A note from the Art + Information rehearsal room
Director, Kate Gaul, reveals how our new performance lecture series is being brought to life
The process of getting Art + Information from an idea generated by the University of Sydney's Performance Studies Department and Seymour Centre, to the Seymour stage in November, has been a layered one.
Once the producers selected each of the three University academics—Beth Yahp, Tara Murphy, and Mitchell Gibbs—and the director—me—we embarked on a process of exploration around the modes, content, and delivery of the performance lecture.
Given that each academic is used to public speaking and lecturing—which is a kind of performance—we teased out where theatre could enmesh with science or academia, and how it might produce a different kind of lecture or performance.
The theatre is a poetic space. It needs both prose and poetry to create the laughter and tears which sit at the heart of the theatre experience.
How to do that, then, with material which is expert, certain, and often data-driven? Can we create accurate, incisive, and compelling 30-minute lectures around nuance and personal stories which leave room for doubt?
And how to grapple with content that is usually accompanied by a set of slides and delivered from a cheat sheet of bullet points; content that has time to detail the science, politics, or philosophy of each speaker? What is it to be on stage as opposed to the lecture hall?
Each performer has now created their 30-minute lecture on paper. This week we are in the rehearsal room and testing these words in a mock-up of the theatrical space.
Zac Saric, composer and sound designer, makes offers from his keyboard to support, deepen, or juxtapose tone. Morgan Moroney, lighting designer and video maker, considers how light can assist in telling the story of a collision in space that occurred 130 million years ago, or how a documentary image can humanise the scientific method.
Each day we are only ever at the start of a process that begins with the certainty and sanctity of words on a page. Can science and art, together, shape time and space and invite an audience to ask questions and ponder the big themes as we become a community in the dark of the Reginald Theatre?
Pleasure, astrophysics, marine science, a family story, memories of things lost, and the awe of looking out to the universe are incredible moments to bring to the stage.
Kate Gaul
Director, Art + Information
2 November 2022
Art + Information is a new performance lecture series that fuses drama and academia to bring big, bold ideas to life. Featuring Beth Yahp, Tara Murphy, and Mitchell Gibbs, three leading University of Sydney academics, and helmed by daring and distinctive independent theatre director, Kate Gaul, Art + Information plays 17 to 26 November. Buy tickets now.
At our new performance lecture series, Art + Information, drama and academia fuse to bring you intriguing insights into First Nations land care, the cosmos, and the small pleasures that make life worthwhile.
Buy ticketsThe process of getting Art + Information from an idea generated by the University of Sydney's Performance Studies Department and Seymour Centre, to the Seymour stage in November, has been a layered one.
Once the producers selected each of the three University academics—Beth Yahp, Tara Murphy, and Mitchell Gibbs—and the director—me—we embarked on a process of exploration around the modes, content, and delivery of the performance lecture.
Given that each academic is used to public speaking and lecturing—which is a kind of performance—we teased out where theatre could enmesh with science or academia, and how it might produce a different kind of lecture or performance.
The theatre is a poetic space. It needs both prose and poetry to create the laughter and tears which sit at the heart of the theatre experience.
How to do that, then, with material which is expert, certain, and often data-driven? Can we create accurate, incisive, and compelling 30-minute lectures around nuance and personal stories which leave room for doubt?
And how to grapple with content that is usually accompanied by a set of slides and delivered from a cheat sheet of bullet points; content that has time to detail the science, politics, or philosophy of each speaker? What is it to be on stage as opposed to the lecture hall?
Each performer has now created their 30-minute lecture on paper. This week we are in the rehearsal room and testing these words in a mock-up of the theatrical space.
Zac Saric, composer and sound designer, makes offers from his keyboard to support, deepen, or juxtapose tone. Morgan Moroney, lighting designer and video maker, considers how light can assist in telling the story of a collision in space that occurred 130 million years ago, or how a documentary image can humanise the scientific method.
Each day we are only ever at the start of a process that begins with the certainty and sanctity of words on a page. Can science and art, together, shape time and space and invite an audience to ask questions and ponder the big themes as we become a community in the dark of the Reginald Theatre?
Pleasure, astrophysics, marine science, a family story, memories of things lost, and the awe of looking out to the universe are incredible moments to bring to the stage.
Kate Gaul
Director, Art + Information
2 November 2022
Art + Information is a new performance lecture series that fuses drama and academia to bring big, bold ideas to life. Featuring Beth Yahp, Tara Murphy, and Mitchell Gibbs, three leading University of Sydney academics, and helmed by daring and distinctive independent theatre director, Kate Gaul, Art + Information plays 17 to 26 November. Buy tickets now.
At our new performance lecture series, Art + Information, drama and academia fuse to bring you intriguing insights into First Nations land care, the cosmos, and the small pleasures that make life worthwhile.
Buy tickets
