Abstract:
This highly illustrated talk explores food in performance and food as performing art; the performative in cookery, its staging in the kitchen and at the table; exploring piquant analogies and correlations; the theatricality of food and food as a model for theatre, multisensory, processual and communal.
From extraordinary video footage of food preparation techniques on a street in Thailand to combat in the kitchen between Chinese Master Chefs, this audio and video presentation will first explore virtuosity in performance by raising issues to do with skill, competence, and ability.
Aspiration to and attainment of the virtuosic is questioned and problematized in the light of other approaches to notions of individual and collective creativity; and questions of how composition, notation and performance scores can enable, nurture or prescribe virtuosity are advanced. The transformative power of the performer’s energy will be witnessed (on video) and the presentation will consider how performance knowledge is transmitted. Finally, speculation and provocation are made on current training practices, the reflective practitioner, performance knowledge and the passing and surpassing of skill.
This presentation will explore the analogies between theatre-making and cookery, performance and gastronomy, aiming to discover what insights (lessons/instructions) one throws onto the other. Listeners will be left hungry…
This highly illustrated talk explores food in performance and food as performing art; the performative in cookery, its staging in the kitchen and at the table; exploring piquant analogies and correlations; the theatricality of food and food as a model for theatre, multisensory, processual and communal.
From extraordinary video footage of food preparation techniques on a street in Thailand to combat in the kitchen between Chinese Master Chefs, this audio and video presentation will first explore virtuosity in performance by raising issues to do with skill, competence, and ability.
Aspiration to and attainment of the virtuosic is questioned and problematized in the light of other approaches to notions of individual and collective creativity; and questions of how composition, notation and performance scores can enable, nurture or prescribe virtuosity are advanced. The transformative power of the performer’s energy will be witnessed (on video) and the presentation will consider how performance knowledge is transmitted. Finally, speculation and provocation are made on current training practices, the reflective practitioner, performance knowledge and the passing and surpassing of skill.
This presentation will explore the analogies between theatre-making and cookery, performance and gastronomy, aiming to discover what insights (lessons/instructions) one throws onto the other. Listeners will be left hungry…
About the Speaker:
Richard Gough is Professor in Music and Performance in the Faculty of Creative Industries, Artistic Director of the Centre for Performance Research (CPR), University of South Wales, and editor of Performance Research which is esteemed to be the most cutting-edged journal on intercultural studies. In his work on the intersection of food and performance, he develops the concept of ‘interweaving’ which bears wider implications to many other aspects of human societies. The CPR under his directorship has brought together performers of many different performance traditions to explore and challenge the concept of intercultural theatre, among whom were the Chinese contemporary theatre and Kunqu director Huang Zuolin and the cast and crew of his ground-breaking Macbeth production.