top of page

COLLISIONS

A FESTIVAL OF

PRACTICE RESEARCH

IN PERFORMANCE

26-28 SEPTEMBER 2017

The Antidote

Cathy Sloan

Tuesday 26th September, 3pm & 6:15pm

What is recovery? What does it mean to choose to be in recovery? Is there something that society can learn from those who have grappled with addiction and chosen to live differently?

This presentation begins with a performance of extracts from a piece in development that grapples with the lived experiences of recovery. Created in collaboration with a group of performers who understand recovery processes, it explores what might be an aesthetic of recovery in theatre practice and performance.

My Research:

My research thesis proposes an approach to developing applied theatre practice as an ‘affective performance ecology’. I begin with the premise that applied theatre practice and research is a living thing bound up in relations in the world, with others and with theatre practices. My approach as a researcher-practitioner, my sense of being-in-the-world, is embedded in my understanding of ‘affect’ as a way of theorising the flow and exchange of energy or sensation that motivates us to thought, to action, to inter-relation with people, places and things. My practice as a theatre-maker with people in recovery from addiction is an affective expression of my understanding of the world and of those with whom I am collaborating. My research is, therefore, a practice of human ecology and, specifically, a concern with both performance ecology and ecologies of recovery (from addiction).

Cathy Sloan has worked as a teacher, facilitator and director/theatre-maker. She was Associate and later Artistic Director of Outside Edge, specialising in performance with and by people in recovery from drug and/or alcohol addiction. Currently she is a PhD candidate at the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama, exploring a philosophy of theatre-making that supports practices of recovery.

A body is a node of relational process, not a form per se. A complex activated through phases in collision and collusion, phasings in and out of processes of individuation that are transformed – transduced – to create new iterations not of what a body is but of what it can do.

 

Erin Manning (2013: 17) Always More Than One

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/messyconnection/ 

Website: https://www.messyconnections.co.uk/

bottom of page