Guildhall School's Andy Lavender leads an insightful talk that explores how conservatoires and the performing arts industry are refiguring practices and relationships in a time of challenge and change.
Andy will discuss sustainable theatre production drawing from three innovative initiatives at Guildhall School of Music & Drama. The first is a production of Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing undertaken according to the principles of the Theatre Green Book, an industry-aligned standard for sustainable theatre production.
The second concerns a research project with Angels Costumes (suppliers to film, TV and theatre), to create a digital archive using the Holosys motion capture system, such that a viewer can inspect a costume on the body of a performer.
The third concerns the redesignation of the School’s Institute for Social Impact Research in the Performing Arts, to become the Guildhall De-Centre for Socially Engaged Practice and Research, which holds that distributed and decolonised models are especially productive in relation to contemporary forms of civic and socio-cultural artistic practice.
Whilst each initiative is different, they operate modally across key registers:
- Preservation (whilst drawing on and promoting new practices)
- Intersection (drawing lines between sectors, practices and constituencies)
- Legacy (geared around both continuities and disruption)
Taken together, they allow us to say something about refigurings in a Western conservatoire at a time of challenge and change in the sector. They seek to extend the boundaries of habitual practice and pedagogy, in a postcolonial, post-pandemic environment where ideas of excellence are factored alongside an acknowledgement of insufficiency and delegation.
