Collaborative Academia
My primary research portfolio is collaborative academia (teaching and research). Here, I focus on exploring collaborative methods for producing and transferring knowledge, paying particular attention to the sociocultural dynamics that are challenged and reaffirmed through shared authorship and authority practices. In that logic, I am an activator of teams dedicated to researching collaboration in itself as a methodology for planetary praxis in teaching and research. Working primarily with digital platforms, these teams are spread around the planet, and we publish, teach, curate, and organise conferences together.
The impulse of this research portfolio stems from the arguments I made in Planetary Performance Studies, where I elaborated on a disciplinary critique of performance studies, arguing that the narrative of origins in and of the field needs to be revised in planetary terms. That is, performance studies ought to relinquish the narrative that grants a specific disciplinary genealogy the authorship to what performance studies are or do. Building on that same argument, in ‘The Planet, Everyday: Towards Collaborative Performance Studies’, Eero Laine and I make the case for a perceptible shift towards collaboration as an ethos of labour and research in performance studies. More recently, along with Kevin Brown, Kristof van Baarle, Kyoko Iwaki, Laine and I co-edited a joint issue between Global Performance Studies and the Journal of Dramatic Theory and Criticism titled Collaborative Research in Theatre and Performance Studies, where we extend the conversation to the larger field.
With the same ethos and spirit, since 2018 I have been developing a strong research focus on collaborative performance pedagogy. Here, I am interested in exploring performance as a learning method that empowers students to engage in collaborative and performative world-making. An example of this is the work I have done with colleagues at Florida State University and the University of New South Wales in what we call planetary performance pedagogy, which has recently been published under the title ‘Towards Planetary Performance Pedagogy: Digital Companions in Multipolar Classrooms’ by the journal Theatre, Dance, and Performance Training.
Currently, this area of my research is generously supported by my home institution, LASALLE College of the Arts, with a three-year grant to support an umbrella platform titled Digital Collaborations in Teaching and Research that allows me to explore collaborative academia in more variables. Below is more information on active and past collaborative projects.
After Performance Research Ensemble
After Performance was founded in January 2015 as a graduate reading group at the National University of Singapore. Throughout six years of constant and consistent interaction, the reading group has evolved into a working group, and then into an ensemble research group, where members continue to develop a collective professional scholarly practice. We experiment with collaborative techniques for thinking and writing together, as a research ensemble. Members also include: Ella Parry-Davies, Alvin Lim, and Matt Yoxall.
After Performance has organised workshops in Singapore, Manila, London, Melbourne and Hamburg. We have also published the following pieces:
1. After Performance: On Transauthorship, in Performance Research, 21.5, pp.35-6, 2016.
2. Vulnerability and The Lonely Scholar, in Contemporary Theatre Review Interventions, 2017.
For more about our work, you can visit After Performance page here.
Performance Pedagogies Working Group
In May of 2020, I assembled an international working group brought together with the intention of building a shared reflection on performance pedagogies. Teaching and learning in dance, theatre, and performance were heavily disrupted by the COVID-19 Pandemic. I assembled this group so that we could grow a research network to face and think through the changes we had to implement to our teaching practice. The group includes specialists from various sub-areas of theatre and performance studies such as performance art disciplinary histories, actor training, voice, participatory practices, digital humanities, etc. Members include Frank Camilleri (University of Malta), Theron Schmidt (University of New South Wales), Eero Laine (State University of New York at Buffalo), Diana Damian Martin (Central School of Speech and Drama), Heike Roms (University of Exeter), Miguel Escobar Varela (National University of Singapore), Kyoko Iwaki (University of Antwerp), Electa Behrens (Norway Theatre Academy), and Maaike Bleeker (Utrecht University).
We are currently developing a book titled Performance Pedagogy: Objects, Transfers, Formations. Our book is currently under peer-review with Bloomsbury Academic, and we hope to publish it by 2023.
Collaborative Performance Pedagogy
Between 2018 and 2020, I have been collaborating with Hannah Schwadron (Florida State University) and Theron Schmidt (University of New South Wales) in research on remote, mobile, and telematic teaching in the performing arts. Since October 2018, we have been teaching each others’ classes remotely and through mobile applications, testing the limits of ”live” teaching in studio settings, and exploring larger questions about knowledge-making and transfer in and through performance.
We recently published our first piece, Towards Planetary Performance Pedagogy: Digital Companions in Multipolar Classrooms. In this article, we argue that digital platforms can support performance pedagogy’s collaborative practice, and expand on the proxemic zones in which a student learns, emphasising an awareness that the planet itself is a shared learning space.
More recently, I have been experimenting with the Collaborative Online International Learning Model (COIL) model in partnership with colleagues at The University of Antwerp. Here, I am interested in exploring models through which performance pedagogy can enable an artistic curriculum that is underlined by practices of planetary citizenry.
Ends
Ends is an international network of performance artists and scholars initiated and co-led by Eero Laine (SUNY, Buffalo), Kristoff van Baarle (University of and Kyoko Iwaki (University of Antwerp), and myself.
The four of us were originally part of the organising committee of PSi’s 2020 conference, which was planned to take place in Rijeka, Croatia, but that, unfortunately, was cancelled due to the COVID-19 Pandemic.
Since 2019, and after the cancellation of the conference, Ends grew into an international network of collaborators that are engaged in various overlapping projects which involve writing and thinking together.
Our multiple outputs include a joint issue between Global Performance Studies and The Journal of Dramatic Theory and Criticism, titled Collaborative Research in Theatre and Performance Studies, and an international symposium titled World Ends Day, which took place on 9 July 2021. Our forthcoming piece, ‘Collaboration and co-finitude: an agenda of care and ends’ will be published in the forthcoming issue On Care, published by Performance Research in late 2022.
PSi Future Advisory Board
From 2015 to 2018 I was a founding member of The Future Advisory Board (FAB). FAB is a PSi initiative that aims to bring together graduate students and early career scholars and artists worldwide. FAB advises the PSi board with regard to the future of the field as new generations see this. To this end, the FAB initiates projects (both online and at conferences) that demonstrate this diversity and contribute to the further development of Performance Studies in ways that acknowledge this diversity. We bring together perspectives, strategies, tactics, provocations, ideas, visions, hopes and dreams from our various practices of theory and performance.
FAB continues with new members.
During my time with the group, we published the following work in GPS: Global Performance Studies:
2. Syllabi for the Future: A Playlist (eds.)
For more on FAB, you can visit their webpage page here.