British theatre in the period 1968 to 1998. The basis of that relationship is a theoretical account of subjectivity, rooted in feminist and psychoanalytic critiques of the relationship between sex, gender and sexuality – primarily in the works of Judith Butler and Elizabeth Grosz. That account challenges the essential construction of gendered identity and seeks to detail the ways in which certain subjectivities are rendered legitimate or illegitimate, marked or unmarked. The notion of conditional subjectivities is first explored through a critical analysis of camp performance as a form of parody which reflexively invokes that which it challenges. Round the Horne is discussed as an example of the mainstream acceptance and use of camp, noting in particular the problematic presence of “polari”, a form of gay slang. The consequent issues of self-identification raised by camp leads to a discussion of the work of the Gay Sweatshop who sought to control and redefine the representation of gay subjects in mainstream theatre and television. This issue of authentic representation as political necessity is then pursued through the work of Tony Kushner and Ron Athey, considering performative responses to the AIDS crisis. The potential impasse created by Queer Theory’s account of the maternal body is explored through a discussion of unmarked race and desire in Caryl Churchill and Joint Stock’s production of the play Cloud Nine, and in the representation of lesbian identity in the work of Jill Posener, Jackie Kay and Michelene Wandor. Finally, issues of representation and legitimacy are explored through the evolution of Pride from protest march to carnival celebration to offer a potential model of queer performance not as a radical alternative operating “outside” of normative cultural discourse, but a process of working the weaknesses within that norm.

This thesis has set out to understand what is happening when impro is practised as a performance form and ask whether impro is a subversive performance practice at odds with the dominant order as described by Foucault. The research questions are whether or not performance that is improvised in the moment can be seen as ‘other’ to authored or devised theatre practices in the same way that woman can be seen as ‘other’ to the male norm. This practice-led-research has isolated and analysed themes emerging from the practice of impro using methods of action research and grounded theory applied to data collected from interviews with female impro practitioners as well as the researcher’s own experiences of practising impro. The resulting themes that have been discovered are those of marginality, playfulness and communality. Victor Turner and Mikhail Bakhtin’s notions of the liminal, the lucid and communitas have been mapped onto these themes and the phrase ‘liminal ludic communitas’ has been developed to refer to the feelings of well-being that are generated when performers practice impro. The research has discovered that impro, paradoxically, both subverts and asserts the dominant order. The form of impro, whereby performances are co-created playfully in the space and time of the present without authorship or artefact, subverts the dominant order of production and consumption whilst at the same time the character indentities and stories that form the content of the improvisations tend to assert the dominant order through cliché and stereotype.

This thesis explores dramaturgical tactics of exchange and transaction in contemporary performance practice, specifically examining the one-to-one performance format as a methodological catalyst for 'making visible' these relations of value and labour (after Mouffe 2013). The thesis uses literature from Marxist and post-Marxist theorists such as Harvey (1982) and Virno (2004; 2007) to examine the current post-Fordist shift in labour relations. It also uses literature around 'relational aesthetics' (Bourriaud 2002) and critical debates around the term from Bishop (2004; 2006; 2012), Jackson (2011), Kester (2004) and Downey (2007; 2009). Finally, it uses literature around practice-as-research (specifically Nelson 2013), the one-to-one performance format, 'dramaturgy' and 'interruption' to articulate its methodology. It then uses four case studies from the work of artists Jo Bannon, Brian Lobel, Hannah Hurtzig and Dries Verhoeven to explore how performance makers might employ mise en scène as a means of staging the 'doubled' anxiety fundamental to reification, and proposes the term 'exchange proscenium' as a means of visualizing this staging. Part 2 then uses a combination of practice-as-research investigations and apprenticeships firstly to interrogate Levinas's notion of the face-to-face encounter and the application of its ethical framework to both Clare Thornton's Material Matters and my first PAR project, Ten Cents a Dance. It moves on to examine relations of service (specifically those between sex worker and customer in Amsterdam's Red Light District) and their corroboration with relations in performance (specifically using my second PAR investigation, SERVUS!). Finally, using my third PAR investigation What The Money Meant, it proposes ways in which spectatorial co-presence might be employed as a dramaturgical strategy, and how the interrupted transaction might subvert the 'crystallization' process (qua Marx) at work in immaterial labour exchanges. It also contains a Photobook appendix with an audiovisual DVD component, to which the reader will be directed.

The submission of the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy by Published Works details the body of practice-as-research investigations undertaken across a series of located performance works created by Pearson/Brookes between 1998 and 2012. This research has explored how the formal construction and dramaturgical structuring of located performance work might be reimagined through specifically developed procedures of meditation, and is rooted in two distinct but complementary lines of enquiry. The first of these enquiries has considered new approaches to the composition of a work’s constituent components, favouring compositional procedures built on processes of layering and accumulation. The second has addressed the formal structure of performance more fundamentally, choosing to consider the transmission of performative material, and the reception of that material by its intended audience, as two separate and independent mechanisms. Key located and multi-site works are selected and detailed within this submission to emboby four phases within the developmental arc of this research. These four key works include the experimental landscape work The first five miles (1998), the multi-site city work Carrying Lyn (2001), the located studio work There’s someone in the house (2004) and finally the large-scale located theatre work Coriolan/us (2012), which was jointly commissioned by National Theatre Wales (NTW) and the Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC) for presentation with the World Shakespeare Festival during London 2012.

This thesis investigates the rise and fall of the propagandist theatre of Moral Re-Armament (MRA), which owned the Westminster Theatre in London, from 1946 to 1997. MRA operated a unique theatre movement which was initially extremely successful in taking a stand against the avant-garde drama of the twentieth century. Its own controversial plays promoted an ideology of living by four absolute moral standards: honesty, purity, unselfishness and love. My research explores the way in which MRA sought to change society through drama and investigates the reasons for the eventual demise of the Westminster Theatre operation. Because MRA theatre has not featured in secondary criticism on twentieth-century British drama, my information has been gathered from MRA archives, interviews with key figures associated with the movement and a performance in London of one of its political plays. My thesis fills a gap in the history of twentieth century British theatre, which so far has not acknowledged MRA’s contribution. Initially the Westminster Theatre, which was administered entirely by volunteers, was a huge success, attracting a working class audience and even helping to resolve industrial disputes. However, the movement was unable to adapt to the cultural revolution of the 1960s. Its plays became less relevant and therefore less effective and the costs of maintaining a London theatre began to soar. The final production at the Westminster in 1990 of Vaclav Havel’s Temptation was boycotted by many MRA members and proved to be a moral and financial disaster that led to the closure of the theatre. Although MRA theatre was ultimately not sustainable, it achieved much during its fifty year existence. It delivered plays that not only promoted its ideology but dealt with controversial issues in a way that the conservative middle and upper classes could understand and gave them a voice that left-wing and experimental theatre did not. However, for propaganda to be successful it must speak the language of the people it is trying to convert. This thesis concludes that MRA theatre failed to advance beyond its post-war ideology and, as a result, its plans for a new society were doomed to failure.