AYSE TASHKIRAN BA, PGCERT, FHEA

Job title Senior Lecturer, Co-Course Leader MA/MFA Movement: Directing and Teaching Email [email protected] Social media @aysetashkiran Website www.aysetashkiran.com

COURSES Advanced Theatre Practice, MA/MFA Movement: Directing and Teaching, MA/MFA Research Degrees (PhD)

PROFILE After joining Central in 2003, I became joint Course Leader of the MA/MFA Movement: Directing and Teaching with Vanessa Ewan in 2004. This is the first and oldest course in Europe to train movement directors and movement teachers. I combine my teaching on this course with practice in professional theatre settings as a movement director and as a researcher in the field of movement direction.

My undergraduate degree is in Drama from Bristol University, and I then trained with Lecoq at L’Ecole International Jacques Lecoq for two years in Paris. After leaving the school I spent twelve years as a physical theatre performer and creator: this included a world tour of Voyageur Immobile with La Compagnie Philippe Genty, shows with Toby Jones and Table Show at BAC, the and West Yorkshire Playhouse, and site-specific performances for Projet InSitu in Syria, South Africa, and France.

My movement teaching started at Guildford School of Acting in 1998 where I was Senior Tutor of movement for three years. Movement direction practice had started to develop whilst at Lecoq and now became more formalised alongside teaching. The move to Central enabled me develop and innovate in the teaching of movement direction, whilst also continuing to work as a movement director for theatre productions and companies, such as the and the Royal Shakespeare Company. Other movement teaching includes workshops and mentoring fine artists at Wimbledon College of Art (2007/8); Art of Regeneration and the National Theatre’s Next Generation project working with young people in South London to generate new music theatre (2004-6). I have led workshops in France, where I was movement practitioner for Universite d’automne at the Scene Nationale, Chateau-Gontier (2008/9); I taught chorus work for dancers and actors International Workshop Project, Greece (2008). I continue to run movement direction workshops and on movement and presence internationally (Chile, New York).

I am an Associate Artist of the Royal Shakespeare Company and a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy. I have been an External Examiner for MA Theatre Lab at RADA, and am currently serving as External Examiner at University of Chichester.

CURRENT PROJECTS INCLUDE: Founding the first professional network for movement directors in the UK with collaborator Diane Alison- Mitchell (Head of Movement at Guildhall), MDA Movement Directors’ Association in the summer of 2020.

Since 2014, Vanessa Ewan and I have been initiating ways beyond the MA/MFA programme, in which Central as an international centre for actor movement and movement direction, might continue to develop professional movement practitioners and foster research collaborations. We have been delighted to host over 150 movement practitioners at our workshop series as part of the ICM (International Community for Movement). Currently, we are leading a research project that is a unique collaboration between Dr Alexandra Gerstein, art curator at the Courtauld Institute and movement direction practice that ran alongside the Rodin Exhibition at the Courtauld 2016-2017.

TEACHING AREAS Movement direction practice and contexts Histories and lineages of movement direction Movement pedagogy Lecoq inspired chorus work, neutral mas, 20 movements and movement forms Movement for puppeteers Devising practices.

PHD SUPERVISION Supervision offered in areas of movement pedagogy, movement direction, devising practice, and puppetry in relation to training and directorial practice.

PRACTICE Current movement direction includes: Europeana as part of Maria Aberg’s Projekt Europa. Recent work includes: BLANK by Alice Birch directed by Maria Aberg at the Donmar Warehouse with Clean Break; The Provoked Wife by John Vanbrugh directed by Philip Breen (RSC); As You Like It by William Shakespeare, directed by Kimberley Sykes for the Royal Shakespeare Company 2019-2020 RST, Barbican and National Tour; The Wolves by Sarah DeLappe directed by Ellen McDougall at the Theatre Royal, Stratford East; Shakespeare in Love adapted by directed by Philip Breen, National Tour); Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare, directed by Erica Whyman in the RST, Barbican and National Tour (RSC); Duchess of Malfi by John Webster, directed by Maria Aberg for the Royal Shakespeare Company in The Swan and Tidy Up for Peut Être Theatre National Tour; Dido, Queen of Carthage by Christopher Marlowe, directed by Kimberley Sykes for the Royal Shakespeare Company in The Swan; by William Shakespeare, directed by Ellen McDougall at The Sam Wanamaker at Shakespeare’s Globe, London; Fantastic Mr Fox written by Roald Dahl adapted by Sam Holcroft, directed by Maria Aberg at the Nuffield Theatre and National and International Tour (UK Theatre Awards 2017 Winner of The Renee Stepham Award for Best Presentation of Touring Theatre); Lady Chatterley’s Lover directed by Phillip Breen at the Crucible Theatre and National Tour with ETT; Dr Faustus directed by Maria Aberg for the Royal Shakespeare Company in The Swan and Barbican; The York Minster Mystery Plays, directed by Phillip Breen at York Minster (Winner of best production York Culture Awards 2016); The Government Inspector, directed by Roxana Silbert at Birmingham Repertory Theatre and National Tour; Barbarians (Young Vic) production nominated at the Oliviers 2016, Hecuba, The White Devil, Shoemaker’s Holiday, As You Like It, The Merry Wives of Windsor, King John, Richard lll and Measure for Measure (Royal Shakespeare Company), Sssh Bang (Peut Être Theatre National Tour), Wildefire (), Much Ado About Nothing (Royal Exchange), The Sleeper ( Max), Little Eagles (RSC at the Hampstead Theatre), The Chairs (Theatre Royal Bath), Day of Significance (RSC, tour) and Sweeney Todd (Welsh National Opera MAX).

Selected Presentations and Curation includes:

2019. Movement Direction: Lineages and Contemporary Practices at the 3rd Seminário Internacional Corpo Cênico, convened by Artes do Movimento of Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro - UNIRIO. Talk and Workshop Litz Pisk’s Pedagogic and Artistic Influence on Post-War British Theatre Creative Collaboration: Women at the Helm at Equity Moving the Stage: Movement Director’s Practice at RCSSD Shaping the Stage at the Old Vic Theatre The Movement Podcast curated by Natasha Harrison

2018. Radical Mischief Conference RSC and University of Birmingham; curated conversation on how scholarship and performance might explore representations of violence in performance The Stage Short Interview about movement direction teaching

2017. Teaching movement directors of the future. Labanarium, University of Surrey

2016. Interview on Movement Direction, Digital Theatre

2014. History of Movement Direction, video for the National Theatre

2011. Movement in the 1960s, Royal Shakespeare Company 50th Anniversary, Royal Shakespeare Company Stratford-upon-Avon

2009. Convenor and chair, Roundtable of Movement Directors in Conversation and curator of the Litz Pisk Masterclasses, Royal Central School of Speech & Drama.

KEY PUBLICATIONS 2020. Movement Directors in Contemporary Theatre: Conversations on Craft by Ayse Tashkiran (Bloomsbury, Methuen July 2020) 2017.? The Actor and His Body? by Litz Pisk, new introduction by Ayse Tashkiran (Bloomsbury, Methuen 2017)

2016. ‘British Movement Directors’ in The Routledge Companion to Jacques Lecoq, edited by Rick Kemp and Mark Evans (Abingdon; Routledge, 2016)

MEMBERSHIPS Equity and UCU

REGISTER OF INTEREST Nothing to declare