The Judith E. Wilson Drama Studio
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A Newsletter of the Faculty of English Volume 12, 2012 The Judith E. Wilson Drama Studio “studio, n. Pronunciation: /ˈstju ːdɪəʊ / Etymology: < Italian studio: see study n. †1. Fine Art. = study n. 10. Obs. rare— 1. 1819 Shelley Let. 25 Feb. (1964) II. 80 The most remarkable is the original studio by Michaelangelo of the day of judgment. 2. a. The work-room of a sculptor or painter; also, that of a photographer. c. Cinematogr. A room in which a cinematographic film is shot. Hence, a film-making complex including film studios and attendant offices and premises (also in pl.); the company which runs this. Cf. film studio n. at film n. Compounds 5.” Trevor Joyce reading (Judith E. Wilson Poetry Fellow 2009-10) From: OED Online: http://www.oed.com/view/Entry/192072 Theatre, or ‘The Theatre’ or ‘drama’ or This is perhaps a more unusual resource ?redirectedFrom=studio& even ‘performance’ – all of which supply for a university department to have than no official accolade or qualification for a it at first seems, as surely there are many Poetry readings | Play readings | Prose graduate to depart with in hand, is technologically-equipped studio-like readings | Readings | Live-streamed everywhere. Many early career paths into spaces in which the collision of debate readings | recordings | film-showings | show business have begun their and ideas between academics, students film-making| painting class | ballet | excavation here, and indeed most of the and the general public can take place. contemporary dance | dramaturgy | country’s ‘top’ jobs in theatre purportedly Over the more than eight years of its student plays | Clowning workshops | still salary people who read something existence, the studio has been both a Experimental music | Classical music | other than theatre at Cambridge. venue for significant cultural occasions, Butoh | Miscellaneous Theatre Festivals | albeit on an intimate scale, as much as it Space which it is difficult to negotiate | The Judith E. Wilson Drama Studio ~ has been an invaluable space for Unperformable theatre | multi-lingual located literally and notionally in the students and teachers to encounter one readings & performances | Artistic basement of the Faculty of English ~ is another in ways which newly challenge residencies | Professional & student both a venue and a studio: a place where how innumerable forms of work are performances completed productions can be seen by treated and considered. the public, and also a place in which First, the studio is a studio: and in this it or students and others, there are work can be developed and worked at, serves its main function, providing a many venues in which to peruse or or worked out. large isolated space – with an array of Fpursue one of Cambridge’s most lighting possibilities from almost pitch popular extra-curricular activities and There have been poetry readings in darkness to stadium brightness, and a exports. almost total darkness, the speaker’s range of acoustic possibilities. There are delivery amplified yet as quiet as a props, costumes, objects and machines, Each eight-week term there is a hectic whisper in your ear, and in another time, materials which are free to use. You can calendar of productions incorporating but perhaps not entirely at the other end play large and loud here, but also, experimental theatre, musicals, plays of any notional spectrum, the entire crucially, miniscule and whisperingly. classical and contemporary, as well as room has been transformed into a beach, Primarily, it is a space in which activities numerous other discrete cultural works complete with sand, sea, mollusks and related to the making and study of and practices. live-streamed whales. poetry and drama can be explored, www.english.cam.ac.uk shared and studied – in a room whose Many places are venues for a variety work can be transmitted or delivered with infinite varieties of atmosphere can be of activities and events, and many may lay absolute clarity and distinction. What all handled directly by those present. claim to their own distinctive cultural studios should provide, however, is space significance, but something which has in which these things as a given can be As a most rudimentary teaching tool or persistently remained an integral aspect of questioned, elaborated, modified or exercise in which any text may be a lot of the work produced in the studio is discarded or replaced entirely. encountered, the studio provides a space the porosity via which people can come to in which a text can be performed live, in engage with it. It is perhaps important to note that over fragmentary or complete form, in the last six or seven years at least, there radically different ways, accommodating It is tricky to write about this aspect, or has been no stated ‘artistic policy’ radically divergent voices and voicings, location, or activity of encounter – without governing or programming or choosing treatments of material and attitudes to its sounding archly insistent upon the what goes on in the studio. It is available representation and reproduction. This is privilege of process over production, as if in the first instance to members of the certainly one of the most effective uses of this were some elite hive in which genius- English Faculty, but then also to a wider this resource in the delivery of its core bees publicly evacuate the tantrum before public both within the university and a activity: two or more entirely different – the poem is born as mellifluous honey. little and far beyond, as a room which can and, crucially, live– performances of be booked for private work or public exactly the same text can be heard in the Indeed, a number of productions, performance. same place, and there is nothing like the performances, readings and even teaching experience of such a thing, however the events in the studio have drawn the Any studio space is of course really a tool idea strikes you as simplistic or easily epithet ‘elitist’ from some audience- box, and there are manifold applications available via the web. members. The phrases ‘self-indulgent’ to which the uses of the studio can be put. and, perhaps particularly poignant in the The current Judith E. Wilson Poetry As a venue for public cultural events, the English language, ‘pretentious’ have been Fellow, Caroline Bergvall, is already using studio has always had a close relationship heard more than a few times by people the space in a radically enabling way, with the creative force of its function as a leaving the studio. And that is perhaps placing her own work in a context which studio: a place where things are made, yes: because it has been a space in which allows people to consider it in the light of but also the same place where they are people have felt encouraged to be ‘brave’, other practitioners, and her truly generous tried and tested, first. Theatre history has to risk failure, or simply to present style of presentation is keenly attuned to been full of attempts to formulate terms something which is unsure of its sense of the ways in which the studio can be used for such spaces – ‘laboratory’ is a word accomplishment. Or which, perhaps not to make complex and difficult work often used across languages for the place altogether conversely, is outrageously accessible and compelling. in which artists carry out their assured of its own validity. But also, the ‘experiments’. A lot of the work of studio very often affords the chance for Jeremy Hardingham is a performance- theatre-making is not perhaps quite so the audience to encounter and challenge maker & writer. He has been the Judith E. hypothesis-led as this, though, yet there is challenging work directly: to question it, Wilson Drama Studio Manager since 2006. still a requirement for a space in which to critique it, even change it. These things, as explore the anterior of what may well as the dissenting and different voices For more information about the studio ultimately come to be shown before an which can be heard among them, are and its events, see the studio web-pages audience. Often, events at the Judith E. integral to its openness as a space for on the Faculty of English website: Wilson Drama Studio have felt very much genuine dialogue, between performers and www.english.cam.ac.uk like listening in to the processes by which audiences, as also between works and the performance has arisen, rather than their makers. There you will also find a place where attuning to its complete accomplishment. you can contribute your own memories, And actually, this is one of its most All of this of course does not preclude the images, recordings and thoughts to the important features as a space for public fact that the studio has always also been, steadily growing ‘NOW in the past’ dialogue, as a rehearsal room, classroom and remains, a place in which excellent, archive of studio history. and occasional artsy-party room. highly accomplished, complete and cogent Whether you are entering the room in which the whole of Milton’s Paradise Lost is being read, performed, sung and played by over a hundred people in one day, or whether you are facing the surprising raw hilarity of Sarah Kane’s 4:48 Psychosis played out by crazed clowns wielding semi-frozen chicken, there is something in the incompleteness or even instability that this space affords which facilitates its generous breadth of access. Crucially in the Faculty of English, the studio provides space for activity whose primary material is not literature, and this vitally enhances the ways in which literature can be encountered and experienced. Students performing a reading of Enemy of the Stars by Wyndham Lewis, Michaelmas 2006 2 Not so.