Visualising War Workshops
To find out more about the Visualising War Project click here.
Principal Investigators: Alice König & Nicolas Wiater. Contact: viswar@st-andrews.ac.uk
Details of the project workshops, and how to register, are listed below
15th March, 2021 (online)
This workshop will bring members of the Visualising War research group together to share work in progress and discuss current and future interdisciplinary opportunities. It will proceed in three parts:
2-3.30: Staging War Stories
The Visualising War project has been working with professional theatre company NMT Automatics since 2019, contributing to their development of ‘Tempus Fugit: Troy and Us’. This play brings an ancient Greek war story into dialogue with 21st century experiences of war and will be performed at the Edinburgh Festival in August 2021. NMTA members will join us to discuss how their research into ancient battle narratives, the representation of women, and 21st century PTSD has informed their representation of war, past and present. There will be lots of time for Q&A, to enable NMTA members and researchers to learn from each other.
Dr Tom Rice will follow up with some reflections on staging war from the Film Studies perspective, and this session as a whole will give us the opportunity to think more broadly about the following questions, which are key to the wider research project:
- Why do we dramatize war? And what trends/habits influence how we do it?
- Why do we watch dramatisations of war?
- What expectations do audiences have of war stories in film and on stage?
- What challenges do writers, actors and directors face when staging war stories?
- What impact do dramatizations of war have on how individuals and societies experience, understand and even conduct it?
3.30-4.15: Cross-Disciplinary Dialogues
Katarina Birkedal (the Visualising War project’s Postdoctoral Research Assistant) will update us on the work that she has been doing to bring different research strands and disciplinary approaches into dialogue, to enhance our collective inquiry into how narratives of war work and what they do to us. This will lead to some plenary discussion of potential synergies within the research group and future opportunities for interdisciplinary collaboration.
4.15-5pm: Interdisciplinary Teaching
During this hour, we will move forward with plans to create some interdisciplinary teaching modules based on the expertise and interests of the Visualising War research group.
If you are interested in attending this workshop, please register here. For more information, you can contact the Visualising War team via viswar@st-andrews.ac.uk.
19th March, 2-4pm
This online event is open to anyone who is involved in theatre, film, dance or documentary-making. We would love you to be part of our conversation between researchers and practitioners about the ways in which war is (or should be) represented in these media.
The conversation will be led by theatre makers from NMT Automatics, who have been working with the Visualising War research group to explore the different ways in which war gets depicted on stage and screen, and the impact which those representations can have on individuals and communities.
Among other questions, we will be considering:
- Why do we dramatize war? And how can (or should) we do it?
- Why do we watch dramatizations of war?
- What expectations do audiences have of war stories in film and on stage?
- What challenges do writers, actors, directors and producers face when dramatizing war in different media?
- What responsibilities do we have when dramatizing war for public consumption?
- What impact do dramatizations of war have on how people experience, understand and even conduct it?
NMT Automatics will share excerpts of their current work-in-progress as prompts for discussion, and participants will be invited to share their experiences and ideas in response. Discussion will be open and collaborative, offering networking opportunities as well as creative thinking space across different art forms.
If you would like to join us, please register here. The link to join the online event will be emailed out to those who register a few days in advance. For more information, please contact the Visualising War team on viswar@st-andrews.ac.uk.
