Papers by Jonathan Pitches
Performance Research, 2020
This article examines the convergence of amateur and professional documentary practice, particula... more This article examines the convergence of amateur and professional documentary practice, particularly photographic self-portraiture, as it is performed on the mountainside. It uses a tight selection of examples drawn from the community of hillwalkers known as ‘Wainwrighters’ to examine the phenomenon of ‘produsage’ (Bruns 2008).
While the world of digitally co-created artefacts may seem a distance away from the top of a mountain, I argue here that high peaks and mountain tops are no more immune from the influence of social media than any other space. In this context, the article seeks to answer a series of questions relating to the practice of taking ‘summit selfies’: What do the self-made digital artworks produced by walkers, and disseminated in tight-knit online communities of mountain hikers, look like? What is it about the mountains that provokes such forms of mediatized self-expression? And how do artefacts evolve and transform, to form ‘palimpsests’ as Axel Bruns terms the outputs of produsage? These questions are discussed in relation to three main examples sited in the Lake District National Park in England: Karen’s Forster’s 214 Headstands, my own celebration of ‘Completion’ on the peak of Pillar; and Charlotte Mellor’s #HoopingtheWainwrights project.
The article concludes by repositioning the selfie as a collective creative act and challenging its popular representation as an expression of youthful selfishness.
Keynote , 2019
Keynote address to History and Historiography Seminar, Institute of History Universidade Federal ... more Keynote address to History and Historiography Seminar, Institute of History Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro
Technology, Pedagogy and Education, Feb 15, 2013
This paper shares the findings of a teaching and learning project (Digitalis) that investigated w... more This paper shares the findings of a teaching and learning project (Digitalis) that investigated ways in which digital technologies can be used by teaching staff to facilitate reflection on creative practices within performing and creative arts disciplines. Two types of reflection are considered: (i) reflection on creative practice and (ii) creative forms of reflection, with five case studies from a range of arts subjects representing a spectrum of reflective activity. Drawing on a model of cooperative enquiry, simple technological enhancements were made to the design of five existing modules, and these were evaluated through student focus groups, observation of student work, and reflective interviews with the module leaders. Through a thematic analysis of the data, the paper shares the learning from these modules, along with a suggested model of digital reflection, outlining the place of capture, documentation and organisation technologies in the reflective process. The paper concludes that there are benefits to be gained from digital reflection, given its facility to aid students to ‘look again’ at their own ephemeral creative processes.
This chapter forms part of a bigger project on Mountains and Performance and sits alongside chapt... more This chapter forms part of a bigger project on Mountains and Performance and sits alongside chapters on Mountain Dramas and on Site specific performance in Mountains. It tries to model a particular way of looking at Mountain Rituals as performance with four key examples.
This is one of a series of draft writings which collectively form part of the 'Handrail' which gu... more This is one of a series of draft writings which collectively form part of the 'Handrail' which guides readers through my forthcoming monograph: Performing Landscapes; Mountains. They comprise a series of short, allusive pieces of writing describing a collective attempt to complete all 214 of the Wainwrights in the Lake District in a dozen years. The series describes an arc (from the first Wainwright climbed in 2006 to a speculative last climb in 2018). Viewed as whole these handrails help illustrate how the climbing of peaks may be consistently linked to the construction of dramatic narratives. It will explore the inherent dramaturgy of mountain hiking and climbing most evident in the numerous (and constructed) connection points between peaks – wainwrights, corbetts, munros, marilyns, the fourteen 8000ers and the seven summits. As a starting point it draws on Tim Ingold’s writing about walking as an intelligent activity (2011), placing centre stage the value of alternative intelligences when describing mountain landscapes, recognising, as Ingold argues, that: “cognition should not be set off from locomotion, along the lines of the division between head and heels, since walking is itself a form of circumambulatory knowing” (2011: 46). This first piece is: Beginnings.
In recent years there has been a distinct performative turn in the development of landscape-based... more In recent years there has been a distinct performative turn in the development of landscape-based architecture; it is now more than possible to consider scenographic models of spatial conceptualization – the “creation of spaces within which performing bodies can interact” (McKinney and Butterworth 2009:3) - as primary tools to analyse architectural interventions into landscape. Drawing on research for a forthcoming book, Performing Mountains (Palgrave 2018), this paper will seek to explain and critique the recent growth of ‘skywalks’, focusing primarily on mountain landscapes and on the scenographic management of risk, fear and exhilaration. In urban contexts skywalks are pragmatic links between buildings, designed to eliminate the need to descend and re-ascend. But in rural contexts the opportunity to enhance the experience of dangerous landscapes is being exploited by architects in high places all over the world – from the Rockies to the Alps, from the Grand Canyon to Zhangjiajie in Hunan province, China.
What does this growing phenomenon of skywalks tell us about the ways in which construction technologies are being utilised to heighten the experience of landscape? What behaviours are produced by such environments? What are the surrounding technologies used to facilitate this heightening of experience – social media and wearable technology for instance? How might a scenographic lens draw out aspects of landscape performativity that might otherwise remain dormant?
With specific reference to one recent example of mountain skywalks, the ‘Walk of faith’ on Tianmen Mountain, China, this paper seeks to answer these questions, building a case for a scenography-based reading of mountain architecture.
This paper was a joint paper, delivered with Mark Evans (Coventry University) and Simon Murray (U... more This paper was a joint paper, delivered with Mark Evans (Coventry University) and Simon Murray (University of Glasgow) at the International Platform for Performer Training conference in Zurich in January 2015. The presentation was delivered in the form of a conversation, interlocution and exchange. We focused on the theme of curriculum and played with the idea of what a ‘year zero’ might look like if we were to invent an actor training programme for the 21st century. Our presentation glanced backwards down the 20th century so as to identify key tropes and ideas which we wanted to ‘salvage’ for our new model(s). Our paper included reference to digital technologies, internationalism (the global and the local), and responded critically to key questions: training for what? Training for whom? How to train? Central to our presentation was be the claim that we cannot productively discuss future models of training without speculating on trends and movements in 21st century theatre, dance and performance.
Whilst Stanislavsky spent much of his energy trying to simplify the processes of acting and avoid... more Whilst Stanislavsky spent much of his energy trying to simplify the processes of acting and avoiding a (pseudo-) scientific terminology for his acting system, he was nevertheless caught up in Stalin’s appropriation of hard science after the Russian Revolution, to be paired with other ‘founding fathers’ of Soviet materialism, including Ivan Pavlov, in the creation of a powerful political orthodoxy. Here, Jonathan Pitches focuses on two of Stanislavsky’s key contemporaries, Meyerhold and Michael Chekhov, both of whom had worked with the founder of the System at different periods in their career, to pinpoint a significant shift, or turning point, in the development of twentieth-century Russian actor training. Drawing on Fritjof Capra’s history of systemic thinking, the article argues that a radical shift of thinking took place in actor training in the 1920s and 1930s, which prefigures the global paradigm crisis Capra has identified at the turn of the last century. Jonathan Pitches is a Principal Lecturer in the Department of Contemporary Arts at Manchester Metropolitan University and author of Vsevolod Meyerhold (Routledge, 2003). This article is a revised version of a paper delivered at the IFTR 2004 Conference in St Petersburg.
Its argument derives from his forthcoming book Science and the Stanislavsky Tradition (Routledge, 2005).
Performance Research, 2008
Physical Theatres, eds Keefe and Murray
Performance Research. 14.2
This article focuses on a detailed analysis of Chekhov’s training schema as he developed it as pa... more This article focuses on a detailed analysis of Chekhov’s training schema as he developed it as part of his studio activity at Dartington using the scene study of the Fishers’ scene (1936–37), written by Paul Rogers. Described by Deirdre du Prey as the scene designed by Chekhov ‘to provide training and experience for the student-actors, directors, playwrights, musicians, technicians, designers etc.’, it is a training regime in microcosm and one which du Prey singled out as a teaching tool when she later trained actors in the Chekhov technique in the US. There is an entire box of unpublished materials dedicated to this scene in the Devon Records archive, including the actors’ own visualised performance scores and art works associated with Goethe’s colour psychology. These diverse sources are brought together here for the first time and related to Chekhov’s later publications. This paper addresses the themes of interdisciplinarity and of Chekhov, training and the archive, paying close attention to the archival records by reconstructing on paper what Deirdre Hurst du Prey later called ‘a truly classic example of the use of Chekhov’s method’ in Laurence Senelick’s book Wandering Stars (1992). Its conclusion moves to a wider consideration of progressive education in the inter-war period and positions Fishers’ as a key example of alternative pedagogy, alongside those of Black Mountain and Cornish colleges.
"In accounts of the many cultural representations of mountains, the disciplines of theatre and pe... more "In accounts of the many cultural representations of mountains, the disciplines of theatre and performance are almost always left off the list. Poetry, art, literature, film and music all figure strongly in the canon of mountain-inspired art but instances of drama and performance in this field are seldom referenced. This is all the more surprising given the close affinities to be found between the languages mountaineers and performers habitually use to describe their respective crafts – intense sensations of being in-the-moment, of tackling a terrible adversary, of rigorous training and planning alongside the necessity for improvisation and the expeditious use of tacit knowledge. One explicit example of shared terminology is the phenomenon of “deep” or “dark play”, theorized by Jeremy Bentham, Clifford Geertz and Diane Ackerman amongst others. Richard Schechner’s extension of this term into Performance Studies (2006) importantly acknowledges the various layers of narration associated with dark play and it is this narration, or more specifically the retelling of dark play to which this paper is devoted. “In dark play”, Schechner tells us, “sometimes even the acknowledged players are not sure if they are playing or not…More than a few have died on a dare” (2006: 121). In terms of the representative act, Schechner argues for an iterative softening of the experience brought about through performance or enactment: “when a person recounts a ‘narrow escape’, he suggests, “what was deadly serious in the doing, becomes playful in the retelling” (2006: 121).
Using a consciously eclectic set of examples from the last 160 years, this paper will interrogate the retelling of mountainous deep and dark play - from Albert Smith’s performative lecture The Ascent of Mont Blanc (first performed in 1852) to the voyeuristic activity of Eiger-gazing in the 1930s, from the extreme sports of wing-suiting and BASE-jumping. In doing so, I seek to map some of the important mechanisms for these retellings – from early slide projection to the now ubiquitous head-cam - and to evaluate how audience’s vicarious sense of dark play has been mediated, from the golden age of mountaineering to today. "
This co-authored article, offers a detailed analysis of two productions of Pinter performed follo... more This co-authored article, offers a detailed analysis of two productions of Pinter performed following a period of training using Michael Chekhov technique and concentrating on theories of Atmosphere. In two parts, it covers both actors' and director's experience of applying Chekhov in production.
Studies in Theatre Production, May 1997
If there were a robust sector of theatre history based on stories of what might have been, the th... more If there were a robust sector of theatre history based on stories of what might have been, the thwarted collaborations of Michael Chekhov and Vsevolod Meyerhold would surely have figured strongly. Two of the most celebrated artists to emerge from the Stanislavsky tradition, their paths were forcibly diverted from one another by cultural and political developments in Moscow after the Russian revolution in 1917. Chekhov left Russia eleven years later; Meyerhold, as is well known, was never allowed to follow him, although he is reported to have rejected one opportunity to emigrate whilst on tour in Berlin in 1930, claiming his return was a 'matter of honour' (Braun 1991: 261). The most tantalising of these might-have-been alliances is sketched by Chekhov himself in his autobiography, Life and Encounters: Meyerhold had often invited me to act in his theatre during my time in Moscow. I had always wanted to work on a role under his direction. This time he made a new proposal. Knowing my love of Hamlet, he told me that he intended to stage the tragedy on his return to Moscow. He started to
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Papers by Jonathan Pitches
While the world of digitally co-created artefacts may seem a distance away from the top of a mountain, I argue here that high peaks and mountain tops are no more immune from the influence of social media than any other space. In this context, the article seeks to answer a series of questions relating to the practice of taking ‘summit selfies’: What do the self-made digital artworks produced by walkers, and disseminated in tight-knit online communities of mountain hikers, look like? What is it about the mountains that provokes such forms of mediatized self-expression? And how do artefacts evolve and transform, to form ‘palimpsests’ as Axel Bruns terms the outputs of produsage? These questions are discussed in relation to three main examples sited in the Lake District National Park in England: Karen’s Forster’s 214 Headstands, my own celebration of ‘Completion’ on the peak of Pillar; and Charlotte Mellor’s #HoopingtheWainwrights project.
The article concludes by repositioning the selfie as a collective creative act and challenging its popular representation as an expression of youthful selfishness.
What does this growing phenomenon of skywalks tell us about the ways in which construction technologies are being utilised to heighten the experience of landscape? What behaviours are produced by such environments? What are the surrounding technologies used to facilitate this heightening of experience – social media and wearable technology for instance? How might a scenographic lens draw out aspects of landscape performativity that might otherwise remain dormant?
With specific reference to one recent example of mountain skywalks, the ‘Walk of faith’ on Tianmen Mountain, China, this paper seeks to answer these questions, building a case for a scenography-based reading of mountain architecture.
Using a consciously eclectic set of examples from the last 160 years, this paper will interrogate the retelling of mountainous deep and dark play - from Albert Smith’s performative lecture The Ascent of Mont Blanc (first performed in 1852) to the voyeuristic activity of Eiger-gazing in the 1930s, from the extreme sports of wing-suiting and BASE-jumping. In doing so, I seek to map some of the important mechanisms for these retellings – from early slide projection to the now ubiquitous head-cam - and to evaluate how audience’s vicarious sense of dark play has been mediated, from the golden age of mountaineering to today. "
While the world of digitally co-created artefacts may seem a distance away from the top of a mountain, I argue here that high peaks and mountain tops are no more immune from the influence of social media than any other space. In this context, the article seeks to answer a series of questions relating to the practice of taking ‘summit selfies’: What do the self-made digital artworks produced by walkers, and disseminated in tight-knit online communities of mountain hikers, look like? What is it about the mountains that provokes such forms of mediatized self-expression? And how do artefacts evolve and transform, to form ‘palimpsests’ as Axel Bruns terms the outputs of produsage? These questions are discussed in relation to three main examples sited in the Lake District National Park in England: Karen’s Forster’s 214 Headstands, my own celebration of ‘Completion’ on the peak of Pillar; and Charlotte Mellor’s #HoopingtheWainwrights project.
The article concludes by repositioning the selfie as a collective creative act and challenging its popular representation as an expression of youthful selfishness.
What does this growing phenomenon of skywalks tell us about the ways in which construction technologies are being utilised to heighten the experience of landscape? What behaviours are produced by such environments? What are the surrounding technologies used to facilitate this heightening of experience – social media and wearable technology for instance? How might a scenographic lens draw out aspects of landscape performativity that might otherwise remain dormant?
With specific reference to one recent example of mountain skywalks, the ‘Walk of faith’ on Tianmen Mountain, China, this paper seeks to answer these questions, building a case for a scenography-based reading of mountain architecture.
Using a consciously eclectic set of examples from the last 160 years, this paper will interrogate the retelling of mountainous deep and dark play - from Albert Smith’s performative lecture The Ascent of Mont Blanc (first performed in 1852) to the voyeuristic activity of Eiger-gazing in the 1930s, from the extreme sports of wing-suiting and BASE-jumping. In doing so, I seek to map some of the important mechanisms for these retellings – from early slide projection to the now ubiquitous head-cam - and to evaluate how audience’s vicarious sense of dark play has been mediated, from the golden age of mountaineering to today. "
Case studies written by local experts, historians and practitioners are brought together to introduce the reader to new routes of Stanislavskian transmission across the continents of Europe, Asia, Africa, Australasia and South (Latin) America. Such a diverse set of stories moves radically beyond linear understandings of transmission to embrace questions of transformation, translation, hybridisation, appropriation and resistance.
This important work not only makes a significant contribution to Stanislavsky studies but also to recent research on theatre and interculturalism, theatre and globalisation, theatre and (post)colonialism and to the wider critical turn in performer training historiographies.
This is a unique examination of Stanislavsky's work presenting a richly diverse range of examples and an international perspective on Stanislavsky's impact that has never been attempted before.