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In Memoriam - Professor Jim Davis

Prof Jim DavisIt is with a very heavy heart that we write to let you know that Professor Jim Davis passed away on Saturday 4th November following a stroke. Everyone who had the pleasure of encountering Jim will appreciate that this is a huge loss for his family, friends, colleagues, collaborators and the wider research community. He was a fantastic scholar and unwavering champion for the discipline and theatre historiography. He was such an important part of the Theatre and Performance family at the University of Warwick and will be missed for his leadership, mentorship, friendship and unfailing sense of fun and mischief.

Jim Davis joined Warwick in 2004 as Head of Department (2004-2009) after eighteen years teaching Theatre Studies at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, where he was latterly Head of the School of Theatre, Film and Dance. In Australia he was also President of the Australasian Drama Studies Association and member of the Board of Studies of the National Institute of Dramatic Art. Prior to leaving for Australia he spent ten years teaching in London at what is now Roehampton University. He co-organised many conferences including for the International Federation of Theatre Research (IFTR) in New South Wales and at Warwick. He convened Historiography Working Groups for both IFTR and for TaPRA. He served as an editor for the journal Nineteenth Century Theatre and Film.

He published widely and with considerable critical acclaim in the area of nineteenth-century British theatre. His most recent bookComic Acting and Portraiture in Late-Georgian and Regency England (2015) won the TaPRA David Bradby Prize for Research in International Theatre and Performance in 2017 and was shortlisted for the 2015 TLA George Freedley Memorial Award. His other publications include Theatre & Entertainment (2016), Dickensian Dramas: Plays from Charles Dickens Volume II (2017) and European Theatre Performance Practice Vol 3 1750-1900 (editor, 2014). He was also joint author of a study of London theatre audiences in the nineteenth century Reflecting the Audience: London 1840-1880 (2001), which was awarded the 2001 Theatre Book Prize. He contributed numerous chapters including essays on nineteenth-century acting to the Cambridge History of British Theatre and on audiences to the Cambridge Companion to Victorian and Edwardian Theatre. He also published many articles in Theatre Journal, Theatre Survey, Theatre Notebook, Essays in Theatre, Themes in Drama, New Theatre Quarterly, Nineteenth Century Theatre, Theatre Research International and The Dickensian. He was also responsible for many of the theatrical entries in The Oxford Readers' Companion to Dickens and contributed to the Oxford Encyclopaedia of Theatre and Performance, The Cambridge Encyclopaedia of Stage Actors and Acting and the New Dictionary of National Biography. For several years he wrote an annual review of publications on nineteenth-century English Drama and Theatre for The Year's Work in English Studies.

There will be an event to celebrate Jim’s life and work on 6 January 2024 12pm-4pm in the Studios in the Faculty of Arts Building on the University of Warwick's campus. Anyone is welcome (colleagues, friends, alumni etc). This will be a hybrid event, so if you cannot attend in person, but would like to join us online, that's also possible. Please RSVP to Dr David Coates - D.J.Coates@warwick.ac.uk

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Prof. Nadine Holdsworth guest edits a special issue of Contemporary Theatre Review on amateur theatre and performance

Contemporary Theatre Review, Vol. 27, No. 1 2017, a special issue titled 'Theatre, Performance and The Amateur Turn' guest edited by Nadine Holdsworth, Jane Milling and Helen Nicholson is now available on Taylor & Francis Online:

http://www.tandfonline.com/toc/gctr20/current

 

This special issue on amateur theatre and performance is accompanied by a set of online features, free to access, at www.contemporarytheatrereview.org, that give further insight into research methods on this subject. These include a collection of images and accompanying stories that came out of ‘Evocative Objects’ workshops held with amateur theatre-makers throughout the UK; a conversation between Nadine Holdsworth and eighty-one-year-old Arthur Aldrich, who has worked across professional and amateur contexts; an annotated slide show documenting amateur theatre in the Royal Navy compiled by Sarah Penny and Nadine Holdsworth; and Molly Flynn’s reflections on the Royal Shakespeare Company’s Open Stages Initiative.

 


Introduction
Theatre, Performance and The Amateur Turn

Nadine Holdsworth, Jane Milling, and Helen Nicholson
pages: 4-17

Articles

The Sociable Aesthetics of Amateur Theatre

Erin Walcon and Helen Nicholson

pages: 18-33

http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/10486801.2016.1262851

Noh Creativity? The Role of Amateurs in Japanese Noh Theatre

Diego Pellecchia

pages: 34-45

http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/10486801.2016.1262848

‘The Hills Are Alive with the Sound of Music’: Musical Theatre at Girls’ Jewish Summer Camps in Maine, USA

Stacy Wolf

pages: 46-60

http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/10486801.2016.1262853

Amateur Science in Activist Performance: Towards a Slow Science

Simon Parry

pages: 61-75

 http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/10486801.2016.1262847

‘Village Hall work can never be “Theatre”’: Amateur Theatre and The Arts Council of Great Britain, 1945-1956

Taryn Storey

pages: 76-91

http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/10486801.2016.1262852

Performing Failure? Anomalous Amateurs in Jérôme Bel’s Disabled Theater and The Show Must Go On 2015

Sarah Gorman

pages: 92-103


Documents

Materialities of Amateur Theatre

curated by Cara Gray and Sarah Penny
pages: 104-123


Reviews

Performance and Media: Taxonomies for a Changing Field by Sarah Bay-Cheng, Jennifer Parker-Starbuck, and David Saltz

Acatia Finbow

http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/10486801.2016.1268780

Queer Performance and Contemporary Ireland: Dissent and Disorientation

by Fintan Walsh

Alyson Campbell

http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/10486801.2016.1268781

Its All Allowed: The Performances of Adrian Howells ed. by Deirdre Heddon and Dominic Johnson

Antje Hildebrandt

http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/10486801.2016.1268782

 

Voices from Within: Grotowskis Polish Collaborators ed. by Paul Allain and

Grzegorz Ziółkowski, trans. by Justyna Drobnik-Rogers, Duncan Jamieson,

and Adela Karsznia

Acting with Grotowski: Theatre as a Field for Experiencing Life by Zbigniew

Cynkutis, ed. by Paul Allain and Khalid Tyabji, trans. by Khalid Tyabji

Halina Filipowicz

http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/10486801.2016.1268783

Applied Theatre: International Case Studies and Challenges for Practice

(Second edition) edited. by Monica Prendergast and Juliana Saxton;

Critical Perspectives on Applied Theory edited by Jenny Hughes and

Helen Nicholson

Maggie Inchley

http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/10486801.2016.1268784 

Performing Contemporary Indonesia: Celebrating Identity, Constructing

Community ed. by Barbara Hatley

Matthew Isaac Cohen

http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/10486801.2016.1268785

The Performing Subject in the Space of Technology: Through the Virtual,

Towards the Real ed. by Matthew Causey, Emma Meehan, and

Néill O’Dwyer

Rosie Klich

http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/10486801.2016.1268786

Backpages

The Editing of Emma Rice

Tom Cornford

 

Crisis Management in the Theatre of Shon Dale-Jones

Maddy Costa

 

Europe: A Tragedy of Love and Ideology

Andrew Haydon

 

Archiving Gestures of Disobedience

Farah Saleh

 

Remembering Annie Castledine (1939-2016)

Annabel Arden

 

Mighty Annie

Gerlind Reinshagen

pages:134-148

http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/10486801.2017.1274147

Thu 20 Apr 2017, 10:12 | Tags: Publications Prof. Nadine Holdsworth Research Impact