In this lecture we will travel back in time to the origin of the clown as an entertainment figure and as the icon of the travelling circuses.
Project Category: Performance Art
Reading Sophocles’s Antigone: Death, Burial, and Kinship
Sophocles’ Antigone has been central to many philosophers’ and psychoanalysts’ thought. This talk offers a fresh interpretation of the play.
Blood, Guts and Implants: The Role of the Body in Performance Art
The human body in performance art serves as a living canvas and vehicle for profound artistic expression. This talk presents artists who push their bodies to extreme places in the name of art and experimentation; they harness the power of their bodies to communicate narratives, evoke emotions, challenge societal norms, and question the very essence of human existence.
The History of Caribbean Carnival in Britain
Join us to explore the celebratory history and purpose of a Caribbean Carnival to understand its combination of Trinidadian roots, African traditions and Jamaican sound system culture and how it came to symbolise freedom in the face of oppression for the Afro Caribbean community in West London's Notting Hill carnival.
Masculine Women and Feminine Men: the Art of Dandyism
In this talk we discuss the history of the Dandy, its relevance to fashion, arts, drag and theatre today and how we might learn from this playful archetype to further embody our own inner Dandy.
Cabaret Culture
In this talk we delve into a world where the outlandish is ordinary and the ordinary seems outlandish, of clowns and comics, dancers and dreamers, of performance just below street level or in a tucked away attic up many flights of seemingly endless stairs. Join us as we discuss who what where when how and why is Cabaret.
A Golden Dawn: magic, mystery and madness at the turn of the 20th century
Join us as we explore the occult subcultures of the fin de siecle and uncover their stories. We will talk about their symbolism and rituals in the context of historical coloniality and militarism.
Theatre and Utopia: Imagining Better Worlds
Are we as audiences drawn into idealistic worlds and stories because they can provide a blueprint for how best to undo oppressive structures in our own worlds? Do such performances serve as an optimistic and educational benchmark of culture or can utopia, if it is ever to be achieved, only exist on the stage or page rather than in the outside world? In this talk we explore the ways in which Utopia and Utopian ideals have been presented in performance and ask what the impact and effect of such performances has had upon us.  Â