What has happened across theatre & performance during Trinity Term 2025?
Projects
Our two 2024-25 RSC IF fellows, Amahra Spence and Stephen Bailey, continued work on their projects. Amahra hosted a Community Developers Dinner as the conclusion of her activity at Oxford. Stephen finished work on his new disabled-led adaptation of Life Is A Dream, and will film a scene from the piece later this month. Both fellows will present their work at the RSC's Festival Of Ideas in July 2025, and the two new fellows will be announced.
Professor David Taylor (English) was awarded John Fell funding for a new project: Restoration Comedy for the 21st Century: Adapting Aphra Behn's Rover. In collaboration with the female-led theatre company The Thelmas, Oxford researchers will research and develop an adaptation of Aphra Behn's 1677 comedy The Rover. This project will uncover this complex history and grapple with the themes of sexual power and sexual violence at the heart of Behn's play precisely by experimenting with ways to bring it to new audiences. Theatrical adaptation will be adopted as a research method that, through collaboration between scholars and practitioners, can shape new approaches to textual reading and interpretation.
Dr Emanuela Vai (Music) was awarded Participatory Research funding for a collaboration with Modern Art Oxford and their resident artist Appau Jnr Boakye-Yiadom: Bate to the Future. The artist will create a new musical composition, recorded and filmed in situ at the current site of the Bate Collection of Musical Instruments, which will form part of an installation when the Bate moves to the Schwarzman Centre over the summer.
The UdK-TORCH seed funded projects were announced for 2025, including Was gibt’s da zu lachen? / A Comic Twist on Memory? with Dr Katharina Friege (History). The project uses theatre to think critically about the postwar era in Germany and Austria in new ways. To what extent did playwrights, actors, and audiences process or suppress the consequences of Nazism and World War II in the space of theatre? The collaboration brings together researchers from Oxford University and UdK Berlin to explore areas of mutual interest.
The Performance Research Hub awarded the second tranche of small event grants, for events taking place in MT 2025 and beyond. These include an event on Ancient Music, a collaboration with Milo Rau, and an exploration on sensitivity reading as dramaturgy.
The Oxford-Uppsala Culture & Creativity Cluster convened in Sweden to develop their work together. The Cluster's first collaborative project is a pamphlet on the theme of Monstrosity - this shared creative process has provided a blueprint for future work together, and we look forward to sharing details of a larger project.
Events
The Performance Research Hub funded four events via participatory event grants. The White Whale open rehearsal was a chance for the public to be involved in a new adaptation of Moby Dick for the stage by Chipping Norton Theatre, working with Professor Christine Gerrard (English). What's In A Letter was a performative lecture exploring the queer epistolary form. Videographic Entanglements was a study day for the Journal of Embodied Research, with roundtables and film screenings. In Voiced In Translation, Professor Kirsten Shepherd (English) workshopped new translations of three plays - two by Henrik Ibsen, one by Laura Kieler.
Professor Oreet Ashery (Ruskin School of Art) took part in a panel at Modern Art Oxford on how artists can work with policymakers. Professor Sos Eltis (English) interviewed the award-winning American playwright Branden Jacobs-Jenkins. Professor Nicholas Perkins (English) presented findings from a project with Wild Boor Ideas about the link between theatre and literacy. Our colleagues at COMPAS ran a seminar series on Art & Migration. The MedHums Research Hub hosted a seminar on film-making as research. There was a public sharing of the new play All Of Them, Dead, which Professor Matt Cook (History) consulted on.
Looking ahead
In September 2025 we move into the brand new Schwarzman Centre for the Humanities. We're excited to share a home with the Faculties to enable more interdisciplinary work - and we're excited to use the beautiful new performances spaces for our events, and as part of research practice. MT 2025 is sure to be an eventful one - watch this space!
Performance Research Hub
