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Performing the City: Space, Movement, and Memory in O Ben’Groes at Droed Amser

  • Francesca Forlini

    is a theatre practitioner and a PhD candidate in English Literature at Roma Tre University. In her dissertation, tentatively entitled “Towards an Ecological Theatre: The Use of Space in Contemporary Site-Specific Theatre,” she investigates some of the aspects of site that are brought to the site-specific process, showing their overlap with an emergent ecological consciousness. She holds a BA in English and French Literature (2017) and an MA in English and Anglo-American Literature from Sapienza University of Rome (2019) and recently conducted research at the University of South Wales in Cardiff. Her main research interests are in contemporary British theatre and in the intersections of drama, theatre, and performance with geography, history, politics, and climate research. Since 2018, she is associate artistic director of the Eco Logical Theater Fest in Stromboli, Italy.

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Published/Copyright: May 12, 2023

Abstract

In considering some of the aspects that are brought to the site-specific process, this article explores how theatre renegotiates patterns of intraurban movement, enacting complex approaches to space and memory. The focus is on O Ben’Groes at Droed Amser, a Theatr Genedlaethol Cymru and National Theatre Wales production, created in collaboration with BBC Cymru Wales and BBC Arts in 2020 as part of Theatr Genedlaethol Cymru’s new programme in response to the COVID-19 emergency and the challenge of creating original dramatic work during lockdown. By allowing virtual audiences to join author and poet Karen Owen on a bus journey from her home and the street where she grew up to Bangor city centre, the production articulated the experience of the city in terms of individual and collective memory, bringing together issues of performance, representation, history, and heritage to reveal alternative layers to the reality of the urban landscape. Memory, I argue, emerged from this production as a performative construct open to renegotiation through a range of present relationships to landscape. In addition to this, the production also offered an alternative to the privileged figure of the walker, performing a subversion of codified patterns of movement.

About the author

Francesca Forlini

is a theatre practitioner and a PhD candidate in English Literature at Roma Tre University. In her dissertation, tentatively entitled “Towards an Ecological Theatre: The Use of Space in Contemporary Site-Specific Theatre,” she investigates some of the aspects of site that are brought to the site-specific process, showing their overlap with an emergent ecological consciousness. She holds a BA in English and French Literature (2017) and an MA in English and Anglo-American Literature from Sapienza University of Rome (2019) and recently conducted research at the University of South Wales in Cardiff. Her main research interests are in contemporary British theatre and in the intersections of drama, theatre, and performance with geography, history, politics, and climate research. Since 2018, she is associate artistic director of the Eco Logical Theater Fest in Stromboli, Italy.

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Published Online: 2023-05-12
Published in Print: 2023-05-03

© 2023 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston

Articles in the same Issue

  1. Frontmatter
  2. Frontmatter
  3. Acknowledgements
  4. Place-Making, Identities, and the Politics of Urban Life: Theatre and the City. An Introduction
  5. Punchdrunk’s Kabeiroi: Taking Immersive Theatre to the Streets
  6. (Un)real City: Spatial and Temporal Ghosting in ANU Productions’ The Party to End All Parties
  7. Performing the City: Space, Movement, and Memory in O Ben’Groes at Droed Amser
  8. A Sense of Place: Staging Psychogeographies of the UK Housing Crisis
  9. Interrelating Necrocities and Borderscapes in the Migration Performances The Jungle, Lampedusa, and The Walk
  10. The Impossibility of Fleeing: The Deconstruction of Urban Space in Martyna Majok’s Cost of Living
  11. Place on Parade: Consumerism and Disidentification in the Parade Genre
  12. Criticising Capitalism in the City and on the Stage: The City Street Movement Occupy Wall Street and Tim Price’s Protest Song
  13. “Racism Isn’t Just Someone Shouting at You from a Passing Car”: Roy Williams in Conversation with Gemma Edwards
  14. “Violence, Ritual, and Space”: Aleshea Harris in Conversation with Julie Vatain-Corfdir and Jaine Chemmachery
  15. “Your Proscenium Is as High as the Sky”: Anne Hamburger in Conversation with Julie Vatain-Corfdir and Émilie Rault
  16. Walkshop Paris: Notes on a Creative Process with the Urban Landscape
  17. Dramaturgy and Design: A Roundtable Discussion with Anne Hamburger, Cristiana Mazzoni, and Andrew Todd
  18. Jeanette R. Malkin, Eckart Voigts, and Sarah J. Ablett, eds. A Companion to British-Jewish Theatre since the 1950s. London: Methuen, 2021, x + 259 pp., £103.50 (hardback), £35.95 (paperback), £82.80 (ebook PDF and Epub).
  19. Tiziana Morosetti, ed. Africa on the Contemporary London Stage. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018, xv + 246 pp., £99.99 (hardcover).
  20. Liz Tomlin. Political Dramaturgies and Theatre Spectatorship: Provocations for Change. London: Bloomsbury, 2019, viii + 205 pp. £85.00 (hardback), £28.99 (paperback), £26.09 (PDF ebook).
  21. Caridad Svich. Toward a Future Theatre: Conversations during a Pandemic. London: Bloomsbury, 245 pp., $26.95 (paperback), $90.00 (hardback), $24.25 (PDF ebook), $24.25 (Epub and Mobi ebook).
  22. Dom O’Hanlon, ed. Theatre in Times of Crisis: 20 Scenes for the Stage in Troubled Times. With an Introduction by Edward Bond. London: Bloomsbury, 2020, xxii + 296 pp., $30.02 (paperback), $25.16 (ebook PDF and Epub).
  23. Peta Tait. Theory for Theatre Studies: Emotion. London: Bloomsbury Methuen Drama, 2021, vii + 188 pp., £45.00 (hardback), £12.99 (paperback), £9.35 (PDF ebook), £9.35 (Epub and Mobi).
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