Professor Joe Kelleher

 

Activities and Interests

Joe is Professor of Theatre and Performance. He is currently also Head of Subject for Drama, Theatre and Performance. His research interests are in contemporary theatre and performance, with a key interest in the forms of critical practice that might speak to particular performance rhetorics. A central theme of his work has been a concern with structures of theatrical persuasion, both within and beyond the professional theatre. His focus over the last few years has largely been on European performance, with a special attachment to work being produced over the last decade or so in northern Italy.

Research Supervision

Joe is convenor of the Drama, Theatre and Performance Studies PhD programme at Roehampton. He is an experienced supervisor of both theory based and practice as research doctorates. He is currently directing PhD work on civic performance art and the architecture of emergency; phenomenologies of laughter; writing, performance and stand-up epistemology; choreographic practice and the abstraction of the real; Pina Bausch and the mitreisender spectator; the performance of built environments; and training for performance.

Publications

Books
The Theatre of Socìetas Raffaello Sanzio, with Nicholas Ridout and the core members of SRS: Chiara Guidi, Claudia Castellucci, and director Romeo Castellucci. Routledge, 2007.

Contemporary Theatres in Europe: A Critical Companion co-edited with Nicholas Ridout, Routledge, 2006.

Idioma Clima Crono is a large format journal, the ten volumes of which have been gathered as a box set, of essays written alongside the Socíetas Raffaello Sanzio’s three-year international theatre project Tragedia Endogonidia. 2002-2005.

Romeo Castellucci. To Carthage Then I Came. Exhibition, by Claudia Castellucci, Joe Kelleher and Nicholas Ridout, Arles: Actes Sud, 2002.

Tony Harrison. (Writers and Their Work series). Plymouth: Northcote House, 1996, i-xii, 1-84.

Chapters in Books
1. ‘A Man in the Audience Stands Up (Postcards from Spectatorland…)’, chapter for a book from Italian dance performance group Kinkaleri, Rome: Luca Sossella Editore, due to be published 2007-8.
2. ‘Legwork: Thinking, Showing, Doing’. A Performance Cosmology, eds. Richard Gough, Judie Christie, Daniel Watt, London and New York: Routledge, 2006.
3. ‘Human Stuff’. Contemporary Theatres in Europe, eds. Joe Kelleher and Nicholas Ridout, London and New York: Routledge, 2006, 21-33.
4. ‘”Our Radius of Trust”: Community, War, and the Scene of Rhetoric’. Blairism and the War of Persuasion: Labour’s Passive Revolution, ed. Richard Johnson and Deborah Lynn Steinberg, London: Lawrence and Wishart, 2004, 173-85.
5. ‘The Suffering of Images’. Live: Art, Performance and the Contemporary, ed. Adrian Heathfield, London: Tate Books, 2004, 190-5.
6. ‘Delinquency and Dreams: Redeeming the Sea of Stories’. Childhood Remembered, ed. Kimberley Reynolds, Lichfield: Pied Piper, 2003, 101-7. Originally in NCRCL Papers 3: Childhood Remembered: Proceedings from the 4th Annual IBBY/MA Children’s Literature Conference at Roehampton Institute London, National Centre for Research in Children’s Literature, 1998.
7. ‘The Writer’s Block: Performance, Play and the Responsibilities of Analysis’. Psychoanalysis and Performance, ed. Patrick Campbell and Adrian Kear, London and New York: Routledge, 2001, 132-46.
8. ‘Rhetoric, Nation and the People’s Property’. Mourning Diana: Nation, Culture and the Performance of Grief, ed. Adrian Kear and Deborah Lynn Steinberg, London and New York: Routledge, 1999, 77-98.
9. ‘Face to Face with Terror: Childhood in Film’. Children in Culture: Approaches to Childhood, ed. Karín Lesnik-Oberstein, London: Macmillan; New York: St Martin’s Press, 1998, 29-55. Invited contributor.

Articles
1. ‘Falling out of the world: in Rome with Freud, a friend, Moses and Socìetas Raffaello Sanzio’, forthcoming Performance Research, Vol 12(2), 2007.

2. ‘“It’s so beautiful here. Come, you come too’. At the postdramatic threshold with Socìetas Raffaello Sanzio’, forthcoming Yale Theater Magazine, 2007.

3. ‘A Romance of Ashes: the 2005 Venice Biennale International Theatre Festival’, edited article. Contemporary Theatre Review, Vol 16(4), 2006, 502-9, CPR Documents.

4. ‘Che succede? Sulla scena di Bock & Vincenzi’. Art’O, spring 2006.

5. ‘Sentimental Education at the National Theatre’. Performance Art Journal, (PAJ 81), 27(3), September 2005, 45-54.

6. ‘Last Night, Tonight’. Frakcija, 32, Special issue on Goat Island’s When will the September roses bloom? Last night was only a comedy, spring 2005.

7. ‘Beyond Repair: Celebrating 20 Years with Forced Entertainment’. Contemporary Theatre Review, Vol. 15(1), 2005, 168-71, CPR Backpages.

8. ‘Ethics of Voice: Claudia Castellucci and Chiara Guidi in conversation with Joe Kelleher’. Performance Research, 9.4 (On Civility, ed. Alan Read), forthcoming 2005.

9. ‘An Organism on the Run: Socíetas Raffaello Sanzio’s C.#01’. Performance Research 7.4 (On Archives and Archiving, ed. Richard Gough and Heike Roms), 2003, 135-40. Also in Idioma Clima Crono I, Cesena, 2002.

10. ‘Theatre PUR on Ice’. Performance Research 6.1 (On Maps and Mapping, ed. Richard Gough), 2001, 79-87.

11. ‘The Wolf-Man’. Performance Research 5.2 (On Animals, ed. Alan Read). Performance text and short article. With accompanying text by Adrian Kear. 2000, 89-92.

12. ‘Disappearing Authors: Poetry and the Twentieth Century Stage’. Drama in English Literature: The 18th All-Turkey English Literature Conference 9-11 April 1997. Conference Proceedings, Bilkent University, Ankara. 1997, 26-38.

Talks, Symposia, Conferences
1. F.I.S.Co (Festival Internazionale sullo Spettacolo Contemporaneo). Respondent through four day section of festival, ‘WANTED’, curated by Kinkaleri, with guests Fabio Acca, Mårten Spångberg, Forced Entertainment etc. Bologna, 21-26 April 2007.

2. ‘Bizarre Objects of Performance’. Paper for Goldsmiths College, London University, Art Theory guest lecture series. 15 March 2007.

3. ‘Step Forward the Spectators’, invited speaker at one-day symposium Making Theatre, Newcastle, February 2007. New Writing North / University of Newcastle / Northern Stages.

4. Presentation / workshop at Being There, event for the AHRC National Performance Theory and Practice Doctoral Research Training Initiative, Queen Mary, University of London, December 2006. Invited speaker.

5. Bologna University, June 2006. Day-long symposium to inaugurate a project on advanced research methods in contemporary theatre and performance. An international forum for PhD level students, academics and artists. A developing collaborative initiative between Bologna University, Roehampton University and Queen Mary University of London. The symposium is a development of work at the 2005 Venice Biennale. The focus is towards a larger (funded) event in Bologna in 2007.

6. ‘Francesca and the Machines’. Paper delivered at Performance Studies international (PSi 12), Queen Mary, University of London. June 2006.

7. Foreman Dialogues. Public debate with playwright and director Richard Foreman. Loughborough University, May 2006. Invited speaker.

8. ‘Writing, Encounter and Event’. Presentation with Simon Bayly, Queen Mary Consortium for Writing in the Disciplines, May 2006.

9. Psychoanalytic Theory in Art and Performance Research. Three-hour presentation with Ernst Fischer and Adrian Kear for AHRC doctoral training programme. Wimbledon School of Art, March 2006.

‘”È belissimo qui. Vieni. Vieni anche tu…”: At the Postdramatic Threshold with Socìetas Raffaello Sanzio’. Beyond Drama: Postdramatic Theatre Symposium, Huddersfield University, 24-6 February 2006.

Convenor (with Nicholas Ridout) of a series of public talks To Make and to Represent with artists daily during the Venice Biennale theatre section. 15-25 September 2005.

Panel (with Simon Bayly [Roehampton], Adrian Kear [Roehampton], Alan Read [Roehampton], Nicholas Ridout [Queen Mary]), ‘What is a university?’. TaPRA Conference, University of Manchester, September 2005.

Panel (with Simon Bayly [Roehampton], Adrian Kear [Roehampton], Alan Read [Roehampton], Nicholas Ridout [Queen Mary]), ‘Inhumanities, or They Shoot Horses Don’t They?’ Performance Studies International, Brown University, USA. March-April 2005. Centre for Performance Research International Gathering ‘Towards Tomorrow’, Aberystwyth, April 2005.

‘Listening to You, Watching You Do Things. Reflections on Socíetas Raffaello Sanzio’s M.#10’. Paper delivered at QUORUM, Queen Mary, University of London theatre and performance research seminar. November 2004.

Public discussion with the Italian performance group Kinkaleri. Laban, London. October 2004.

Convenor (with Nicholas Ridout) of a public symposium, Tragedy Technique Community Impossible, with the core members of Socíetas Raffaello Sanzio. London International Festival of Theatre. May 2004.

‘The Theatre Fetish’. Paper delivered at the London Theatre Seminar, Institute of English Studies, University of London. January 2004.

Public discussion with Chiara Guidi and Claudia Castellucci for the session ‘Ethics of Voice’, Civic Centre: Reclaiming the Right to Performance international conference. London. April 2004.

‘Lessons in a lost language’. Paper delivered at the Goat Island Summer School Symposium, Creative Re-use, Bristol University. August 2002.

‘”I’ve things to be, places to see…”: performance, memory, and standing still’. Paper delivered at International Federation for Theatre Research (IFTR), Amsterdam. July 2002.

Public discussion with Atilla Pessyani, director of Iranian performance company Theatre Bazi. Riverside Studios, London. Produced by Centre for Performance Research. March 2002.

‘Seeing is Believing & the Videochild (signs that don’t even say what you want them to say…)’. Paper delivered at Performance Studies International (PSi 7), Mainz. 2001.

Seminar/Panel: Beyond Semiotics: Theatre and Recalcitrance (Co-convened with Adrian Kear) American Society for Theatre Research, New York. 2000.

‘Like, Literally: Mimesis and Paranoia’. Paper delivered at Performance Studies International (PSi 6), Phoenix. 2000.

‘Spaces of Writing, Topologies of Performance’. Paper delivered at American Society for Theatre Research (ASTR), Minneapolis. 1999.

‘Eurydice in the Underworld: Kathy Acker’s Future Maps’. Performance Studies International (PSi 5), Aberystwyth. 1999.

‘Delinquency and Dreams: Redeeming the Sea of Stories.’ Paper delivered at 4th International Board for Books for Young People, Roehampton. 1998.

‘Looking Back on Modernism: Testimony and Verse’. Paper delivered at International Society for the Study of European Ideas (ISSEI). Utrecht. 1996.

Other Writing (Selected)
‘Image.’ Short article in Performance Research, Vol 11(3), Lexicon, 2007.

‘Hey Girl’. Programme notes for premiere of Socìetas Raffaello Sanzio’s Hey Girl!, Théâtre l’Odéon, Paris, Autumn 2006.

Book review: Hans-Thies Lehmann, Postdramatic Theatre (Routledge, 2006), for Contemporary Theatre Review, Vol 16(4), 510-11, 2006.

Book review: Enoch Brater, ed. Arthur Miller’s America: Theater & Culture in a Time of Change (University of Michigan Press), for Contemporary Theatre Review, Vol 16(3), 38-9, 2006.

‘Dissolvenze e dissolvimenti’. Press article for Santarcangelo 06 International Festival.

Short untitled article in Pompei il romanzo della cenere, La Biennale di Venezia, 37. Festival Internazionale del Teatro, Milan: Ubulibri, 2005, pp. 117-8.

‘Rhetoric.’ Performance text for Forced Entertainment’s durational work Lexicon Marathon. Mousonturm, Frankfurt, November 2003. London International Festival of Theatre, November 2004. Invited writer.

Performance texts translated from Italian (verse and prose) for Socíetas Raffaello Sanzio’s Tragedia Endogonidia L.#09 (London), Laban. 2004.

‘Nine Unreasonable Theses on the Campsite, Handwritten by a town-dweller’. Programme essay to accompany performances of Theatre PUR’s Take Cover! (See Practice as Research, below). 2004.

Theatre Capital. A short series of performance reviews (on work by Kinkaleri, Masque Teatro, Edit Kaldor, Teatrino Clandestino, Fanny e Alexander, and Motusfactory) for the website E-State (an outlet for the early stages of the AHRB-funded project ‘Performance Architecture Location’, led by Alan Read. http://www.e-state.org.uk Some of the early Idioma essays can also be viewed on this site. 2003

Wolokolamsk Highway. Translation from the German of the five verse plays in Heiner Müller’s Wolokolamskerchaussee, for an undergraduate production. Roehampton. 2003.

Mrs Freud and Mrs Jung. Playtext commissioned for London fringe production (Hampstead) and UK tour. 1997.

The Wolf-Man. Performance text for the practice as research project The Wolf-Man. Brixton HeArt Room. 1996.

The Clouded Eye. Playtext performed at Edinburgh Festival Fringe (my own production, 1993), and revived for a brief professional production at Riverside Studios, London. 1995.

Performance
1. Since 1996 I have been a member of the performance group Theatre PUR, directed by Simon Bayly (now a senior lecturer at Roehampton University), as a performer and co-deviser of the work. PUR are a collective of (currently) seven people, including performers, theatre-makers and a sound artist. The ensemble nature of the company enables long rehearsal times, in which the work negotiates contemporary understandings of presence and activity (in life and in performance) and explores experimental modes of making and responding to a performance score. Full-length productions with PUR include:

Euphoria. A collaboration with installation artist Lily Markiewicz. Young Vic Studio, London, 1997. Tramway, Glasgow, 1998. Invited artists (Glasgow).

Running Time. Young Vic Studio, London, 1998.

Take Cover! Commissioned for the international conference Civic Centre: Reclaiming the Right to Performance. London, 2003. Invited artists.

DEAR ALL – a brief encounter. Birkbeck College, University of London, June 2006.


2. The Wolf-Man. A devised performance project based on Freud’s case study and related materials. A collaboration between academics (Adrian Kear, Joe Kelleher and Maggie Pittard) and artists (Ernst Fischer and Helen Spackman) based at the time at Roehampton. Text by Joe Kelleher. The performance ran at the private domestic theatre Brixton HeArt Room during winter 1995-6.

Teaching Expertise

At Roehampton Joe has developed several
courses for the BA, including 'Advanced Theatre Practice', 'Tragic
Thought', 'Modernism Performance and the
Avant-Garde', 'The Voice in Culture', 'Postmodern Practices of Performance' and
'Drama and the Family Romance'. In the
studio he has overseen undergraduate
productions of such as Richard Foreman’s
Film is Evil, Radio is Good, Reza
Abdoh’s
Quotations from a Ruined City,
Heiner Müller’s
Wolokolamskerchaussee (in his
own translation), Peter Handke's and Kathy Acker’s
Eurydice in The Underworld, as well
as devised projects.

He also has devised and taught a course
'Childhood on Film' for the Film and
Television Studies programme. He developed the course
'Critical Practices' for the MA Performance Studies.

Other teaching (BA, foundation year)
includes 'Performance Project', and
'Approaches to Drama and Theatre'.