Adjacent fields

It frequently occurs to me how much our “object” of study – contemporary theatre music – overlaps or blurs with other objects, disciplines and projects. Sometimes this is due to aesthetic similarities that occur across quite different genres – the relationship of music, space and movement may be similar in a dance piece, a music-theatre project and a devised theatre performance, sometimes there are cross-pollinations on the levels of processes, venues or people. Paul Clark, e.g. writes music for theatre productions of Katie Mitchell (there is a great conversation about their collaboration on YouTube) and is co-director of Clod Ensemble, whose productions defy genres, but fall under the wider bracket of dance.

And finally, there are adjacent research areas, disciplines, methodologies and projects, which more or less immediately impact on the ways in which can seek to analyze and understand theatre music as a creative relational practice.

One such project is the fascinating ongoing study “Aural/Oral Dramaturgies: Post-Verbatim, Amplified Storytelling and Gig Theatre in the Digital Age”. This is funded as an AHRC Leadership Fellowship held by Duška Radosavljević at The Royal Central School of Speech and Drama, University of London and warrants flagging up in this blog as there are many shared interests.

So much so, that Duška invited me to contribute to the podcast series “Lend me your ears”, that is a crucial part of the project’s outcomes. For the so-called “Salon” strand, Katharina Rost and I had a very rich conversation with director, musician and artistic co-director of the Zurich Theatre Nicolas Stemann, which is now published on the Auralia.space website.