Objects and agents: women, materiality, and the making of contemporary theatre

Thesis

This thesis uses embedded research to inform understanding of the complex nature of agency in contemporary British theatre-making. The close observation of activities in the rehearsal rooms, workshops, and auditoria of two British theatres – The Theatre Chipping Norton in Oxfordshire and the Royal & Derngate in Northampton – highlights a collaborative creative agency that challenges the tendency to privilege the singular intention of director or playwright in theatre and performance studies. Drawing upon new materialist thinking, agency is conceived as a process enacted across a diverse assemblage of participants that includes the production team, backstage professionals, and performers, as well as the material resources of theatrical production such as costumes and props. Tracing expressions of material agency, I seek to uncover hidden narratives that have been marginalised within accounts of the theatre-making process. I argue, particularly, for methodological resonances between a new materialist turn to matter and feminist strategies for recovering women’s experiences. The materiality of the stage is taken up as a critical lens to unpack material processes engaged in the gendering of labour, performing bodies, and theatrical space.

Five productions staged at The Theatre Chipping Norton and the Royal & Derngate between 2017 and 2019 serve as case studies for my exploration of gendered material agency. Four chapters are divided into two parts. The first, Gendering Bodies: Theatre-Makers and Objects, encompasses Chapter One: Costume and Chapter Two: Props and Puppets which both examine embodied encounters that take place between practitioners and objects in the staging of gendered bodily experience. The second part, Staging Gendered Experience: Theatre Apparatus and Character, sustains the inquiry of the first two chapters but considers how gendered experience is staged through the transformation of the staged environment, rather than through individual entanglements of bodies and stage objects: Chapter Three addresses the gendering of the material apparatus of form in contemporary realist theatre, and Chapter Four examines the how the gendered spatial dynamics of the staged home are reconfigured by contemporary theatre-makers. The local focus of this study, rooted in the observation of live practice, argues for the value of the specific in generating pertinent insights that introduce new perspectives to wider critical discussions; here, the complex question of collaborative agency and the gendering of practice that underpins contemporary theatre-making.

Authors: Gurnos-Davies, K

• Type of award: DPhil
• Level of award: Doctoral
• Awarding institution: University of Oxford
• Language: English
• Keywords: scenography; agency; gender; performance; women; new materialism; theatre; costume; props; materiality
• Subjects: Theaters--Stage-setting and scenery; Feminist theory; Costume; Performance; Gender; Women