Research and Scholarly Activity
The department of Performing Arts is engaged in a range of traditional research activities, but also specialises in practise-based and practise-led research. Each year a member of the academic staff works towards staging a research performance, or demonstrates practise-driven work-in-progress. All members of staff participate in the Faculty of Business Arts and Humanities research programme, regularly presenting papers and practical research findings at seminars and in workshops in-house and internationally.
Dr Ben Francombe is currently interrogating the role of the dramaturg in relation to collective making processes. He is working as a dramaturg on two particular projects: Search Party’s life-long performance project Growing Old With You (www.searchpartyperformance.org.uk) and the Paper Bird’s latest work, provisionally entitled Others (www.thepaperbirds.com). Both projects will be seen in the autumn of 2010 with national tours.
On 30th September 2009, Dr Jem Kelly staged an inter-media, interactive telematic performance held simultaneously in The Showroom, Chichester, and University of Paris 8. The performance, Inter-Views, interrogated current debates around time, memory and perception by drawing on the lived experiences of the performers, whose projected images cascaded back through time at intervals of 45seconds (pictured).
Jem is currently working on a bid for funding to set up a telematic network with external collaborators, including Chichester Festival Theatre and Central School of Speech and Drama. He has written a chapter on telematic performance, Three-Way Inter-Play: devising processes in Station House Opera's The Other Is You, which will be published in the book, Devising In Process by Palgrave in May 2010.
Ian Hornsby recently chaired the philosophy panel at the PCA/ACA conference in Atlanta, Georgia, USA; where he presented a paper The Graphic Novel Sophist: Grant Morrison’s Animal Man. The paper investigated the link between the Eristic sophist Gorgias, the Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben and writer Grant Morrison.
Ian’s PhD research on ‘The Novel Sophists’ is ongoing and explores the role of sophistry in the writings of Maurice Blanchot, John Barth, Paul Auster, Robert Coover, Don DeLillo, Robert Anton Wilson and William Gaddis.
Andrew Wilford is completing his PhD, Elucidating Elan Vital.
Louie Jenkins is a founding member of Factory Floor, a national network of solo female performers. The organisation tours and runs workshops throughout the country. She is touring her solo devised performance, Moth, (Chapter, Cardiff, Blue Coat, Liverpool and The Show Room, Chichester), and is also developing Moth II, with dancer, Carrie Whittaker. Louie is about to complete writing a feature length film, Ash.
Robert Daniels is Creative Director of Bootworks and will be touring with his company throughout 2010, both nationally and Internationally.
Dr Ben Francombe
Contact details: Tel: +44 (0)1243 816482
Email: b.francombe@chi.ac.uk
Web profile: Ben Francombe
Specialism: Contemporary British Theatre, Modern Irish Theatre, Post-Colonial Performance.
Ian Hornsby
Contact details: Tel: +44 (0)1243 816335
Email: i.hornsby@chi.ac.uk
Web profile: Ian Hornsby
Specialism: Modern Literary and Critical Theory, Historical and Theoretical Film Study, Continental and Contemporary Philosophy, Post Structuralism and Anarchy Aesthetics.
Dr Jem Kelly
Contact details: Tel: +44 (0)1243 816483
Email: jem.kelly@chi.ac.uk
Web profile: Jem Kelly
Specialism: Multi-media Theatre, Devised Theatre, Music-driven Performance, Memory-themed Theatre and Film.
Louie Jenkins
Contact details: Tel: +44 (0)1243 816192
Email: l.jenkins@chi.ac.uk
Web profile: Louie Jenkins
Specialism: Solo performance, Applied Theatre, play writing, scripting for film.
Andrew Wilford
Contact details: Tel: +44 (0)1243 816484
Email: a.wilford@chi.ac.uk
Web profile: Andrew Wilford
Specialism: Contemporary, Theatre/Performance, Post-structural Critical, Theory and Graphic Design.
Robert Daniels
Contact details: Tel: +44 (0)1243 816192
Email: r.daniels@chi.ac.uk
Web profile: Robert Daniels
Specialism: Solo performance, phenomenology, devised theatre, physical theatre.