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Theatres of Contagion: Infectious Performance

Starts:
Finishes:
Venue: Birkbeck 43 Gordon Square

No booking required

  • How have theatre and performance represented, examined or been implicated in the transmission and circulation of medical and psychological conditions and knowledge?
  • How has our understanding of these relationships and phenomena changed over time, across cultures, including via developments in interdisciplinary practice and inquiry?

At least since Thebes was beset by plague, western theatre has incubated a fascination with its own contagious power. This has extended beyond investigating medical and psychological conditions on stage, to both exploring and protecting against performance's capacity to transmit ideas, illnesses, feelings and behaviours. This two-day symposium puts the relationship between theatre and contagion under the microscope, to assess it from a range of humanities, medical, psychological and scientific perspectives, and by looking to diverse forms including drama, theatre, live art, dance, musical and cultural performance.

Keynote speakers:

  • Bridget Escolme (Queen Mary University of London), 'Passion, I see, is catching': Contagion, Cure and Emotion on the Early Modern Stage
  • Kirsten Shepherd-Barr (University of Oxford), Plague, Inc.: Theatre's Engagement with Mechanisms of Contagion and Containment

With performances by:

  • Dickie Beau, Re-Member Me
  • David Slater and Entelechy Arts, BED

Screenings:

  • Martin O'Brien, The Unwell (2016)
  • Jorge Ruiz AbÃnades and Diego Agulló, The Dancing Plague (2016)

Interdisciplinary keynote panel:

Stephen Frosh (Birkbeck, Psychosocial Studies); Richard P. Mann (Leeds, Mathematics); Emily Senior (English, Birkbeck); Matthew Weait (Portsmouth, Law); Jo Winning (English and Medical Humanities, Birkbeck).