February 13-14th saw the launch of a festival celebrating 400 years of Shakespeare’s legacy. King’s College London are part of this year-long series of cultural events called Shakespeare 400.
In this video director of the London Shakespeare Centre, Professor Gordon McMullan and English department scholars Dr Emma Whipday and Dr Elizabeth Scott-Baumann talk about the festival and their involvement.
Introduction by Max Saunders, Professor of English and Director of the Arts and Humanities Research Institute (AHRI)
The idea for Wax Virginia was developed by Prof. Clare Brant, Co-Director of the Centre for Life-Writing Research, and Ruth Richardson, Visiting Research Fellow of the Centre, who both worked closely with the artist Eleanor Crook, on the design of the installation. The project is characteristic of the creativity and imagination they have brought to the Centre. At the unveiling during the Arts & Humanities Festival people were astounded by the way the sculpture transformed the lobby space. It was just what was needed to realise the presence of Arts & Humanities at 22 Kingsway.
Watch a time-lapse video of the artist Eleanor Crook producing the work, then read more about the project in a post from Catriona Livingstone.
By Penny Newell, PhD student in the English Department
Ever since I attended one of Lois Weaver’s Long Tables on Live Art and Feminism, I have been paying a special attention to tables. Tables structure conversations. Tables anchor discoveries. Tables form communities. Tables ground critique.
In Weaver’s Long Table, the table is a centrepiece of a performed conversation, in which you can choose whether or not to participate. It’s an amazingly simple yet effective performance work. It makes you re-think your critical relationship with tables. It makes you ask: Who sits at my table? Who can sit at my table? Who listens? Who speaks? Continue reading Sitting at a table in Berlin, thinking about Aretha Franklin
By Alan Read, Professor of Theatre, Director Performance Foundation
22 Kingsway: This is Your Life tells the remarkable story of the site for which the English and Comparative Literature Department is the current sitting tenant. Conceived by the theatre makers Forster & Heighes in collaboration with the Performance Foundation and 20th Century Magazine, and generously supported by the KCL Principal’s Fund, our intention was to trace the hidden history of a building that to the outside eye would appear to have little to say. As we discovered, nothing could be further from the truth. Some buildings are silent, some speak, this one, despite its mute modernism, sings. Continue reading 22 Kingsway: This is Your Life
In July 2015, one King’s PhD researcher and a group of Philippine community artists, academics and documenters undertook a two-week ‘RoRo’ journey in Mindanao, the largest island in the southern Philippines. The journey was part of PSi#21, an international Performance Studies research project, which coordinated conferences in fifteen locations across the globe in 2015.
By Ella Parry-Davies, PhD student in Performance Studies
