News is a place where events such as workshops, conferences, and launch events related to all areas of theatre, dance and performance training are announced. Calls for Papers and other research-related announcements are also welcome here.
My Training is a space where individuals can reflect on their own personal experiences of training. This will allow traditions of training and particular companies’ unique training methodologies to be examined from a variety of subjective perspectives. Posts may include descriptions of the origins and principles of training methodologies as well as reflections from students, workshop leaders, and others associated with the training of their experience of it.
Anyone who wishes to contribute is encouraged to submit their own post, or to comment on any of the existing pieces, allowing organic, living discussions about personal experiences of distinct trainings to evolve.
The Studio is the area of the TDPT blog dedicated to the audio-visual documentation of training practices. We hope that over time the studio will act as a repository of performance training materials, making them available for research and for use in studios and classrooms across the world. Some materials will also provide models of how to document training, possibly with short examples of reflective writing to complement the documentation.
Audio-visual materials should clearly demonstrate a particular aspect of the research/practice. They can be a recording of a training exercise, a series of comments/interviews on a particular approach, or a provocation to adopt, rethink or transform a training example – and an invitation to share these transformations on the blog.
Comebacks is a space which offers the opportunity to respond to ideas and arguments put forth in other contexts. These might be ones that were explored within the pages of the Theatre, Dance and Performance Training Journal proper, other academic journals, conferences, symposia, workshops or broader practical sessions. While we encourage authors whose work has been included in past or current issues of the journal to return to ideas previously discussed, we equally invite new contributors to provoke conversation on any content related to training.
A comeback might be defined as:
- a return
- a reply after a period of consideration
- a quick reply; retort
- making fashionable again
- coming back to something forgotten (to return to someone’s memory)
Training in the Community investigates pedagogic approaches outside of professional practice, exploring how performance training is utilised in community and applied theatre settings as well as how practitioners train and prepare for those settings.
Training in the Community investigates the role of training in applied and community theatre. We are looking for contributions from practitioners, scholars, teachers and others interested in exploring the intersection between training and community for instance, how training might be used in relation to theatre for social change, the relationship between training and some of the prominent themes of applied practice, or how we train for working in the community.
The Practice Diaries Exchange is a place to explore, discuss, debate and rethink the concept of training/practice in order to give weight to training/practice as a ‘deep-going’ process of cultivation that can lead to to profound understanding and realisation of embodied knowledge in performing arts. In order to create an open space where everyone may share their opinions, this section will run like a forum – calling for a question as a theme first and then collecting contributed articles for follow-up discussions. The question will serve as a stimulus to not only attract and invite various views from known or experienced knowledge but also to encourage people adopt a practice-as-research process for exploring the offered question.
We welcome the proposal of questions from all artists, practitioners, researchers, students and blog readers who are interested in training or practicing processes of performing arts. The questions related to training/practice could come from your experiences, something you have been contemplating, or from a sudden creative idea. If you are interested to raise a question for the first session, please send your proposal to the section editor, I-Ying Wu, at [email protected].
Editorial Policy
A small team of academics and practitioners from the Theatre, Dance and Performance Training editorial team will review all contributions to the blog. We are interested in receiving a mix of different kinds of content and formats including audio and video, as well as opinion pieces, edited discussions, interviews or shorter responses. There is no set word count for submissions but as the blog invites a range of types of contributions, article-length submissions should be reserved for the journal itself. You could submit extended ideas or articles over a series of blog posts. The posts are not peer-reviewed, but are moderated and curated by a small editorial team. For submissions to the blog “Home” page or “My Training” please get in touch with James McLaughlin ([email protected]), submissions to the “Comeback” section can be emailed to Bryan Brown ([email protected]). Those interested in submitting audio-visual materials for “The Studio” should make contact with the Studio Editor Maria Kapsali ([email protected]) in the first instance. Submissions need to be hosted on an external site – YouTube, Vimeo, Metacafe, DailyMotion, Veoh, Soundcloud – and will be linked to/embedded in the blog. All rights remain with the producer of the material. Any copyright permissions will need to be in place before being shown on the TDPT blog. All material will be assessed for editorial suitability and quality.
Videos should meet the Technical Specifications criteria listed below:
• Length: Aim for 5 minutes (If there is a case to be made for longer then make it to us – but also consider chunking the video down into separate sections and submitting a number of videos).
• We strongly encourage you to accompany your videos with a short written statement (up to 250 words), giving a title, a list of contributors, information of context; explaining the purpose of the exercise; providing any other relevant information.
• As with our written articles, videos should be accessible to those who may not have experience or prior knowledge of the particular activity.
• Videos in a language other than English need to have subtitles.
• All videos need to be hosted on an external site, following their submission guidelines. We do not have the capacity to host videos directly on our site.
• Videos must meet minimum standards of quality for both visual and audio components. Poor audio can often compromise the effectiveness of a video, irrespective of the quality of the visuals. Use a camera with a good built-in microphone and get as close to the sound as possible. Use an external microphone if you must stay farther away.