Dr Alexander Kelly

Stephanie Riggs (2019) suggests that immersive/interactive forms mean the end of storytelling as we know it. This session takes practitioners from different areas of practice (Games, Film/TV & Theatre) and asks them to discuss what it means to create for interactive formats. In particular it asks them to think about their audiences and what performance processes will ensure their active participation. Each of the contributors, David, Che, John, Alex and Anna will address the topic from their own standpoint and then debate the different approaches using examples of their own work and the work of Yoko Taro, BBC Sherlock and Bernie Su.

Third Angel & Northern Stage present The Department of Distractions A single glove in the street, A torn up love letter in a Metro carriage, A pair of shoes hanging from a telephone wire, A phone box that rings as you walk past… You see their work - but you never see them. So subtle you might not even notice. Snags in the fabric of everyday life. Objects, moments, the seeds of stories, the odd little things you come across every day that make you think, what’s going on there…? The Department of Distractions, an organisation so clandestine you won’t have heard of them. Until now. They say their job is to plant stories in the world “to make life more interesting.” Others would argue that their job is as much to stop us looking in certain directions. But things are starting to unravel, a story they started has got out of hand, they’ve lost control of it and now they’re in danger of being exposed. How far will they go to maintain their anonymity? How much are you willing to believe? Third Angel brings you a conspiracy-theory documentary-exposé detective story for the 21st century that asks: What aren’t you looking at? “engaging with the big issues about how we live with a fierce intelligence” The Guardian on Third Angel #TheDepartmentOfDistractions

Where do ideas come from? And more importantly, which ones stick around and turn into something? What are the ideas, objects, phrases, images, texts or thoughts that have inspired you in the past or continue to inspire you? Over the duration of the Exchange, we swap a personal catalogue of inspiration for an eclectic, multi-contributor library of ideas, incidents and events. Inspiration Exchange shifts in duration and format, popping up at festivals and conferences, in cafes, foyers and little side rooms in theatres, museums, galleries...anywhere there are people and ideas.

Third Angel presents CAPE WRATH An epic journey in a stationary minibus. Written and Performed by Alexander Kelly Directed by Rachael Walton After he retired, my Grandad went on a trip from the Midlands up to Cape Wrath, the most north-westerly point of his native Scotland. He sat, looked at the sea, and thought about his life. Then he got up and went home. Over 20 years later, I got on a coach and followed in his footsteps. This is what I learned. Third Angel presents a story of family, of fellow travellers, of whisky and chocolate, of the longest bus journey in Britain, told to an audience of just 14. Completely sold out for its run at the Edinburgh Fringe in 2013, Cape Wrath is heartfelt, moving and funny. A compellingly intimate journey to the edge of the island.

Third Angel presents 600 People Written & Performed by Alexander Kelly Inspired by conversations with Dr Simon Goodwin Directed by Rachael Walton “We step out of our solar system, into the universe, seeking only peace and friendship...” So says the message from the human race on the Voyager spacecraft. But is there, y'know, anyone out there? I really wanted to know, so I went to speak to an astrophysicist to find out. This is what I found out: Stellar Wobble. The Mirror Test. The Drake Equation. Fermi’s Paradox. The Enhanced Human and murderous dolphins. Somewhere between stand-up comedy and an astrophysics lecture, Third Angel brings you a simple show about huge ideas: the story of how a three-hour conversation with an astrophysicist changed the way Alex understands the way the Universe works. 600 People explores how we think about evolution and intelligence, belief and invention, communication and space travel. A show that that explores the stories we tell in order to understand our place in the cosmos. A show that asks if there are extra terrestrials in our galaxy. A show that asks what it means to be human. We said they were big ideas…

In this paper I will explore how I have commemorated my grandad’s life in two theatre pieces, one made when he was alive, one made in response to his death.  In The Lad Lit Project (2005) I tell the story of my grandad’s war time escape: his plane shot down over occupied Holland, smuggled cross country by the Dutch Resistance, constantly in fear for his life for three months. A story so beyond my own experience that it felt like it had to be told – as he so rarely told it. Ghost-writing, it felt like at the time, telling his story for him.  For Cape Wrath (2013) I recreated my grandad’s 1988 journey from his/my home to Cape Wrath, the most north-westerly point of Scotland. 8 hours by coach. 5½ hours by (mini)bus. Overnight in a hostel. A 2mile walk. 20 minutes in 8-seater boat. 30 minutes by minibus. It was only having got there that I realised, to my own surprise, that this was an act of remembrance. I decided to go and drink a shot of his favourite whisky for him. (I don’t like whisky). When I explain this in the show, and drink another whisky, I’m also talking about the show itself. It’s an act of remembrance. It’s a real whisky, to drink a real toast.  And one of the reasons I wanted, or needed, to make Cape Wrath, is that in The Lad Lit Project, I tell his story anonymously. I never say he’s my grandad. I never say his name. His name is Henry Radcliffe.

Thinking about authorship & responsibility in Third Angel’s solo auto/biographical projects. This paper will draw on my experience of making The Lad Lit Project, Class of '76 and Inspiration Exchange, and of teaching and mentoring other artists.

Over the years, alongside our end-on seated-audience theatre work, Third Angel has returned to the exploration of a mode of performance built on conversation, or interview, with individual audience members. Performance in as much as you know more about what's going to happen than they do. Their interaction is what makes the work. Making the performance involves making the space in which the audience member is allowed, encouraged, to be creative. A space in which they feel comfortable enough to think about things, talk about things that at, say, 10 o'clock that morning, they hadn't thought about for days, weeks, years. A space in which, at the end of it, they feel comfortable enough to say of what they have given you, ‘Yes, that's fine, I'm happy for you to share that with other people.’ This paper explores the individual contributions and responses to Third Angel's Inspiration Exchange. It documents the specific mechanism of the project in order to interrogate the form of conversational exchange, story-gathering, “one-to-one” performance, and the contexts in which this work has been presented.

A consideration of the influence of film editing techniques on the making process of Third Angel's shows Presumption, The Paradise Project and The Lad Lit Project.

In Third Angel's performance piece 9 Billion Miles from Home, artists Gillian Lees and Alexander Kelly were attached to each other via a pulley system that meant that for one of them to move forward, the other had to move back. Barefoot and supporting one another they created a perfect circle of talcum powder, so positioned that although they could both reach the centre spot of the circle, they could not do so at the same time. Once each in the performance they stepped into the circle, leaving (in Alex's case) four perfect foot prints or (in Gillian's case) evidence of ten minutes of barefoot running on the spot. This was a shamanic performance obsessed with travel, return, cycles and distance – distance measured in miles, metres, footsteps, days, years. Ten years earlier, in Third Angel's Saved, Rachael Walton stepped backwards through a floor covering of epsom salts in a performance in which the audience were required to remove their shoes in order to feel the salt shift under their feet. Rachael left perfect footprints in the salt, before stepping back and erasing them. The Distance Between Us is a set of hand-drawn performance maps, born of a series of conversations between the artists, two and twelve years since they last performed the works. They discuss the physical and emotional memory it has left them with. Rachael revisits the solo task of walking backwards for anything up to 5 hours at a time, erasing traces of her passing. Alex and Gillian remember that they would would watch, not each other's faces as they travelled about the stage, but each other's feet.

In Third Angel we’ve always said that we make work about the things that fascinate us or bother us. The stuff your brain returns to when its meant to be thinking about something else. That might be personal relationships and domestic details, or it might be circadian rhythms, timezones, cartography or the fact that the Voyager spacecraft are, you know, actually out there, right now, almost incomprehensible distances from the human beings who built them. We explore these ideas through conversations and collaborations with specialists and experts in their fields: psychologists, cartographers, astrophysicists. Our aim with these projects is to make something that responds to the emotional, human impact that their research has.

Third Angel was a theatre company born out of interdisciplinary practice, and created by theatre graduates Rachael Walton and myself, who then trained as teacher and film-maker, respectively. Without identifying it as interdisciplinary, what we were interested in from the outset was collaboration. Drawing on the expertise and experience of a varied group of practitioners, our stated aim was to make something none of us would have made on our own. Something more than the sum of its parts. Our unstated (at the time) aim was to demonstrate that theatre was more than plays. We were interested in cross-art form work – ‘multi-media’ was the in phrase at the time; when an idea reminded us of a film or novel, it seemed worth pursuing; if it reminded us of a piece of theatre we had seen, it would often get forgotten about. This chapter reflects on two decades of collaboration between Third Angel and a number of scientists and specialists from other disciplines. These collaborations produced projects in theatre, live art, film, video, and participation, which were presented throughout the UK and internationally. We did not specifically set out to make interdisciplinary work: we followed our curiosity and discovered that ethos as we travelled. We were believers in the value of serendipity in a devising process, and recognised that we did not know what we did not know. We were always interested in collaborating with people with different approaches, born out of different experiences to our own. When we wanted to learn more about a subject, we approached people who knew more than us and, always fascinated by other people’s workshops and studios, we asked if we could go and visit them in the place they worked. We began to value spending time, literally and metaphorically, in other people’s classrooms.

The rules: a songmap is a drawing of a song that is created in the time it takes for the song to play once in full. Each element of the picture (or map, or catalogue) can only be drawn after it has been mentioned in the lyrics. In performance, the drawing is done physically on A4 paper, whilst at the same time being projected much larger scale at the back of the stage. Songs chosen are narrative, usually containing multiple characters. Although the term used is mapping, the intention is that each song has a unique drawing created for it, which might involve mapping, itemising or diagrammatic illustration. Each one is introduced with a reflection on the personal significance of the song itself, and on the practicalities of drawing it, uncovering the rules of Songmapping as we go.

Presentation about the creation process of this interactive, play-at-home performance piece.

Dolphin Philosophy / Dr Alexander Kelly A proposal for a performance lecture for Theatre About Science Over the last two decades – as part of the theatre company Third Angel - I have worked with researchers from many different fields to create performances inspired by their ideas and research: work psychology, astrophysics, mathematics, sociology, cartography and geography. Through these projects I realised that many of our collaborators have a strong sense of what will happen in their area over the next 10 years, and can also make an informed guess as to what might happen in the 20 – 30 years after that. So, I decided to talk to more specialists from a range of areas: artificial intelligence, food scarcity, space exploration, product design, information technology, economics, climate science, and ask them: What do you believe will happen in your field in the next 10, 20, 50 years? What are you curious about? What are you optimistic about? From these conversations and other research I would start to build a timeline of the future, and develop a project in which we invite the public/participants/audience to assemble the predicted events and inventions into a plausible future. What might we call such a piece? Prediction Game? The Future Is Decided…? Perhaps we would make a podcast, too. ** Autumn 2022. We began our research, including interviews with astrophysicist Prof Simon Goodwin, robotics specialist Dr Stevieanna de Saille, product designer Dr Anne Schiffer and water reclamation specialist Dr Luisa Orsini. The research threw up tantalising glimpses of what the future will almost definitely contain: Ethical Design. Curiosity Led Science. Sustainable Cities. Energy Justice. Forever Chemicals. Ectogenesis. Fusion Power. Designer Climates. Ghost DNA and Water Cleansing Resurrected Crustaceans. Dolphin Philosophers. And yes, the discovery of life on other planets. In February we announced that Third Angel will close in the summer of 2023. The Future is Decided is at least paused. The beginnings of a show, or performance game, in my notebook and my imagination. Dolphin Philosophy is a performance lecture that speculates about that partial future, half discovered through zoom calls and office visits. It explores collaboration through conversation. It wonders how storytelling and theatre might represent ideas that are, literally, alien or out of this world, such as: what the discovery of evidence of previous life on Mars will tell us about the origin of life on Earth. My hope is that through presenting these ideas in a number of contexts (conferences and symposia, festivals, storytelling nights), a format will emerge that frames them in a way that says: all of these processes are already in motion, but the future can still be decided by us. For Theatre About Science I will present the audience with some of the inventions and discoveries we expect in the next decades, and ask them to decide when – if ever – they would like them to arrive. Together we will build a visual timeline of a possible shared future.

“We step out of our solar system, into the universe, seeking only peace and friendship…” So says the message from the human race on the Voyager spacecraft. But is there, y’know, anyone out there? I really wanted to know, so I went to speak to an astrophysicist to find out. This is what I found out: Stellar Wobble. The Mirror Test. The Drake Equation. Fermi’s Paradox. Enhanced humans and murderous dolphins. Somewhere between stand-up comedy and an astrophysics lecture, Third Angel brings you a simple show about huge ideas: the story of how a three-hour conversation with an astrophysicist changed the way Alex understands the way the Universe works. 600 People explores how we think about evolution and intelligence, belief and invention, communication and space travel. A show that explores the stories we tell in order to understand our place in the cosmos. A show that asks if there are extra terrestrials in our galaxy. A show that asks what it means to be human. We said they were big ideas…

Throughout the day Alex will be engaging members of the conference audience and general public in conversation, swapping stories of inspirational ideas and curating a shared oral archive of stories and ideas. Then in this talk he will reveal the ‘story of the day’ created at the conference, and reflected on the process and history of the Exchange.

Over the last two decades – as part of the theatre company Third Angel - I have worked with researchers from many different fields to create performances inspired by their ideas and research: work psychology, astrophysics, mathematics, sociology, cartography and geography. Through these projects I realised that many of our collaborators have a strong sense of what will happen in their area over the next 10 years, and can also make an informed guess as to what might happen in the 20 – 30 years after that. So, I decided to talk to more specialists from a range of areas: artificial intelligence, food scarcity, space exploration, product design, information technology, economics, climate science, and ask them: - What do you believe will happen in your field in the next 10, 20, 50 years? - What are you optimistic about? - What are you curious about? From these conversations and other research I would start to build a timeline of the future, and develop a project in which we invite the public/participants/audience to assemble the predicted events and inventions into a plausible future. What might we call such a piece? Prediction Game? The Future Is Decided…? Perhaps we would make a podcast, too. ** Autumn 2022. We began our research, including interviews with astrophysicist Prof Simon Goodwin, robotics specialist Dr Stevieanna de Saille, product designer Dr Anne Schiffer and water reclamation specialist Dr Luisa Orsini. The research threw up tantalising glimpses of what the future will almost definitely contain: Ethical Design. Curiosity Led Science. Sustainable Cities. Energy Justice. Forever Chemicals. Ectogenesis. Fusion Power. Designer Climates. Ghost DNA and Water Cleansing Resurrected Crustaceans. Dolphin Philosophers. And yes, the discovery of life on other planets. In February we announced that Third Angel will close in the summer of 2023. The Future is Decided was paused, then cancelled. The beginnings of a show, or performance game, in my notebook and my imagination. Dolphin Philosophy is a performance lecture that speculates about that partial future, half discovered through zoom calls and office visits. It explores collaboration through conversation. It wonders how storytelling and theatre might represent ideas that are, literally, alien or out of this world, such as: what the discovery of evidence of previous life on Mars will tell us about the origin of life on Earth. Bio Dr Alexander Kelly is Reader in Theatre & Performance at Leeds School of Arts. He was Co-Artistic Director of Third Angel (Sheffield UK) from 1995 - 2023. He is an Artistic Associate of Má Criação, Lisbon. a.kelly@leedsbeckett.ac.uk

This study explores the contribution of three solo performances created by Alexander Kelly and Third Angel to the field of autobiographical performance: Class of ’76, The Lad Lit Project and Cape Wrath. The three Existing Published Works are preceded by a contextual, critical synopsis and a Timeline of Submitted and Related Projects, positioning them in their immediate context of Third Angel’s 22 years of practice. The study recognises the political potential of autobiographical work to give voice to those whose stories are often overlooked by the dominant media around us as the central argument for the value of this work. Consequently it considers what the ethical implications are of using autobiographical performance to tell other people’s stories.  Chapter 1 introduces the study, and identifies the key literature that has framed and informed the work: Heddon’s Autobiography and Performance, Govan et al’s Making A Performance and Maguire’s Performing Story on the Contemporary Stage. Chapter 2, Mapping The Territory, identifies the key themes that have emerged in this theoretical consideration of autobiographical performance in the late 20th and early 21st centuries, notably the importance of authenticity, the construction of the self, the role of persona, the relationship to place. It places the work in a lineage of devised and autobiographical performance, notably the work of Spalding Gray, Bobby Baker and Bryony Kimmings. Chapter 3, Telling Other People’s Stories, identifies the importance and impact of the submitted projects. Recognising the devising methodology of the work, the different roles of Kelly (deviser, writer and performer) and his principal collaborator Rachael Walton (director) are identified. Through exploration of a process of real world investigation, the study demonstrates a model of reportage performance that tells both the stories uncovered and the story of their discovery. Autobiographical narratives are utilised as a frame to explore wider themes and to tell other people’s stories. Processes that solicit and value contributions of auto/biographical stories from participants facilitate the construction of ‘multi-author solo-performances’ that give voice to those not positioned or inclined to make performances of their own. Re-telling these stories, performers find their own resonances, and place their own emphases. Therefore mechanisms need to be deployed that genuinely invite contributions, and recognise the responsibility we have as researcher performance-makers to the stories and lives that we tell. Through producing performances that ‘show their working’, these autobiographical works invite audiences to imagine, and even make, their own versions, in recognition that everyone has a story worth telling, and worth hearing.  The three projects are presented in their own volumes that detail their intentions, their unique devising processes and the evolution of the performance material. The full touring history of each show is included, alongside a demonstration of its critical reception and impact. Finally, each is represented with photographs and a full performance text or transcript.

The Format: The six artists pages are full colour scans of a research file into The Department of Distractions. Typed pages, hand-written notes, flow diagrams of plot development (for a theatre show, or an adventure gamebook, or a story to be planted in the media?), paperclipped surveillance photos, architect/set designer's plans, ‘Instagram’ photos of The Department’s work, puzzles to solve. Where It Comes From: The Department of Distractions is a theatre show by Third Angel that toured in the UK from 2017 – 2019, until interrupted by the pandemic. Unlike much of Third Angel’s work, The Department of Distractions appears to be a play, but really it is a devised show going undercover as a TV detective drama. The show presents us with the work of The Department, “an organisation so clandestine, you won’t have heard of them.” Their job is to plant stories in the world, to make it more interesting. And to distract us, the public, from what is really going on. They are undercover in real life, hiding in plain sight. They are clear that they “do not deceive the public, just refocus their attention”. The show nests several stories within a day-in-the-life of The Department, including a detective story, partly inspired by 1980s TV show Moonlighting, which circles back round to being the same day-in-the-office narrative. Because a member of the Department has been undercover in a story they are following, The Case of the Missing Traffic and Travel Announcer, who in turn (Spoiler Alert!) has gone undercover herself. So What’s It About? The Department of Distractions was originally generated as two separate performance texts, under the title O Grande Livro dos Pequenos Detalhes (The Great Book of Tiny Details) for Má Criação (Portugal/Brazil). Bringing it back ‘in house’ to Third Angel, Kelly worked with dramaturg Stacey Sampson, co-director Rachael Walton and the rest of the company to integrate the two stories to create one complete plot. Watching The Detectives reflects on this experience: lessons learned about the plotting timelines, fixing plot-holes (that then has a knock-on effect 12 pages later), the inclusion of numerous red herrings and Easter Eggs as a stylistic and thematic device, and the difference between clues embedded in the text (that everyone therefore hears, whether they know it is a clue or not) and visual clues incorporated into the stage picture and action, that, because there isn’t a close up, the audience might not see. When is it good for an audience to know what they don’t know: our regular devising room conversations about Point Break, The Sixth Sense and a whole host of detective fiction. In 2020 Third Angel are making a sequel to The Department, an experience that is delivered to the audience via their phones, computers and through their letterboxes, asking them to go undercover for the Department. We haven’t made that yet, but it is likely Watching The Detectives will draw on that process, too.

You caught our attention. You are special. We’re looking for people who see the world in a slightly different way. People who notice things others don’t. And we think that might be you. We just need to, well, get to know you a little bit better. See where your strengths lie. You could be a great asset to us. And we could change your life. The Department of Distractions, a clandestine organisation that claims its job is to plant stories in the world “to make life more interesting”, is on the search for new recruits… and they think YOU might be just what they need. What do you think? Could you be a Distraction Agent..? The Distraction Agents is a game, a challenge, a puzzle and a story in a box. Receive your package through the post, your instructions via email and online films, and let the Agents guide you through the challenges, tackle the tasks and reveal the code to unlock your prize!

“If you could rename a street of your town after a hope, dream or ambition for the future, what would you choose?” We draw a giant street map onto the stone floor of the town or city we are in. We invite the public to rename a street in their town after a hope or dream or ambition they have for the future. HIGH STREET immediately became FREEDOM STREET HOWARD AVENUE was renamed OVERSTAND AVENUE BATH ROAD became ALL IS LOVE AVENUE EDINBURGH AVENUE is now THUNDERBIRDS ARE GO AVENUE and WELLINGTON STREET was renamed ALGERIAN STREET

How do we remember? How do we find and tell memories? How might memories become performance? A workshop demonstrating techniques designed to allow participants to access memories, and draw on those memories to tell their own stories, in a safe space, and without feeling the pressure of coming up with ‘good material.’ Exercises that allow participants to be both an expert in their own experience, and also be ‘put on the spot’ and so re-discover memories that are not just the stories we always tell. The workshop draws on exercises developed for the creation of a number of Third Angel shows, in particular Senseless (1998), Where From Here (2000), The Lad Lit Project (2005). These performances all draw on personal memories and, to a greater or lesser extent, reflect on the nature of memory, and how we re-tell memories of the past as a way of constructing our identities in the present.

It’s been a long time coming, this one. Back in 2004, Third Angel artists Alexander Kelly & Rachael Walton were engaged in a research project called Karoshi (Japanese for ‘death from overwork’) with Dr Christine Sprigg and Dr Peter Totterdell from the Institute of Work Psychology, University of Sheffield (amongst others). This research fed directly and indirectly into a number of Third Angel performances & video works: Realtime (2004), Hurrysickness (2004), Standing Alone, Standing Together (2005), Presumption (2006), 9 Billion Miles From Home (2007). It also threw up a project that we were interested in pursuing, but which, due to the arrival of children in our lives, was not practical. Over a decade later, children becoming more independent, we’ve realised that we’re still interested in this. Alex and Third Angel regular collaborator Gillian Jane Lees (who co-devised 9 Billion Miles From Home, a shamanic ritual designed to help us live in a big here and a long now) have not been able to let this one go. We’ve begun talking about it again, and have started seeking appropriate scientific collaborators. This is what we think it involves: In an attempt to have more time, to tune in to our circadian rhythms rather than the external pressures of the atomic clock, Gillian and Alex will live a Lunar Day – which is 24 hours and 51 minutes – for 25 days. This equals about 26 days in the real world, and brings us back into sync with the world around us, having ‘lost’ a day. For TaPRA 2019 I propose a pitch, or an initial project report, on where we have got to in our plans, and what scientific and performative questions have arisen for us so far. I’ll explain a bit about circadian rhythms, why a lunar day is 51 minutes longer than a solar day, and what it means to us as humans.

A collection of theatre devising exercises that have their roots in a Third Angel show called The Lad Lit Project (2005), specifically an exercise called ‘the Chapters Game.’ In this exercise, performers’ and contributors’ memories were formatted within a questionnairestructure. The different versions of ‘Text Templates’ presented have been formulated to work for larger groups in workshops and teaching contexts. This includes the show Emergency Drinking Water made in collaboration with MA students at Leeds Beckett University. We also know anecdotally that at least one youth theatre group has made the first version of this exercise (‘The Conversation Game’) into a show in its own right.

Third Angel’s show 600 People explores the possibility of humans finding intelligent alien life in our galaxy, and the implications of such a discovery (or lack of it) on our future evolution and our capacity to believe in there being something else out there. In this interview/conversation the show’s creators [Third Angel Co-artistic Directors Rachael Walton and Alexander Kelly, and astrophysicist Simon Goodwin] remember the initial meeting that inspired the show [in 2006] and reflect on its development from a 30-minute spoken word piece [2013] to a more theatrical ‘full’ show [2015–2023], and the ways in which the science progressed alongside the 17 year life of the project. They discuss the overlaps in form and intention between a science talk, astrophysics lecture and theatrical performance lecture, and the inclusion of emotion in science.

At the time of writing, fault lines in the creative industries are clearer than they have, arguably, ever been. Who is afforded the ability to be included, to make decisions, to make work, has come into sharp relief; highlighting those who are excluded or at the margins. For those, like me, who have been – or are considered as being – at the margins, this is not a startling discovery. This thesis offers insight and strategies for disrupting marginalisation; offering starting points, evidencing benefits and giving theoretical underpinning for a reversal. These are focalised through three research questions: How can curricula, especially that used in actor training, be diversified and made more inclusive?; Why is representation of identities that are ‘on the margins’ important and how can this inclusion and diversification be sustainably achieved?; How can equitable access to performative work be fostered in its creation and dissemination? Part one comprises nine solo authored, peer reviewed, published research papers. Taking, in the main, an ethnographic approach, these published works encapsulate professional and pedagogical practice with research led conclusions, suggestions and provocations to both training/educational establishments, theatres and theatre (and performance) makers. Part two, the exegesis, offers the rationale for, and coherence of, the published work. In a timeline of significant Benchmarks, my practice, pedagogy and research are mapped against the publication of the submitted papers. The Introduction offers reasons why I am, and have been, the best person to undertake this research, which champions de-marginalisation. Discussion of my lived experience, the reasoning that my research needs to exist, as well as explorations of intersectionality and equality, diversity and inclusivity are set against the context of creating a world that my marginalised 15-year-old self would have hugely benefited from. Pulling it together looks to the methodological basis and conceptions that the published works in part one sit in, develop and are reliant on, offering my methodological praxis, conceptualised as a tripartite. Waymarkers reviews, chronologically, eight works from across disciplines which have been an influence on the published work and give rise to the ‘golden threads’ that thematically bind my work. Asking questions, the lynchpin of the exegesis, through the three research questions, situate my contributions against and in conversation with the waymarkers and recent literature, evidencing the novelty and positive contribution(s) that have been made in, by and through my work. My Conclusions extend the journeying metaphor seen throughout, offering coalescence of my contributions and suggestions of where focus needs to be next placed to create and sustain these much-needed changes. Finally, the Epilogue maps the lineage that my work speaks, and adds, to.

The Department of Distractions, an organisation so clandestine you won’t have heard of them.

The first collected works of Hannah Nicklin: a writer, game designer and performance maker experimenting with social engaged practices and storytelling in contemporary performance. This collection brings together three pieces made in collaboration with a series of other artists, musicians and people in the street, from 2012 to 2015. There is an introduction and commentary on each performance text, plus additional materials provided by collaborators, expanding and reflecting on the work, and how each piece was made.

The symposium will reflect on the past, present and future of the company Third Angel. It is an opportunity to reflect on the company's journey, from making live art, durational performances and video art to their current theatre making practice and collaborations with other artists from around the world. It is a time to take stock of what they have achieved as they embark on their next 21 years. It is a chance to ask both artists and academics: ‘Where from here?’ and to celebrate the company's longevity and place this into context in the current political, economic and artistic climate. Established in 1995, Third Angel makes artwork that encompasses a range of disciplines. They use styles, techniques and interests discovered in experimental work for other spaces, to create new theatre that plays with conventional forms while remaining accessible to a mainstream audience. 'Where From Here: 21 Years of Third Angel' seeks to trigger a debate around the company’s work that offers a critical lens through which to explore theatre’s wider landscape for the next 21 years.