No description available.

No description available.

No description available.

No description available.

This thesis examines the political dimension of comedy in performance through a practice-as-research project incorporating elements of stand-up comedy, relational art, and participatory performance. In the wake of the depoliticisation of live performance comedy in Britain after the incorporation into the mainstream of the agit-prop driven Alternative comedy of the 1980s, I question whether stand-up in particular can have a political efficacy greater than raising awareness or representing a political struggle. Satirical comedy, comedy of Carnival, and more recently, comedies of ‘transgression,’ are held as paradigmatic of comedy’s generic political dimension, and contemporary discourse celebrates the comedian’s ability to negotiate lines of offense or taste. Opposing this view, I argue that this ‘Canivalesque logic’ is incompatible with the ideological conditions of global capitalism. A ‘radical democratic’ comedy necessitates a focus on the relational and affective dimensions of comedy performance. Following from this theoretical framework, this thesis progresses through three phases of experimental practice. I begin by interrogating and expanding my existing practice as a ‘circuit comedian.’ Next, audience-performer relationships become the site of interrogation, and I engage in two projects influenced by participatory performance and relational aesthetics. The third phase returns to stand-up comedy, coloured by my previous experiments. This project results in a model of comic performance as embodied formalist critique of ideology. The results of this project contributes to a way of reading comedy performance, as well as to discourse about the politics of theatre and performance. It is also provides an exegesis of comic techniques and a sustained analysis of my practice as a comedian and artist. Overall, this project intends to escape the false choice faced by the politically-minded comedian today: to paraphrase a well-known Marx Brothers joke, when given the choice between commenting on the world or changing it, we should answer: ‘Yes, please!’

Along with the live performance of Sissy!, the present document constitutes research centred on the figure of the ‘sissy,’ defined in relation to the effeminate homosexual. The practice-based study proposes ‘sissiography’ as an original concept, conceived of as a negotiation between the three elements of body, abuse and space. Bodily traits are investigated under the coin ‘negotiable markers’ to include mannerisms, behaviours and sartorial choices commonly regarded as characteristic of the sissy. Abuse is studied in reference to Butler’s notion of ‘words that wound’ as well as to incidents of hate crime in London. Thirdly, sissy space is analysed in relation to safe and hostile urban zones. The study concludes that the unifying principle at the heart of sissiography is the concept of failure. In examining the writing of sissiness, the thesis considers existing scholarship on sissies and positions itself against the diagnostic concept of so-called Gender Identity Disorder. The argument developed here is underpinned by autobiographical elements. Historical discourses of male effeminacy are presented to challenge the notion of fixity in perceptions of the sissy. While offering a written investigation of the concept of sissiography, the study also develops an analysis through the researcher’s body in a series of studio experimentations and live performances. Practice is the central instrument of the enquiry, facilitating the writing of new sissy discourses. A cyclical mode of research leads from practice to theory and back to practice. The sissiography is thereby shown to be a form of inscription on the body, a form of writing space, of writing movement, of reinscribing history, of describing possible sissy futures.

Using the social model of disability as a catalyst, this practice as research project starts with the understanding that theatre can disable some of its spectators. Contemporary theatre is conventionally visual. If a theatregoer has low or no vision she or he can be disable by theatre. An investigation of historic directing practice and dramaturgy will demonstrate an ocular bias in contemporary performance. A theatre director is in a unique position to counter this bias and influence opening performance to those with visual impairments or blindness. The idea of blind spectatorship is a provocation for directors and theatre makers. What are popular and experiential definitions of blindness and how might these ideas influence conceptions of an audience? How does theatre disable someone with low or no-vision? What can a director do to open performance to a blind or visually impaired spectator? Audio description interviews with audience members and access specialists, the practice of theatre companies like Extant and Graeae and an Affirmative Model of Disability frame and inform this study. It will be argued that access strategies for the visually impaired or blind, outside of a very few companies, are not widely considered within an artistic purview. This thesis aims to place these access responsibilities firmly within a director’s control and considerations. By locating this study in my own directing practice, I can demonstrate how performance can be opened to a broader audience. Four fully produced stage plays covering a range of performance styles (kōläzh, 2006; Foto, 2010; In the Tunnel, 2010; Variations on the Death of Trotsky, 2012) and several laboratory experiments focused on elements of staging, production, directorial intent and perceptive intersections of access are used to question and exhibit the findings of this study. Sonic dramaturgy emerges as a particularly useful tool for theatre makers and an economic and scalable balance to visual conventions.

No description available.

Experiments were conducted to investigate the comparative effects of the nitrogen sources, poultry waste, urea or casein/fish meal on the microbial fermentation of carbohydrates in vitro and on in vivo glucose metabolism in sheep. In vitro studies An artificial rumen designed by Czerkawski and Breckenridge (1969) was used in the present study. A series of short term incubations were carried out in which starch or cellulose was incubated with casein, urea, poultry waste or casein + urea. These food combinations were isonitrogenous and had identical dry matter contents. An additional treatment containing grass cubes, hay and poultry waste was also studied. Control incubations were carried out in parallel with all treatment incubations. Nutrients used in control incubations were grass cubes and hay. The duration of each incubation was 61/2h. Fermentation parameters studied were, rate of gas production, pH, and concentrations of volatile fatty acids and ammonia. The fermentation of poultry waste with either of the carbohydrate sources gave rise to a higher volume of gas production than either casein or urea. Urea resulted in a reduction in the volume of gas in the incubation vessels and caused a much larger increase in pH of the incubation medium than did poultry waste. Using mixtures based on starch, the total gas produced in the medium containing poultry waste after 60 and 390 min. of incubation was 44% and 100% greater respectively than that produced from the medium containing casein. Similarly when poultry waste was fermented with cellulose, the total gas production after 60 and 390 min. was 59% and 108% greater respectively than that produced from the fermentation of cellulose + casein. The differences in gas production between urea and poultry waste or urea and casein were not quantified since urea resulted in a reduction in the volume of gas produced. From the starch and cellulose based diets, VFA production in the presence of poultry waste was greater than that from either casein or urea. At the end of incubation, production of VFA from the fermentation of starch + poultry waste was 1.5 or 3.5 times greater than that from starch + casein or starch + urea respectively. Similarly, for a mixture containing cellulose, VFA production in the presence of poultry waste was 2.3 or 6 times higher than that derived from casein or urea respectively. With both starch and cellulose, poultry waste maintained much lower concentrations of ammonia and much lower levels of pH than did urea but considerably higher than those observed with casein. Incubation of grass cubes and hay with poultry waste resulted in greater production of gas and VFA than that obtained from the controls (grass cubes and hay). In vivo studies The primed-continuous infusion technique of Steele et al. (1956) was used to study the comparative effects of poultry waste, urea or fish meal on glucose metabolism with 3 sheep using a 3 x 3 Latin square design. The animals were frequently fed during the experimental period and were maintained on medium quality high roughage diets. Although there were no significant changes in blood glucose level in sheep receiving different nitrogen supplements, the urea and poultry waste containing diets showed a tendency to give lower values than did the fish meal diet. Similarly overall mean insulin concentrations tended to be higher for the fish meal diet than those for the poultry waste or urea diet. Plasma levels of free fatty acid showed small differences between diets which were not significant. Irreversible loss of glucose, glucose pool size, glucose space were estimated. In three out of nine infusions plateau specific activity of glucose was achieved. Consequently, these parameters were calculated for two animals only on each of the dietary treatments. When a plateau glucose specific activity was not attained, the animals exhibited irregular feeding behaviour after about 3h. of infusion and blood analysis showed that they had unusually high levels of cortisol. Plasma glucose concentrations of these animals throughout the infusion period, varied considerably. It appears that uneven feeding behaviour resulted in large fluctuations in the plasma glucose concentrations and specific activity. The results of the in vitro study indicated that poultry waste is more efficient in promoting the utilization of both starch and cellulose than either urea or casein. Poultry waste also caused an improvement in the overall digestion of natural roughage feeds. It was not possible to draw firm conclusion on the results of in vivo experiments because, of the variable data. No significant differences were observed in the concentrations of plasma glucose, insulin, urea or free fatty acids between dietary treatments of fish meal, urea or poultry waste.

Metallothioneins are ubiquitous sulphur-rich heavy metal binding proteins whose biosynthesis is induced in response to a variety of agents, including heavy metals. A number of isoforms of metallothionein are known to be induced by heavy metals in the common mussel Mytilus edulis, and recently interest has centred on the nature of these proteins and their possible utility as pollution indicator agents. Cadmium-induced metallotheioneins were isolated from mussels by procedures which included gel permeation and anion-exchange chromatography. They were shown to comprise two molecular mass classes of 10 and 20KDa. The 10kDa class was resolved by anion-exchange into four components designated 10-I, 10-II, 1--III and 10-IV. The 20kDa class was similarly resolved into three components designated 20-I, 20-II and 20-III. The amino acid sequences of each of the components in both of the classes were determined. This involved digestion with a variety of proteinases and separation of the resulting peptides. The abundance of crysteines in these mussel metallotheioneins necessitated their derivatisation with methyl-p-nitrobenzenesulphonate to generate the S-methyl derivative of cysteine which has been found to be suitable for peptide mapping by HPLC and sequence analysis by automated methods. The components of the 20kDa class were shown to possess linked peptides consisting of 71 amino acids, which were distinct from the 72 amino acid peptides of the 10kDa class. It is suggested that the two monomers in the 20kDa proteins are linked via S-Cd-S bonding, i.e. a bridging cadmium ion. The various components within both classes exhibited homology, particularly with regard to the location of the cysteine residues, to metallothioneins from other species, including mammals. On the basis of this homology these proteins were classified as class I metallothioneins.