The Nomadic Studio

The concept of the Nomadic Studio challenges and explores the kinds of spaces (internal, external and virtual) needed in order for performers to assemble and create work that speaks to, from and for people (the communities within which theatre functions). It unsettles terms such as ‘performer’ and ‘pedagogue’ as fixed positions; the term ‘nomadic’ generates a sense of liminality, porosity, transformation, journeying and celebrated otherness within the training space. The Nomadic Studio is not owned or policed; it is designed to create spaces where performers can assemble/gather and where the human self-image can be performatively and critically explored. The term Nomadic is intended to disturb notions of permanence, universality and stability in relation to actor training, and to echo contemporary social, societal and aesthetic challenges – such as migration, sustainability, homelessness and nationalism. The concept draws variously on the auto-cours at the Lecoq School in France, Olu Taiwo’s concept of the Mobile Studio, Lisa Peck’s work on critical acting pedagogy, the work of the SP Escola de Teatro in Brazil, Rosi Braidotti’s work on nomadic theory, Judith Butler’s work on a performative theory of assembly, Rajni Shah’s work on gathering and listening, Kristine Landon-Smith’s work on intracultural actor training, Niamh Dowling’s development of a nomadic pedagogy, Claudia Nascimento’s work on the actor as cultural border-crosser and the auto-didactic journeys of many performers who seek out their own training.
Our proposal is to walk the nomadic studio.
We propose a walk that journeys the environs of RCSSD, the spaces between some of the conference venues and the wider socio-geographic context of the area around RCSSD – assembling ourselves at points along and after the walk. This mobility is central to enabling an engagement with the cultural, racial, ethnic, gendered, aged and disabled diversity within which we perform and create. The journey is important in bringing meaning to the event of assembly.
Embodying the spirit of the Nomadic Studio, in order to explore and interrogate its potential significance for performers, pedagogues and performance makers, we propose a walk that will enable the participants to share thoughts and practices within the context of the nomadic – whilst also bearing witness to and acknowledging the contemporary political significance of dislocation, journeying and assemblage.
This event is an invitation to journey, to assemble and to participate in the performative definition of the nomadic studio. As an assembly of participants, we will aim to gauge and map our different needs and desires and their potential accommodation within the nomadic studio concept, seeking to recognise its constellations/networks accordingly. As such the nomadic studio will operate as a process rather than an outcome - a way both to gather data which guides the future direction/shape of the nomadic studio as well as to explore how we might resist restrictive approaches to teaching, training, performing and making. We encourage participants to record their experiences and reflections through digital photography, audio recording, drawing/mark-making and creative and/or reflective writing.
We will invite responses to a series of challenges – seeking to question what the nomadic studio might represent or enable within the context of participants own performance and/or pedagogic practice and experience, and within the context of the spaces/contexts through which we walk and assemble and with which we might therefore engage. The activity will finish by opening out the concept for further discussion and to suggestions for development through future journeys and assemblies elsewhere.