Participants
PROFESSOR LIB TAYLOR
Principal Investigator
https://www.reading.ac.uk/ftt/about/staff/l-j-taylor.aspx
TERRY O’DONOVAN and DAPHNA ATTIAS
Dante or Die Theatre Company
http://danteordie.com/
ABHINAV BAJPAI and LUKE ALEXANDER
Marmelo
https://www.marmelodigital.com/
DR JOHN TROYER
Co-Investigator
http://www.bath.ac.uk/sps/staff/john-troyer/
JOHN LUTHER
South Street Arts Centre, Reading
https://www.readingarts.com/south-street
DR LUCY JEFFERY
Research Assistant
https://research.reading.ac.uk/beckett/about/people/l-jeffery/
FURTHER INFORMATION
PROFESSOR LIB TAYLOR
Lib is Emerita Professor of Theatre & Performance in the Department of Film, Theatre & Television at the University of Reading. She has published widely on the body in performance, women’s theatre and contemporary British theatre and performance, including articles in Theatre Research International, Performance Research, Studies in Theatre and Performance and Contemporary Theatre Review. She is co-editor of the book The Indeterminate Body. Lib has a background as a theatre practitioner and some of her research takes the form of practice, focusing on the ways in which gender and the body are constructed in performance, specifically in recent stagings of modernist women writers, Marguerite Duras’s Eden Cinema and Savannah Bay and the theatre writings of Gertrude Stein. She has also written on the boundaries of the perceptions of performance within extraordinary and unexpected events. Lib has also been part of an AHRC funded project on fact-based and verbatim theatre.
DR LUCY JEFFERY
Lucy is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Samuel Beckett Research Centre. She has published on the work of Beckett, Harold Pinter, Ingeborg Bachmann, Ezra Pound, Natasha Gordon, and Magda Szabó. Her articles have appeared in the Journal of Beckett Studies, Radio Journal: International Studies in Broadcast & Audio Media, Interdisciplinary Literary Studies, Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television, The Harold Pinter Review, and Word and Image. She has also contributed chapters to Samuel Beckett and Technology eds. Adar, Kiryushina, and Nixon; The Oxford Handbook of Samuel Beckett eds. Nixon and Van Hulle; and Radio Art and Music: Culture, Aesthetics, Politics eds. Mildorf and Verhulst. Her monograph (published by ibidem-Verlag, 2021) is entitled Transdisciplinary Beckett: Visual Arts, Music, and the Creative Process.
DANTE OR DIE
“DANTE OR DIE ARE EXPERTS IN SITE-SPECIFIC THEATRE” – The Arts Desk
For more reviews, click here
TERRY O’DONOVAN
Terry has worked as an actor, director and producer since 2005. As Co-Artistic Director of Dante or Die he has co-created all productions. He performs in Take On Me, Handle With Care, I Do, Caliper Boy and Side Effects. In 2012 he co-founded TOOT to make Ten Out of Ten, an Ovalhouse commission toured throughout 2013 & 2014. Since then he has co-created Be Here Now and Focus Group* which have both toured nationally. Directing credits include On The Wire (Best Production, Irish Times Theatre Awards Nom; Wildebeest Theatre Co for Limerick City of Culture), The Secret Princess of Severndroog (Look Left Look Right commission for Greenwich & Docklands International Festival), Blackout R&D (China Plate / Katie Lyons & Ella Grace), Spin Cycle (Emergency Exit Arts), Our Dancing Feet and Home Fires (Inroads & Zap Arts).
DAPHNA ATTIAS
Daphna is Co-Artistic Director of Dante or Die Theatre. She has directed all of the company’s work to date: Take On Me, Handle With Care, I Do, La Fille à la Mode, Side Effects, Caliper Boy, Clunk. She is also Artistic Director of Peut-Être Theatre, where she creates unforgettable early theatrical experiences. Her directorial work with Peut-Être includes Tidy Up, Shh…Bang!, The Tin Soldier, Dare to Sea, Draw me a Bird, The Bug and the Butterfly & This is a That. Her work has been presented and performed nationally and internationally at venues such as Almeida Theatre, Roundhouse, Royal Albert Hall, Brighton Festival, Southbank Centre, The Place, Royal Opera House, The Lowry, Barnsley Civic, The Arc Stockton, The Egg Bath, Polka Theare, National Theatre’s Watch This Space, Drama Centre Singapore, Ziguzajg Festival Malta, Israel Festival for Children in Israel and ASK China.
MARMELO
Marmelo Digital was established by Luke Alexander and Abhinav Bajpai in late 2015. As a technological company they are dedicated and innovative problem solvers. Some of their work includes London Calling: an interactive theatre experience and Simplifying access to mental health services for Camden NHS.
DR JOHN TROYER
Dr John Troyer is the Director of the Centre for Death and Society at the University of Bath. His interdisciplinary research focuses on contemporary memorialisation practices, post-mortem bioethics, and the dead body’s relationship with technology. John is also a theatre director and installation artist with extensive experience in site-specific performance across the United States and Europe. He is a co-founder of the Death Reference Desk website, the Future Cemetery Project and a frequent commentator for the BBC. His book Technologies of the Human Corpse will be published by MIT Press in 2018. He is co-founder of the Death Reference Desk website http://deathreferencedesk.org and the Future Cemetery project.
SOUTH STREET
South Street Arts Centre is at the heart of Reading and presents a range of performing arts from both the professional and community sectors. It is programmed by Arts Co-ordinator John Luther (john.luther@reading.gov.uk). In recent years South Street has worked with and supported the best young theatre companies whose performances have often developed into shows for national touring. Such theatre companies include: Inspector Sands, Cartoon de Salvo, Shams, Periplum, The Plasticine Men, Stillpoint Theatre, Wonder, Limbik Theatre, Beady Eye, Laura Mugridge, FanSHEN, and Dante or Die.
