Creating and Acting Identity: Practice-as Research

A One-Day Interdisciplinary Symposium

Sponsored by: the Departments of Theatre & Dance, German and English;

the Davis Humanities Institute; and the Consortium for Women and Research

Friday October 22, 2010: 10.00am-5.30pm

Lab A, Wright Hall, UC Davis

followed by a performance of Tilly No-Body at 8pm

Vanderhoef Studio Theatre, Mondavi Center for the Performing Arts

What prompted this symposium?

Creating and Acting Identity: Practice-As-Research fuses historical, aesthetic, theoretical, psychological and imaginative investigations into the enactment of identity, while simultaneously examining the nature of practice-as-research. This interdisciplinary symposium was initially prompted by the research of Dr Bella Merlin – Professor of Acting at UC Davis – into the life of Tilly Wedekind, actress-wife of German playwright, Frank Wedekind (1864-1918) (author of Lulu and Spring Awakening). Merlin’s research comes to fruition this October 2010 in the play, Tilly No-Body: Catastrophes of Love, which runs in tandem with this symposium.

The Wedekinds’ professional and domestic union was both profoundly creative and explosively destructive. While Frank became internationally celebrated – largely due to Tilly’s incarnations of his female roles – she remains peripheral to theatre history. During their marriage, Wedekind wrote plays fuelled by their tempestuous relationship, actively moulding Tilly’s identity by insisting she play the female leads. Private interactions became public consumables, and Tilly was robbed of her own voice. Frank’s ‘ownership’ of her identity went so far as to include regular weighing and measuring of her body.

Tilly eventually suffered a nervous breakdown and attempted suicide by swallowing poison. The poison at last found its way out of her body through her skin, until one day, the skin of her hands ‘came off’ like a glove, leaving baby-new skin underneath. This image informs many of the choices in the devising of Tilly No-Body, as well as the themes of the symposium. In her mature years, Tilly sought to re-construct herself through an autobiography, Lulu: Die Rolle meines Lebens (‘Lulu: The Role of My Life’), in which she reveals how Frank ‘turned her into Lulu’ in the course of their life together. Her voice has yet to be heard in English…until now.

However, the questions are much broader. Underpinning the specificity of Frank and Tilly’s life are universal issues of self and identity in an era where personal values are nationally and globally under re-examination. Actors negotiate significant questions of self, body image, and identity, which face every one of us on a daily basis. Therefore, Tilly’s life in effect forms a filter for broader, universal questions: ‘Who am I? Who defines my identity? In an age of celebrity fascination and cultural diversity, who owns my identity?’

We will strive to probe some answers during the symposium.

What are the key research questions?

There are two core research questions fuelling our enquiries:

1. How does the actor (ergo: the human individual) create, shape and negotiate complex layers of identity and self-(re)presentation?
2. What are the issues involved in presenting practice-as-research in the humanities? How do we adopt modes of formulating and disseminating our research, which may draw upon traditional intellectually-driven findings, but which ultimately culminate in the sharing of embodied knowledge, personalised and presented through the actor in performance?

Symposium schedule

10.00am:                     Coffee

10:15am:                    Welcome and Introduction to Symposium Topics, Context and Participants:

Dr Bella Merlin (Professor of Acting, UC Davis)

10.30am-12.00pm      Session 1: Creating and Acting the Wedekind Identity

This session will be an historical and contextual insight into the material that informed the scripting and performing of Tilly No-Body.

• Chair: Professor Simon Williams, Theater and Dance, UCSB. Dr Williams has authored books on German actors of the 18^th and 19^th centuries, the history of German theatre, and subversion & sexuality in theatre
• Wedekind and Lulu: A Cultural Context: Dr Gail Finney. Professor of Comparative Literature and German, UC Davis. Dr Finney’s publications include work on Frank Wedekind, the portrayal of women in modern theatre, and Weimar Germany.
• Frank and Tilly ‘Marriage is the most relentless of human addictions’ Margret Greiner. Guest International contributor from the Wedekinds’ home town, Munich. Frau Greiner has been a key research collaborator on Tilly No-Body.
• Tilly No-Body: Practice-as-Research & Acting with Facts: Dr Bella Merlin Professor of Acting, UC Davis, and creator & performer of Tilly No-Body

12.00pm:                     Coffee Break

12.15pm-1.45pm:       Session 2: Creating Identity: Performative contributions from writers exploring Practice-as-Research

Three professional writers of different genres discuss how they create multiple identities through their one, unique imagination. Their presentations include performative elements.

• Chair: Bella Merlin
• Playwright: Lucy Gough. British writer, Lucy Gough’s haunting voice combines streetwise grit with metaphysical poetry. Widely produced in film, television, BBC Radio and international theatre, her work often investigates the nature of identity, including its ultimate destruction: suicide. She is the Granada Artist-in-Residence at UC Davis Theatre and Dance Department this Fall 2010.
• Performance Poet: Dr Andy Jones. Professor of Composition & Literature, UC Davis, Dr Jones is a powerful performer as well as a scholar; publications include Split Stock with Brad Henderson and broadcasts include Dr Andy’s Poetry and Technology Hour – a vital contribution to UC Davis life
• Novelist: Lucy Corin. Assistant Professor, English, UC Davis, Lucy Corin is a fiction writer whose publications include Everyday Psycho-Killers: A History for Girls (2004) and Entire Predicament (2007).  Her insightful, first-person narratives create highly performable prose, which often explores fragmented identities.

1.45pm-2.30pm:         Lunch brea 

2.30pm – 3.45pm:      Session 3: Shaping Identity: A Discussion Panel

                                    This session brings four interdisciplinary voices together to discuss the way

                                    they are each involved in shaping and researching identities – either their own

                                    or that of others.

• Chair: Professor David Grenke. Professor of Dance, UC Davis, Dave Grenke’s choreographic work as founder of ThingsezIsee’m Dance/Theater includes a focus on Weimar Germany and Degenerate Art; his award-winning choreography Vespers explores aspects of autobiography and embodied research.
• Librarian/Second Life expert: Bernadette Daly Swanson, M.L.I.S. Bernadette Daly Swanson’s involvement in the use of Second Life in collaboration with the Psychiatry and Behavioural Sciences at UC Davis provokes questions of how individuals create and shape their identities through technology and creative media.
• Actor: Miles Anderson. Olivier-nominated UK actor, Miles Anderson’s wide and acclaimed career has involved the adoption of multiple identities from the mad King George (this summer at the San Diego Old Globe) to Macbeth to Hitler to Peter Pan. He is also the director and collaborator on Tilly No-Body.
• Sociologist: David Orzechowizc. Winner of the PSA Graduate Student Award at UC Davis for his paper, ‘Elite Emotion Managers: The Case of Novice and Semi-Professional Actors’, David Orzechowizc’s research addresses the way in which actors manage their feelings, and thus create and shape their onstage and social identities. 

3.45pm:                       Coffee Break

4.00-5.15pm:              Session 4: Acting and Performing Identity: Examples of Practice-As-

                                    Research

                                    This session comprises presentations from three PhD candidates from UC

                                    Davis, all of whom are actively engaged in practice-as-research, and the

                                    presentation of self in various performative modes.

• Chair: Claire M. Blackstock (PhD candidate in Theatre and Dance: information pending)
• Nita Little (PhD candidate in Theatre and Dance: information pending)
• Daniel Grace (PhD candidate in English: information pending)
• Dylan Bolles (PhD candidate in Theatre and Dance: information pending)

5.15pm:                       Break

6.00pm:                       Dinner

8.00pm:                       Performance of Tilly No-Body at Vanderhoef Studio Theatre,  Mondavi Center

9.30pm:                       Post-show discussion and drinks reception in Lab A, Wright Hall

10.30pm:                     End