What's on

Performances, workshops, events and seminars are shown on this page, where they're of interest to Communications, Drama and Film students.

Please remember that coursework-related events may not appear until a week before the event, so please check back regularly.

Wed 22 Jan

Start time: 16:30

"You do assist the storm": Tempests, Sustainability, and Mitigation

Location: TS1 Alexander Building, Thornlea, New North Road, Postcode: EX4 4LA Show on Map

Performance historians often interrogate sexism, racism and class politics in productions of Shakespeare; I contend that, in addition, we need to call out productions that do not take environmental sustainability seriously and that The Theatre Green Book, published in 2021 as a practical resource for theatre makers, can be used as a critical lens in eco-performance history. As Shakespeare’s The Tempest opens with a storm onstage, staging this play presents a particularly useful range of theatrical, intellectual and, today, environmental challenges. How should a storm be staged in a period of global climate catastrophe, of storms, of threatening seas? And, in addition, how should environmentally responsible scholarly research and publication be practised?

Prof Elizabeth Schafer is Professor of Drama and Theatre Studies at Royal Holloway, University of London. She has published performance histories of The Taming of the Shrew and Twelfth Night, a biography of Lilian Baylis, manager of the Old Vic and Sadler’s Wells theatres and a monograph MsDirecting Shakespeare: Women Direct Shakespeare. She has edited Richard Brome’s The City Wit and The Northern Lass for the Oxford University Press complete edition of Brome’s plays. Her Theatre & Christianity offers a radical new reading of Isabella in Measure for Measure and her most recent book is Shakespeare and Eco-Performance History: ‘The Merry Wives of Windsor’. She is a UCU activist and Green Rep.

Reserve a place for in-person attendance or online-only via the Reserve button.

Thu 23 Jan

Start time: 16:00

Masterclass: Music Journalism with Nick Reilly

Location: TS2 Alexander Building, Thornlea, New North Road, Postcode: EX4 4LA Show on Map

Nick Reilly, Rolling Stone UK's News Editor and seasoned music journalist, will be returning to CDF to deliver a two-hour workshop that will cover his career pathway, the future of music journalism, how to pitch a story, and how to write critically about music.

During Nick's session last year, students wrote a music review for the up-and-coming band The Last Dinner Party... who are now one of the most successful bands in the country.

If you are interested in a career in journalism or simply a music lover who wants to hear more about what it is like to work in the industry, then you do not want to miss this exciting event!/p>

Read Nick's work for Rolling Stone UK here: https://www.rollingstone.com/author/nick-reilly/

Wed 29 Jan

Start time: 16:30

Where (and what) is "history" in video game promotion?

Presented by: Esther Wright (Cardiff University)
Location: TS1 Alexander Building, Thornlea, New North Road, Postcode: EX4 4LA Show on Map

This paper will discuss the varying uses of “history” in the promotion and branding of contemporary video games. Game developers, marketers, and critics all actively contribute to the curation of historical discourses around the release and reception of these games, but they are not necessarily talking about what history is, or what makes a game “historical,” in a single way. That is, there are layers of potential meaning being constructed. These layers might involve: the history of a game or game developer, their brand and/or reputation for making games; the historical touchstones around a game’s particular experience or representation, and how they have informed or inspired the game’s development; and/or the history of a particular period, place, or wider subject matter, and the approach a developer has taken to (re)mediating it in their game. Ultimately, what this paper will explore is that all of these ideas overlap, but usually with a specific, overall goal: to stake a claim for the “authenticity” of a game’s representation of the past.

Bio: Esther Wright is Senior Lecturer in Digital History at Cardiff University. She researches historical video game promotion and branding. Her first monograph, Rockstar Games and American History: Promotional Materials and the Construction of Authenticity, was published by De Gruyter in 2022, and an edited collection of essays, Red Dead Redemption: History, Myth and Violence in the Video Game West (with John Wills), was published by Oklahoma University Press in 2023.

Wed 12 Feb

Start time: 16:30

Gender, Power and Autonomy

Presented by: Research Centre for the Study of Gender Media and Sexuality (GEMS)
Location: TS1 Alexander Building, Thornlea, New North Road, Postcode: EX4 4LA Show on Map

This is a joint CDF Research Seminar

In recent years, the world has witnessed growing feminist challenges and anti-feminist right-wing backlash. We have also observed the blurred boundaries between feminist politics and reactionary politics, as in the case where women’s self-empowerment is both a feminist goal and a neoliberal propaganda. As the power in the late capitalism develop new strategies and apparatuses to regulate, control, manage, and defuse feminist practices and politics, the key question at stake thus is one of autonomy. Departing from the Western, liberal notion of autonomy – defined as the realization of the desires of individual’s true will, our discussion draws on de-colonial, queer feminist insight of agency - that moves beyond the binary model of enacting and subverting norms - to address the contemporary predicament. Against this backdrop, we invite the CDF community to explore how the changing communication environment re-shapes the ways in which autonomy is experienced and enacts, and how autonomy can be reimagined by different media practices and performances.

Topics might include (but are not limited to):

Women creators’ autonomy in television and film industries
Autonomy and the body
The power of affects – intimacy, eros, and anger,
Popular feminism and popular misogyny
The role of White supremacy and racism in re-shaping the idea of autonomy
Decolonising and de-Westernising the idea of autonomy
LGBTQ, feminist, anti-racist, disability activisms

Wed 26 Feb

Start time: 16:30

Research Seminar: Keep singing, Orpheus: Decadent voiceworlds and utopian possibilities in Anaïs Mitchell’s Hadestown (2019)

Location: TS1 Alexander Building, Thornlea, New North Road, Postcode: EX4 4LA Show on Map

In this presentation, I will introduce themes and ideas from my new book Singing Utopia: Voice in Musical Theatre (OUP, 2024). As the first long-form study of musical theatre voices from a cultural perspective, I will consider some of the key terms and frameworks introduced in the book through a close listening to the ‘voiceworlds’ in one primary case study—Anaïs Mitchell’s Hadestown (2019). Using utopian theory, musicological analysis, and four new approaches developed in Singing Utopia, we will examine the spaces, sonorities and social constructs of this folk-infused reimagining of the Orphic myth, listening to what voices do in their efforts to imagine, critique, and shape better worlds in the face of inevitable failure. The implicit tension between hope and loss is the very substance of Orpheus’s song and, I argue, the very thing that imbues musical theatre vocality with utopian possibility.

Reserve a place for in-person attendance or viewing the livestream online via the Reserve button.