Perforum Presents Konstantinos Thomaidis

15 Oct 2023

PERFORUM - Artistic Research Seminar - Autumn 2023

Konstantinos Thomaidis

Voicing Bodies, Voicing Histories:

Elaine Mitchener’s Sweet Tooth

Thur 23^rd Nov @ 2.10pm

Granary Theatre 

Vocal artist and composer Elaine Mitchener, MBE, has worked across contemporary music, opera, installation, site-specific performance and movement arts for two decades. Yet, little has been written about her groundbreaking contribution to British performance and its voicescape. This talk examines Mitchener’s Sweet Tooth, a piece about the British sugar plantations in the Caribbean and the transatlantic slave trade. In investigating the piece, I will discuss how Mitchener’s approach to multi-source devising is in fact a coalitionary tactic against patriarchal-capitalist frameworks. Listening to the work alongside decolonial feminist frameworks, I suggest that Mitchener engenders a new approach to contemporary voicing, one that invites new ways of listening to the archive and re-sounds new possibilities for structurally marginalized voices.  

Biography 

Konstantinos Thomaidis is Associate Professor in Voice, Theatre & Performance at the University of Exeter. He is co-founder of the Centre for Interdisciplinary Voice Studies and co-edits the Journal of Interdisciplinary Voice Studies and the Routledge Voice Studies book series. His books include Voice Studies: Critical Approaches to Process, Performance and Experience (Routledge 2015), Theatre & Voice (Bloomsbury 2017) and Time and Performer Training (Routledge 2019). For the special issue ‘What is New in Voice Training?’ he received the Honorable Mention for Excellence in Editing by ATHE in 2020. His recent artistic work was as music director for the Greek National Opera.