Photo by Cat Buck
I am a dramaturg, writer, and researcher. I work internationally from my base in Perth (Scotland) with strong connections to Devon (UK), Halland and Skåne (Sweden). I have worked as a dramaturg on queer adaptations of classics by Shakespeare, Marlowe, and Strindberg; been commissioned for original writing by Teater Dictat; delivered a rehearsed reading of an original play at Bastionen, Malmö; conducted research and development at Exeter Fringe Festival; and delivered a talk at Dramaten, Sweden’s national stage.
My professional theatre career has been evolving over the past five years through which I have also conducted research into Highland dramaturgy as cultural heritage at the University of the Highlands and Islands. I hold a BA in Writing, Directing, and Performance (University of York), and an MA in Applied Cultural Analysis (Lund University). After living internationally for most of my adult life, from Hong Kong to Sweden via Argentina, I’ve returned to the UK and have been developing my creative practice both in Devon and Scotland. My knowledge in identity, narrative, and heritage shapes my creative practice.
My passion for environmentalism reaches into how we relate with the nonhuman world and reflects on ways of sustaining fair and just futures beyond the anthropocene. I maintain a love of reading across a wide range of genres and value literary imaginaries as important part of our theatrical ecology.
Book recommendations from my IG @mcsbooks
My dramaturgy uses ethnological methodologies combined with creative/artistic research strategies. The aim is to anchor texts, performances, and creative visions with a unified grounding so that teams or individuals can consistently reach their full potential without being weighed down by a dozen additional worries. My dramaturgy typically exists in the liminal spaces between all individual roles to form an artistic cohesion and establish cultural, visual, and/or narrative logics. I specialise in three distinct and oft overlapping areas:
An ecodramaturgy deals primarily with the climate crisis and its anxieties. It critically interrogates the anthropocene and challenges theatre and performance’s role within it. I am particularly invested in moving beyond the anthropocentric perspective to understand and renegotiate how non-humans are represented and given voice in text and performance. This typically allows me to then move into the field of local and place-based environmental issues, whilst also assessing social sustainability as a tool that requires a macro understanding, not just a human-centred one.
Queer dramaturgy is diverse. My practice follows a “normkreativ” idea that brings in a nature of play, exploration, and artistry to norm-criticism. I strive to understand how heteronormativity has shaped the landscape of storytelling and reading, then work with queer practitioners to find an original way of subverting that. My dramaturgy is about representing queer bodies and our stories in both implicit practice methods and explicit performance structures. It is ever changing and ethnographically focused so that each queer project is unique and co-designed by a collective non-hetero reality.
My translated dramaturgy works with theories of translation, semiotics, and inter-cultural communications. It is not solely language based, but can also be understood as translation = metamorphosis. I explore the ways to translate text into performance, to translate productions across cultural borders, and to translate the imaginaries of communities. It is a dramaturgy that deconstructs visual cues, linguistic challenges, and cultural signifiers to then reconstruct a performance that can bridge borders and modes of understanding. On the one hand it can be a consultation of a translated script, on the other it can be an entire exploration of the space within which a play was written and the space it will be performed. It’s about understanding and making sure that the moments of misunderstanding prove to not be problematic.