Making theatre as an emerging company: Exposing trends, tactics, strategies and constraints

Duffy, Jenny (2017) Making theatre as an emerging company: Exposing trends, tactics, strategies and constraints. Doctoral thesis, Northumbria University.

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Abstract

This thesis is based on a journey of practice undertaken by emerging theatre company, Massive Owl between 2012 and 2016. The thesis has been written by company member, Jenny Duffy but is reflective of the broader experience of the company as a whole. It exposes and discusses key trends, tactics, strategies and constraints of this journey, generating a unique contextual account of the experience and work of an emerging company working in the field of contemporary performance today. Through this the thesis responds to an identified gap in literature within the field of contemporary performance that examines the work of emerging artists.

It analyses select frameworks currently available to and prolifically used by emerging artists including: Arts Council England’s funding programme, Grants for the Arts and ‘Scratch’ and Work-in-Progress events, from the perspective of an emerging company. Through examining the role of the arts within recent cultural policy and surrounding agendas of this policy, the thesis critiques the predominant instrumental and economic rationale for arts funding in relation to the neoliberal capitalist context and the impact this has on emerging artists’ development and their work.

The thesis concludes with a call to arms from within the unstable and rapidly changing political climate of 2017, to value artists on their own merits and to not make claims for art within frameworks that place constraint on its wider role and value.

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