Project description
Tracing cross-currents between creative practitioners across disciplines
Distinct from traditional opera, new music theatre can be defined as a combination of music and drama in modern form. From the 1960s to the 1980s, interdisciplinary collaboration and reciprocal influence between composers, writers, directors and performers from different backgrounds were crucial to the shaping of its performative language. For instance, singers inspired creative musical and theatre writing; theatre directors and composers pursued similar concepts of the human voice; and the work of innovative dramaturgs was supported by lesser-known musicians and actors. The EU-funded NePraMusT will retrace some of these interactions, voicing the role of numerous creative agents currently underrepresented in official accounts. The aim of the project is to identify the creative cross-currents that converged in new music theatre, and which have continued to shape present-day creative practices.
Objective
From the 1960s to the 1980s, numerous younger European composers were drawn to theatrical projects that overturned the established conventions of the opera house. These projects were typically small in scale and experimented with new relationships between instrumental performance and staged action. This ‘New Music Theatre’ is today regarded as an important manifestation of the experimental spirit of the time, and remains widely influential upon present-day creative production. However, histories of the genre have been misleading in focusing almost exclusively upon the figure of the composer. Documentary evidence shows clearly that new music theatre typically emerged from collaborations between composers, writers, directors, and performers, who dynamically mediated practices and theories from different disciplines and backgrounds. For instance, singer Roy Hart inspired works by Stockhausen and Henze, Eugenio Barba’s and Berio’s contemporaneous views about voice were liminal, while Peter Brook’s dramaturgy was supported by the work of lesser known composers and practitioners. NePraMusT aims to retrace some of those interactions, voicing the role of numerous creative agents currently underrepresented in official accounts. Through gathering extensive documentary evidence from European archives and undertaking practice-led investigation of historical actor training and voice work, the action will establish how music and theatre converged in these projects, throwing light on the creative and aesthetic crosscurrents that have heavily shaped present-day creative practices. NePraMusT will contribute to enhance the ER’s skills and future employability prospects, opening new training opportunities both as an academic and an artist-researcher, furthering her ability to plan, organise, develop her dissemination and public outreach competencies, and reinforcing her professional networks of practitioners and researchers versed in theatre and music theatre studies.
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Funding Scheme
MSCA-IF - Marie Skłodowska-Curie Individual Fellowships (IF)Coordinator
HD1 3DH Huddersfield
United Kingdom