Theatre Production and Performance

Theatre Production and Performance | Ros Ballaster

Throughout 2014, Ros Ballaster provided and facilitated academic consultancy for the Royal and Derngate Theatre, Northampton. Ros provided guidance on script development for productions staged by the Royal, and brought other academics to the theatre to lend their expertise to relevant productions.

These included arranging workshops on Anglo-Saxon translation with Lucinda Rumsey (University of Oxford), and on Arthurian sources and medievalism with Professor Helen Fulton (York University) and Dr Carolyne Larrington (University of Oxford) for Ella Hickson to write her new play Merlin, the Royal’s Christmas show. Ros also wrote some programme notes and commissioned some from other scholars, bringing a wide range of academic expertise to the company’s performances.

Ros writes of the project: ‘This kind of knowledge exchange is mutually enriching — it challenges literary scholars to communicate and translate their knowledge in ways attractive and interesting to those engaged in theatre-making, and it enriches theatre practitioners’ understanding of the materials they work with.’ She continues to work with the Royal and Derngate, and now has a long-term consultancy agreement with them.

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Stage setting with actors performing a play