Theatre & Performance Studies News
In Memoriam - Professor Jim Davis
It 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
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.
Introduction
Theatre, Performance and The Amateur Turn
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
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
It’s 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: Grotowski’s 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
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