Tag: writing

review of Alchemies of Theater now live online

My review of a new publication on the work of Dick Higgins, Alchemies of Theater: Plays, Scores, Writings edited by Bonnie Marranca, is now live on the Leonardo Reviews site.

Marranca’s focus is on performance theory and history, and she frames each of the four sections with a short prefatory essay. These give some historical and critical context for the works, and offer background information on productions, or publication, gathered from the archive, or through correspondence with collaborators, performers, family and friends of Higgins.

The book introduced me to works by Higgins I was unaware of and gives a sense of the range and variety of his practice. You can read the review at:

https://leonardo.info/review/2025/07/alchemies-of-theater-plays-scores-writings

review of Lives of the Voice

My review of Lives of the Voice: An Essay on Closeness by Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht is now live on the Leonardo Reviews site.

The book set me thinking about my father’s voice, remembering a mixture of emotions, of expectation and resistance. My father was a farmer, but also a singer, singing at weddings and funerals, at home and to his cows. Known locally as a singer, his reputation generated a mix of embarrassment and pride in me as a child and created expectations that I too might be a singer. Listening to other singers, I sometimes catch echoes of his voice and am drawn into a spatial-temporal relationship of nearness and distance, of connections among material human bodies and the specific sounds they produce. The bittersweet sensation that Gumbrecht highlights as specific to singing and listening to songs (p. 51-52) is wrapped up in a sense of being overwhelmed by some experiences of song, and a paradoxical sensation of proximity with voices of the dead or of artists we have never seen live.

You can read the full review here:

https://leonardo.info/review/2025/06/lives-of-the-voice-an-essay-on-closeness

between twiceness and thriceness: a conversation on collaborative making

For CAMP’s Online Talks Series, Shelley Hodgson and I will present a performative conversation that examines our work together over the past two years. Resulting in a performance, a radio show and a public conversation, our collaboration has generated material, raised questions, and prompted reflection.

In our zoom conversation for CAMP, from two locations, Shelley and I will focus on questions of collaboration. Talking about how we have found a way to work together, how we make work that is jointly developed. Discussing how we use strategies of scores, timing, and our different skills, to make work that feels properly collaborative. A lot of this depends on trust, on communication, and on being OK with things that don’t ‘work’. We will use flash cards, some recorded sound, a dictaphone, and there will be sonic interruptions and obscure gestures.

The event will be accessible live online on Tuesday 8th April 2025 at 1830hrs via the CAMP Mighty Network.

thriceness for The Convivial on 6th February

thriceness: Name, Voice, and Gesture – who it is we are and how we tell this

In a development of my work with Shelley Hodgson we will present a performative conversation as part of The Convivial series hosted by Sophie Craven in Penryn, Cornwall. For this iteration of Convivial, we will open out some questions around bodies, names, and communication. The conversation develops ideas and actions we presented in the performance work ‘twiceness’ (Plymouth, May and July 2024), as we pick up on threads and themes that emerged from our working together.

Acknowledging the people in the space, as we gather together to listen, to share, to exchange, the conversation will begin with names and naming. Then considering connections to voice and to identity we will raise questions around how we tell who we are, how we connect to others, how we bridge gaps between us, us humans, and the other-than-human. The discussion will attend to matters of value, of exclusion, and how we are variously valued, differently excluded. Mixing action, gesture, talking and recording, ‘thriceness’ will address who it is that we are and how we tell this.

Thriceness: Name, Voice, and Gesture – who it is we are and how we tell
The Convivial, Thursday 6th February 2025, 1800 to 2200hrs
Three of Cups, 20 Lower Market Street, Penryn High Street.

Tickets via Eventbrite

‘What shall we call it?’ for First Spark

Shelley Hodgson and I are making a radio show for Soundart Radio’s First Spark Festival 2025. For broadcast on Sunday 2nd February starting at 12 noon, the programme will mix recordings, conversation and songs. Playing with ideas of names and naming as a point of beginning, connecting to First Spark’s occurence at Imbolc, a new year, a new beginning, we will look at naming ceremonies, giving names and changing names, and the idea of naming a year. The mix will include references to the film Morvern Callar, the novel 4,3,2,1 by Paul Auster, Ali Smith’s latest novel Gliff, and we will play songs with references to names and beginnings. 105.2fm

https://soundartradio.org.uk/firstspark