The rehearsal processes of theatre companies are an oft-neglected area of research in Drama and Performance Studies. My study of the Catalan devising collective Els Joglars and the Madrid producing venue Teatro de la Abadía seeks to redress the balance with a close analysis of methodologies employed in rehearsal. In both cases I have witnessed rehearsals first-hand; with Els Joglars observing preparations for En un lugar de Manhattan (2005); in the case of the Abadía working as assistant director on El burlador de Sevilla (2008). These observations are fundamental to a thesis where I have sought to place both companies in a local, national and international context. The thesis examines Els Joglars’ roots in mime and how they have generated a practice-based methodology by means of a hands-on exploration of ideas derived from practitioners as varied as Etienne Decroux and Peter Brook. With Teatro de la Abadía, the focus shifts to how the founder and Artistic Director José Luis Gómez developed exercises drawn from European practitioners such as Jacques Lecoq and Michael Chekhov in order to create his own actor-training centre in Madrid. In effect, both companies have created distinctive rehearsal processes by applying ideas and techniques from a wider European context to a Spanish theatre scene which had been seen to follow rather than develop trends and techniques visible in theatre across France, Italy and Germany. Critically, their hybrid rehearsal processes generate heightened theatrical results for the audience. This could be described as an experiential engagement, where the creative process has been consciously geared towards placing the audience in a ‘distinct situation’ and requiring them to respond accordingly. Thus the thesis shifts the focus of academic study away from product and towards process, demonstrating how an understanding of process assists in the reading of the theatrical product.

This thesis examines post-war black British theatre through a transnational lens. It argues that the hitherto prioritization of a national paradigm in discussions of black British theatre is not sufficiently complex to chart the historical processes that have shaped it and the multiple spatial, cultural, and political contexts in which it has been generated. This thesis finds that a transnational optic exposes a network of connections – physical, ideological and psychic – between blacks in Britain and other global black communities which have shaped and transformed the lives of Britain’s black communities and their cultural production. The thesis is divided into three chapters: the USA (chapter 1), the Caribbean (chapter 2), and Africa (chapter 3). Each chapter represents a specific geo-cultural-political space with which black British theatre has an important relationship. Each chapter follows the same broad structure: the first half of the chapter establishes a particular transnational process and mode of analysis which frames the ensuing historical discussion; the second half is devoted to an analysis of two contemporary black British dramatists. The USA chapter examines black British theatre through the lens of Americanization and Black Power. The first half traces the influence of black America on black British theatre’s formation, organization and expression in the post-war period. The second half examines works by Kwame Kwei-Armah and Mojisola Adebayo. The Caribbean chapter applies the process and theory of creolization to a discussion of the rise and consolidation of Caribbean culture in black British theatre. The chosen case studies for this chapter are Roy Williams and Bola Agbaje. Finally, the African chapter discusses the recent flux of immigrants from Africa since the 1990s and, using the concept of diaspora as an analytic model, explores the impact this has had on black British theatre. The second half focuses on works by Inua Ellams and debbie tucker green. Dividing the thesis into the spaces of the USA, the Caribbean and Africa allows one to filter and track the origination and circulations of particular sets of ideas, practices and / or people. The divisions reiterate that I am looking at complex heterogeneous material informed by multiple strands of influence. Nevertheless, connections between the chapters emerge, which illustrate historically embedded circuits of influence and exchange that have routinely transgressed national borders. Taken as a whole, the thesis supports the idea that black British theatre not only merits a transnational approach, but is, in fact, a transnational practice in itself.

Being an actor / becoming a trainer: the embodied logos of intersubjective experience in a somatic acting process This practice-as-research thesis documents a sustained period of research grounded in my experience as an actress who has become an actor-trainer within UK-based actor-training institutions. It explores the development of an original somatic actor-training methodology within different theatre teaching and performing environments. This research concentrates on challenging dualistic binaries of mind-body, inner-outer, self-other and the universalizing of the individual actor’s experience as problematic logocentrism in Stanislavski-inspired actor-training traditions. It is informed in practice by Linda Hartley’s IBMT (Integrative Bodywork and Movement Therapy) somatic approach, which is based upon Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen’s Body-Mind Centering® (BMC®) principles. I suggest the practical modification of Cohen’s developmental process of embodiment in the actor-training context through the shaping of contingent, processual and intersubjective/intercorporeal explorations which I coin as fluid structures. Rooted in the interconnection of theory and practice, or praxis, this thesis is based upon the original notion of each actor's embodied logos. This term is inspired by Merleau-Ponty’s theoretical understanding of logos as flesh that allows the perception of logos as an embodied and intersubjective experience. An emergent new somatic actor-training pedagogy contributes to contemporary actor-training practices and languages revisiting the dialogue between the actor and the trainer through the innovative intersubjective role of the trainer-witness and the relationally aware actor-mover/actor-witness. Following this processual study I articulate and respond to thorny ethical issues in actor training regarding emergent dissonances between therapy and training, training and rehearsal/performance processes, the trainer and the director, the edges of actors’ emotional expression and sense of freedom.

Since the publication of Mother Camp: Female Impersonators in America in 1972, drag performance has been an object of fascination for many French and Anglo-American queer and feminist theorists. Employing an intersectional, transfeminist approach, I explore central preoccupations traversing diverse theories of drag, focusing particularly on three issues: the relationship between drag and performativity, the assumption that a drag performer’s gender differs from the gender they perform on stage, and the positioning of drag as necessarily either subversive or reactionary. Analysing the flaws and benefits of these conceptual trends as they appear in a representative selection of French and Anglo-American queer and feminist theoretical texts, I challenge the perception of drag as subverting or upholding the status quo, suggesting that this understanding creates reductive generalisations and cannot account for the diversity and complexity of many current drag scenes. Further, I contest the definitional focus on a presumed opposition between the gender of the performer and the gender they perform on stage. Although a performer’s gender can shape their experience and understanding of drag performance, the focus on this presumed opposition erases certain performers’ identities and distracts from what is actually happening on stage. While my first two chapters concentrate on selected queer and feminist theorizations of drag performance, my final chapter considers the relationship between Butlerian gender parody, intramural parody, and extramural satire in Rachilde’s Monsieur Vénus, Virginia Woolf’s Orlando, and Monique Wittig’s Le Corps lesbien. Here, I develop the frame of ‘textual drag’ to describe the interactions of these forms of parody and satire in these texts, while highlighting their authors’ interrogations of norms of gender performance, gender identity, and embodiment. I then conclude by demonstrating how existing insights into drag performance can be combined with my own findings to create a particularizing, transfeminist approach to drag.

The work of the British theatre company Blast Theory explores intermedial dramaturgies that this thesis claims can be categorized as radical because they present a generative characteristic. Intermediality, understood here as the impact of analogue and digital technologies in theatrical performance, establishes complex relationships between physical and virtual spaces, structures that create a rich polyphony of multiple temporal orchestrations, and narratives that present a multiplicity of performative arrangements. Intermedial performance, as a performative and experiential event, encompasses a triad of performative interactions between performers, spectators and the media itself executed at and concentrated on the moment of the performance encounter. This research argues that this encounter displays a generative character – a moment at which all the attending performance variables come together in a constant process of performative re-activation thus generating the intermedial performance event. Within this descriptive parameter, this research claims that recent performance conceptualizations fail to account for the work of Blast Theory. Contemporary performance and liveness debates focus principally on the ontology of performance. So, notwithstanding their differences, performance theorists such as Lavender (2002), Fischer-Lichte (2008), and Schechner (2003), and presentness/presence theorists such as Phelan (1993) and Power (2008) all agree that performance is an ontological, ephemeral, and fleeting event. While there are many valid points in these diverse approaches, they only offer a partial account of the specificities of the work of Blast Theory and, by extent, the intermedial performance event. This thesis therefore relocates the terms of the debate on a constructivist epistemological basis. In this way, the thesis proposes that an intermedial performance event must be understood beyond the ontological approach by specifically interrogating the conditions of intelligibility; that is, its operative and intelligible architecture of attending elements and the participating subject. The key hypothesis shared is that in introducing a constructivist reading of epistemology, as described by Alfred Whitehead and Gilles Deleuze, a new account of intermediality in performance emerges as a radical dramaturgy, incorporating generative aspects, and with this, a unique type of intermedial performance subjectivity is enabled.

The London Turkish Cypriot (LTC) community has been described as ‘invisible’, a community at the point of eradication (Aksoy and Robins 2001). For three generations of LTCs the process of cultural identification has seen an evolution from migration and ‘homeland’ association, to critical displacement, assimilation and different perceptions of what is ‘home’. The growing diversity in cultural identification is further reflected in enhanced access to spatial consumption, mobility and choices of emplacement for its younger generations. This PhD is driven by practice-as-research. The practice, and therefore line of reasoning, behind this research is an ongoing, organic process that has shifted throughout the course of the thesis. The documentation of the practice-as-research is included in the accompanying DVD and is integral to the findings of this thesis. The thesis asks how LTC youth ‘perform’ their identities and negotiate a diaspora identity that is in constant flux. The enquiry consists of two main lines of enquiry. First, I am exploring how young people use public spaces through mobility and a ‘mobile’ culture, using mobile initiated technology to further explore the idea of movement and flux. Second, I progress towards a greater understanding of the participating young LTCs’ concept of ‘home’ and what elements of their every day performative behaviour, their environment and relational spaciality construct and support these home-making practices. The thesis addresses complex issues arising out of auto ethnographic practice-as-research of the LTC community, conducted through applied drama practices with its youth. Issues include identifying young participants’ relationship to cultural space, place making and notions of ‘home’ as part of their identity construction process. The thesis also discusses the ‘fit’ of applied drama as a qualitative research tool within this context and the fluidity of changing technologies that can be, and are at times, used to document examples of practice.

This Practice as Research thesis is a contribution to and intervention in the fields of intermedial performance studies and live media practice. Its arguments are formulated through live intermediality, a mode of practice whereby the solo performer activates image, sound, object and body in the presence of and sometimes with the ‘experiencers’ (Nelson 2010), in order to compose a series of shifting intermedial combinations. The thesis interrogates current discourses around intermediality in performance, the role and actions of the live media performer and the generation of events in intermedial and live media practice, arguing that each can be productively re-­-viewed through live intermedial practice. In positioning the practice clearly within the various lineages from which it draws and positing the particular ‘knowings’ it produces, live intermediality is formulated as distinctive ‘praxis’ or ‘doing-thinking’ (Nelson 2013). In addition, the specific characteristics of live intermediality – the dualities, discourses and collisions it generates - are presented both as form of new knowledge through practice and employed as the tools to pierce existing thinking from an ‘insider’ perspective. Working from a Practice as Research methodology, live intermediality is placed in dialogue with resonant conceptual frameworks, such as the work of intermedial theorists, Kattenbelt (2008) and Lavender (2006), new media theorists, Bolter and Grusin (2000), as well as broader paradigms of presence (Power 2008), autopoiesis (Fischer-­-Lichte 2008, Maturana and Varela 1987) and event (Derrida 1978, Deleuze 2006). The praxis, through its dialogue with such frame works, reconfigures current theories around the activation, operation and experience of intermediality in live media forms. In addition, through its distinctive features and the ‘knowings’ they generate, live intermediality is proposed as new mode of praxis within these fields.

The theatre director (metteur en scene in French) is a relatively new figure in theatre practice. It was not until the 1820s that the term 'mise en scene' gained currency. The term 'director' was not in general use until the 1880s. The emergence and the role of the director has been considered from a variety of perspectives, either through the history of theatre (Allevy, Jomaron, Sarrazac, Viala, Biet and Triau); the history of directing (Chinoy and Cole, Boll, Veinstein, Roubine); semiotic approaches to directing (Whitmore, Miller, Pavis); the semiotics of performance (De Marinis); generic approaches to the mise en scene (Thomasseau, Banu); post-dramatic approaches to theatre (Lehmann); approaches to performance process and the specifics of rehearsal methodology (Bradby and Williams, Giannachi and Luckhurst, Picon-Vallin, Styan). What the scholarly literature has not done so far is to map the parameters necessarily involved in the directing process, and to incorporate an analysis of the emergence of the theatre director during the modem period and consider its impact on contemporary performance practice. Directing relates primarily to the making of the performance guided by a director, a single figure charged with the authority to make binding artistic decisions. Each director may have her/his own personal approaches to the process of preparation prior to a show. This is exemplified, for example, by the variety of terms now used to describe the role and function of directing, from producer, to facilitator or outside eye. However, it is essential at the outset to make two observations, each of which contributes to a justification for a generic analysis (as opposed to a genetic approach). Firstly, a director does not work alone, and cooperation with others is involved at all stages of the process. Secondly, beyond individual variation, the role of the director remains twofold. The first is to guide the actors (meneur de jeu, directeur d'acteurs, coach); the second is to make a visual representation in the performance space (set designer, stage designer, costume designer, lighting designer, scenographe). The increasing place of scenography has brought contemporary theatre directors such as Wilson, Castellucci, Fabre to produce performances where the performance space becomes a semiotic dimension that displaces the primacy of the text. The play is not, therefore, the sole artistic vehicle for directing. This definition of directing obviously calls for a definition of what the making of the performance might be. The thesis defines the making of the performance as the activity of bringing a social event, by at least one performer, providing visual and/or textual meaning in a performance space. This definition enables us to evaluate four consistent parameters throughout theatre history: first, the social aspect associated to the performance event; second, the devising process which may be based on visual and/or textual elements; third, the presence of at least one performer in the show; fourth, the performance space (which is not simply related to the theatre stage). Although the thesis focuses primarily on theatre practice, such definition blurs the boundaries between theatre and other collaborative artistic disciplines (cinema, opera, music and dance). These parameters illustrate the possibility to undertake a generic analysis of directing, and resonate with the historical, political and artistic dimensions considered. Such a generic perspective on the role of the director addresses three significant questions: an historical question: how/why has the director emerged?; a sociopolitical question: how/why was the director a catalyst for the politicisation of theatre, and subsequently contributed to the rise of State-funded theatre policy?; and an artistic one: how/why the director has changed theatre practice and theory in the twentieth-century? Directing for the theatre as an artistic activity is a historically situated phenomenon. It would seem only natural from a contemporary perspective to associate the activity of directing to the function of the director. This is relativised, however, by the question of how the performance was produced before the modern period. The thesis demonstrates that the rise of the director is a progressive and historical phenomenon (Dort) rather than a mere invention (Viala, Sarrazac). A chronological analysis of the making of the performance throughout theatre history is the most useful way to open the study. In order to understand the emergence of the director, the research methodology assesses the interconnection of the four parameters above throughout four main periods of theatre history: the beginning of the Renaissance (meneur de jeu), the classical age (actor-manager and stage designer-manager), the modern period (director) and the contemporary period (director-facilitator, performer). This allows us properly to appraise the progressive emergence of the director, as well as to make an analysis of her/his modern and contemporary role. The first chapter argues that the physical separation between the performance space and its audience, which appeared in the early fifteenth-century, has been a crucial feature in the scenographic, aesthetic, political and social organisation of the performance. At the end of the Middle Ages, French farces which raised socio-political issues (see Bakhtin) made a clear division on a single outdoor stage (treteau) between the actors and the spectators, while religious plays (drame fiturgique, mystere) were mostly performed on various outdoor and opened multispaces. As long as the performance was liturgical or religious, and therefore confined within an acceptable framework, it was allowed. At the time, the French ecclesiastical and civil authorities tried, on several occasions, to prohibit staged performances. As a result, practitioners developed non-official indoor spaces, the Theatre de fa Trinite (1398) being the first French indoor theatre recognized by scholars. This self-exclusion from the open public space involved breaking the accepted rules by practitioners (e.g. Les Confreres de fa Passion), in terms of themes but also through individual input into a secular performance rather than the repetition of commonly known religious canvases. These developments heralded the authorised theatres that began to emerge from the mid-sixteenth century, which in some cases were subsidised in their construction. The construction of authorised indoor theatres associated with the development of printing led to a considerable increase in the production of dramatic texts for the stage. Profoundly affecting the reception of the dramatic text by the audience, the distance between the stage and the auditorium accompanied the changing relationship between practitioners and spectators. This distance gave rise to a major development of the role of the actor and of the stage designer. The second chapter looks at the significance of both the actor and set designer in the devising process of the performance from the sixteenth-century to the end of the nineteenth-century. The actor underwent an important shift in function in this period from the delivery of an unwritten text that is learned in the medieval oral tradition to a structured improvisation produced by the commedia dell 'arte. In this new form of theatre, a chef de troupe or an experienced actor shaped the story, but the text existed only through the improvisation of the actors. The preparation of those performances was, moreover, centred on acting technique and the individual skills of the actor. From this point, there is clear evidence that acting began to be the subject of a number of studies in the mid-sixteenth-century, and more significantly in the seventeenth-century, in Italy and France. This is revealed through the implementation of a system of notes written by the playwright to the actors (stage directions) in a range of plays (Gerard de Vivier, Comedie de la Fidelite Nuptiale, 1577). The thesis also focuses on Leoni de' Sommi (Quatro dialoghi, 1556 or 1565) who wrote about actors' techniques and introduced the meneur de jeu in Italy. The actor-manager (meneur de jeu), a professional actor, who scholars have compared to the director (see Strihan), trained the actors. Nothing, however, indicates that the actor-manager was directing the visual representation of the text in the performance space.

Taking as its focus the ‘actor-creator’s’ process in devising practices, this study explores the notion of the ‘poetic body’ developed by French theatre pedagogue Jacques Lecoq (1921 - 1999) and the writings of French philosopher Gaston Bachelard (1884 - 1962) on the ‘poetics of imagination.’ The overarching aim is to originate a new ‘embodied poetics’ whereby the sensate, feeling body actively explores correspondences with the ‘material elements’ of earth, air, fire and water. These are experienced as ‘poeticising substances’ – catalysts and conductors for an embodied imagination. More specifically, this thesis asks the following question: What new understandings can a relational encounter between Lecoq’s pedagogy and Bachelard’s ‘poetic imagining’ reveal about the ’poetic body’ and how might these new understandings originate a devising process? I combine three solo practical projects with accompanying written analysis, to first interrogate the working methods I have inherited as a practitioner and teacher since my time as a student at the Lecoq School, from 1987 to 1989. This is followed by an embodied exploration of Bachelard’s ‘poetic imagining’ process through my own practice. In the final project, I develop an ‘embodied poetics’ for devising, based on the ‘actor-creator’s’ active participation with the world and a recognition that the poeticising ‘I’ is intimately entwined with the material elemental substances that comprise it. In considering the material elements as originating substances for an imagining body, their dialectic qualities offer infinite possibilities for a permanent renewal, expansion and transformation of practice. This study also proposes a new reading of Lecoq’s notion of the ‘poetic body’ from an embodied perspective. Equally, in applying Bachelard’s ‘poetic imagining’ to the devising process, I seek to revivify and reposition his philosophical standpoint from a contemporary perspective within the field of interdisciplinary practices.

This thesis investigates Stanislavski’s unnamed invisible form of communication described within the chapter ‘Communion’ in An actor prepares (1936). The description Stanislavski includes in the chapter is especially difficult to access leading to much neglect in critical studies of Stanislavski’s approach. This thesis explores the concept as it permeated across Stanislavski’s writings and practical work. It then establishes a comprehensive, concise and contained description of the experience Stanislavski sought to achieve through his proposed ‘invisible communication’. Most current literature investigating aspects of this ‘invisible communication’ relate it to Stanislavski’s interest in yoga philosophy and practice. Although Stanislavski did indeed appropriate terms and technique from his readings and interest in yoga practice, this thesis proposes that the concept existed from Stanislavski’s earliest theatrical explorations and helped shape his understanding of acting as art. With the compiled description amassed from Stanislavski’s work, this thesis locates correlations of the experience Stanislavski described within the current paradigm of cognitive studies. These correlations help form a theoretically plausible account of the concept to aid further discussion and evaluation. In addition, this thesis uses abductive reasoning to postulate a working hypothesis accounting for the perception within a framework of current understandings of cognitive function. This thesis is the first stage of a much-needed re-evaluation of Stanislavski’s ‘invisible communication’. With a framework to investigate and discuss ‘invisible communication’ in theoretically plausible manner, this thesis is helpful in future development of performer training and practice.