Staff Magazine Editorial

This month I had the great privilege of writing the editorial for the University of Lincoln Staff Magazine. Just thought you might like to read it. Comments welcome as it describes something I've been thinking about for a while. It begins with a number of silly questions from the general editor, Dave...

Proudest Moment: Being awarded my PhD and getting married in the same month.

Dream Dinner Party Guests: my husband, Elizabeth Gaskell, Peter Gabriel, Ewan MacColl, William Wilberforce, Nigella Lawson and wrestler, Shawn Michaels. We would change the world in the space of an evening!

Favourite film: Studio Ghibli's My Neighbour Totoro

What are you listening to at the moment? the 'Inception' soundtrack while working and Yes' 'Talk', Asia's 'Omega' and Peter Gabriel's 'Ovo' in the evenings.

If you had a superpower what would it be? Space/Time manipulation

Last week I gave two lectures as part of our first year Foundations of Twentieth-Century Theatre module; in the first I received a round of applause for pretending to be a rhinoceros and in the second I baffled the group by reading Karl Schwitters' peculiar poem 'What a b'. The former was an attempt to bring the Theatre of the Absurd to life through the poetic diction of Eugene Ionesco and the latter, part of a broader explanation of Dadaism.

Both lectures were loosely connected to my own research in the area of theatrical avant-gardism. At times academics can be guilty of disconnecting research from teaching, presuming that there is little relationship between the two.  So recently, I've been reconsidering the way my own research impacts my students. For this Foundations course, my studies proposed a clearer way of understanding the relationship between the concepts of 'modernism' and 'avant-gardism'. It also, inevitably, meant that students had to pretend to be body parts as we participated in a workshop of Tristan Tzara's The Gas Heart!

And, further, I've been listening to the way my students respond to the ideas I present. After the fireworks of Ionesco and Schwitters, one student legitimately asked, 'but isn't it all just meaningless?' It led to a rewarding conversation about the intention of experimental theatre and how it might help us to think differently about art and the world outside the theatre walls. While I've considered these ideas before, my own conclusions were reinvigorated and challenged by the fresh eyes of my slightly bemused first years. As I write my first monograph and look forward to teaching on a fresh, revalidated degree next term, this experience has reminded me of how excitingly fruitful a university can be for academics and students alike.

CSW