In my second year, I began to discover what kind of theatre I wanted to make. Artist as Witness remains one of my favourite modules on my degree as it was here where I found my kind of practice, my niche. Having explored the subject matter of war, destruction and death in Ensemble Visual texts, Artist as Witness’ exploration of the cultural wound caused by the Shoah, deepened and reshaped my perception and understanding of such subject matters.
It was making this work that I realised the importance of our humanity. In visiting Auschwitz and seeing the horror of humans being denied their humanity, I gained a reverence for the simple human experiences that we take for granted. We created material from colleagues’ stories and their family’s stories.
Tadeusz Kantor and Peggy Phelan became key influences in this module; their explorations of memory, life and reality resonated with the work I wanted to make. Relationships, perception and storytelling were essential in our piece, with the meta structure being one large family sheltering from destruction in their village hall.
It was here where I also began to discover the queer through intertextuality. In alluding to Hamlet, I explored the notion of drowning and found Virginia Woolf. I then discovered her love affair with Vita Sackville-West. Such queer literary figures began to bleed from my English Literature background into my practice; for me, these were a way in which I could explore my own sexuality. Such explorations and epiphanies, surrounding life and art, prepared me for my Independent Practice as Research project.