Playing in the Gallery with Life-Model Theatre

Playing in the Gallery with Life-Model Theatre Dr. Nina Kane (Artistic Director, Cast-Off Drama)

Cast-Off Drama is…

- a theatre company of life-models, artists and street-performers working with itinerant and community art in galleries, studio theatres, community centres, festivals and outdoor locations.

- a recognised pioneer of 'life-modelling theatre' offering new roles to life-models as performers and to artists as 'notators' and audience members. We recognise life-modelling and life-drawing as interdependent art forms involving both model and artist in dynamic creative exchange. We see life-modelling as a theatre-based art form, and the life-drawing space as a space for theatre. 

- also works with live performance art interventions in public gallery spaces and has a specific relationship to galleries working closely with Education and Community teams to develop research programmes, responses to exhibitions, new audiences and ‘alternative canons’ from permanent collections. Has a 12-year continuous relationship with Leeds Art Gallery.

- committed to public and community arts, and embedding a practice of ‘ownership’ in gallery spaces and collections for everyone through accessible and inclusive community drama working. Works project-by-project; carries out independent Public Arts and Community Education research

Public Arts and Community Education (PACE)•are artist-led and centre on practice, experimentation, community politics, conversation and reflective thinking 

• develop working partnerships with galleries, education centres, and community forums to facilitate access to activities for communities who may find themselves excluded through intersectionality

•embed processes of selection and discussion of gallery collections; develop the means by which different ways of knowing can be expressed

• work with the development of body art and theatre practices; work consistently with the development of 'life-model readings' of art objects and collections; continually develop 'life-model canons' of art history

•work to principles of ‘community conversation’ and ‘in-reach’ i.e. encouraging members of the public into municipal spaces and institutions to participate in dialogue about their usage; work with public and community arts funding structures to offer activities free-of-charge or through optional donation

•are informed by diverse research philosophies and approaches, but primarily those of Luce Irigaray, Michel Foucault, bell hooks, Griselda Pollock, Augusto Boal & Paulo Freire

Current Projects

•Saturday Moots / Sunday Club•Queer Eye 2014 – 2017•My Name Is… / Crave by Sarah Kane•The Great Art Nude Survey (GANS)

•Let’s Get Basted!•Kiss and Tell

Saturday Moots / Sunday Club•a life-model development programme offering creative and networking experiences. Uses drama, storytelling, art history, looking at gallery works, discussions about life-modelling as a profession, conventions of the life-drawing space, codes of ‘robe use’, nude-working, pose and tableau-shaping (supported by two artist-notators)

•weekend workshops once a month – Saturday Moots for life-models, Sunday Club for life-drawers; model-led

Saturday Moots / Sunday Club•for experienced or new models and artists - all welcome; free of charge to models, optional donation for life-drawers

•WILMA- Women Into Life-Modelling Arts; not an agency, no audition

•strategically works to binary structures of gender - separate workshops for female and male models (alternating months);workshops are Trans*-friendly, recognise and support an individual's self-definition of gender; Transgender facilitator

•‘drop-in’ workshops on the Sunday (Sunday Club) for life-models to explore solo, paired and group modelling with life-drawers present; opportunity for life-drawers to draw, also for models and artists to network

•Leeds Art Gallery, Oct 2014 – July 2015•Wakefield, Huddersfield, York and Manchester from January 2015

Queer Eye 2014 – 2017 •three-year co-curatorial project between Cast-Off Drama and Leeds Art Gallery Community Engagement•queer culture (LGBT*IQ) – all welcome•developing relationships with LGBT*IQ individuals and community spaces in and around Leeds; ‘queering’ gallery spaces and collections•weekly workshop programmes, gallery performances, exhibitions and displays, film, life stories projects, publications and education resources; intersectional focus•long-term aim of co-curating a ‘queer display’ from Leeds Museums & Galleries collections with members of the public•independent research into queer co-curation between gallery curator (public institution) and artistic director (public artist); dialectical issues, artistic and research ownership, strategies, co-facilitation, social, economic and political implications, sustainability; publishing•thematic development by year - ‘Queer Cultures, Queer Lives and Intersectionality’ (Oct 14/15)-‘Roots, Shoots and Shifting: Explorations of Queer Places, Spaces and Displacement’ (Oct 15/16)-‘Golden Years: Queer Lives and Ageing - 50th anniversary celebrations of the legalisation of homosexuality in the UK (Oct 16/Dec 17)

-Queer Eye cabinet, after Claude Cahun, Cast-Off Drama / Leeds Art Gallery; Five by Lubaina Himid, 1991, loan, Leeds Art Gallery

My Name Is… / Crave by Sarah Kane“a project aimed at exploring the links between social networking, identity and performativity. It recognises that users of social networking are frequently involved performatively with mask and object-based forms when they build an identity and interact with others online. It recognises that users often transcend time, space and geography, create new liminal languages stuck between speech and writing, make traces and gestures through digital commitment or non-commitment, rename or reinvent themselves or live out different sides of their personality, choose visibility and invisibility and build communities with others that mark the self as belonging to tribes both inside and outside their everyday lives. The project aims to work with both the digital space and the physical world and will build both mask and text-based performances that enable deeper discovery and questioning, recognising the importance of how we name ourselves, live and perform online”.

My Name Is…/ Crave by Sarah Kane•18-30 year olds, LGBT*QI – focus on BME young adults•Gemma Barker case, 2012, Jennifer Saunders, 1991 – question: can political and community theatres provide a defence and a reflective space for young LGBT*QI people exploring presentations of a queer self in cyberspace and in everyday performance?

•mask-making, script-writing and drama project, 12 weeks investigating themes related to social networking and performance of identity; movement between online and offline relationships; building a queer ‘identity’ online; spectrums and ethics of online performance through character-building; ethical and legal questions of uses of a performative identity online; social networking as process for theatre-making in physical space and time – ethics, practices, innovations, Facebook as forum

•‘A Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing’ and ‘Echo and Narcissus’ fables•Crave by Sarah Kane, 1998. Rehearsed over the internet together; UK-based director, 4 actors based in different countries, each supported by an assistant director in their physical location, over a 3-month period; rehearsals timed to shift between the 5 countries represented by director and cast to explore optimum working conditions

•Live internet performance of the finished work in a UK gallery space on UK time (negotiated with the cast), shown on monitors

Repertoire works in development, 2012 - 2016Kiss and Tell

An installation-based, interactive, piece of street-theatre / one-to-one performance art for a gallery space. It is about kissing and telling secrets. It invites audiences to enjoy the act of kissing and telling, and invites them to think about what to do with secrets they tell and secrets they keep. The participant encounters a large shed at the edge of a sea. An old Duchess of indeterminate age and gender potters around the garden singing songs and gestures the audience member into the shed. Once comfortably ensconced within, the Duchess invites them to kiss her and tell a secret. She will then kiss and share a secret in return. The audience member is asked what they would like her to do with the secret they have told her and given four options - bottle, burn, bury or blow/blab! At a later date, bottled secrets will be collected and released into the sea; burnt secrets will be tossed into a ritual fire, buried secrets will be consigned to a beautiful patch of earth. Secrets to be blown or blabbed will be typed into a computer keypad by the audience member and broadcast on a social networking forum. The participant is asked what they would like to do with the secret she has told them, but does not have to act on it in any form unless they wish to. The Duchess will let the secret she tells go with the audience member. What they do with it is up to them. The exchange concludes with a farewell kiss. This performance piece is being developed for gallery appearances in 2015-2016 and draws inspiration from the works of Derek Jarman, Spencer Stanhope and Phil Sayers. It was developed in the early stages through discussion with Chinese National Painter Bai Ni (Yun Yang) in exchanges undertaken in 2012

Repertoire works in development, 2012 - 2016Let's Get Basted! and Other Tragic Tales of Bird-LifeLife-Model performance piece for a life-drawing and spectator audience. An elegant ostrich enacts tragic tales of bird-lore in a riot of foil and feathers. Come and hear the plight of the ugliest duckling, the bleeding hearted nightingale, the stork who couldn’t sup his soup, the Christmas turkey, the Old Bird who needed a hairdresser and the Phoenix still struggling to rise! This warm, wet, racy, roasting and most ridiculous clowning extravaganza has been built from life-drawing activity. Once the whole story has been performed, the Ostrich will invite the life-drawers to choose poses from the piece to re-stage for drawing. The performance lasts for 6 hours.

The Elements Project / Wolf, 2012 - 2013

The Elements Project / Wolf, 2012 - 2013

Modelworks, mother bird, Foil and Feathers (2008 – 2012)

Modelworks, mother bird, Foil and Feathers (2008 – 2012)

The Art of the Life-Model, 2002 - 2009

“Will You, Won’t You…?”, 2001 – 2002

The Dance by Paula Rego, 1988“Will You, Won’t You… Join the Dance?” Cast-Off Drama / WILMA, 2002

The Great Art Nude Survey (GANS), 2014 - 2017

•a life-model led consultation to assess the current status and conditions of nude-working in the Arts in Britain

•independent Public Arts and Community Education research project from Cast-Off Drama

•2-phase project from Sept 2014 – March 2017

•aims to develop nude-working policy and practice in galleries, arts education, funding bodies (national and local government)

•invites consultation from a wide range of interested parties

The Great Art Nude Survey (GANS), 2014 - 2017•WHO? life-models, life-drawers, performance artists, sculptors, dancers, theatre-makers, live art practitioners, clowns, circus workers, gallery education and participation, community, exhibitions and collections, curators, site managers, H&S, security, Front-of-House, Visitor Assistants, technicians, administrators, cleaning, catering, education workers, lecturers, tutors, teachers, teaching assistants, technicians, HR staff, college principals – mainstream and community, statutory, lifelong learning local government, arts council, policy-makers, arts programmers, arts development, unions, gallery visitors, arts students

•aims to produce six case studies developing nude arts work policy and practice in Britain by March 2017

•Cast-Off Drama – www.castoffdrama.blogspot.com•E-mail to request a word copy – [email protected]

Thank you! The door is open…Cast-Off Dramawww.castoffdrama.blogspot.com [email protected]