Photo by Johan Svensson
I am a dramaturg and writer based in Devon (UK), Skåne, and Halland (SE). My education and professional background is in theatre and ethnology which has shaped my practice into what it is today. I have been a teacher, a bookseller, a cultural evaluator, and a librarian, all whilst finessing my skills as a creative practitioner.
After taking on both amateur and professional musical theatre gigs as a child, I pursued an education in Writing, Directing and Performance from the University of York. I then moved to Hong Kong for four years and undertook a summer school programme looking at Chinese Culture from a Gender Perspective. This led me to taking a masters in Applied Cultural Analysis at Lund University. Within my masters, I focused on art practices as integral to identity processes through phenomena such as international film festivals, both novelty and traditional museums, and translated literature. Since completing my masters, I have endeavoured to continue learning by taking part in a summer course from the Central European University in Commoning Art and Culture.
Now I freelance as a dramaturg and work on original play scripts. I keep up a love of books in my spare time and seek out accessible and affordable ways to continue my education in an environment that strives for the opposite when it comes to formal learning.
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.