Jo Ronan

My professional practice as Associate Director, The Necessary Stage (Singapore) and 7: 84 Scotland have been instrumental in developing the focus and direction of my research. I formed BloodWater Theatre, a practice-based research ensemble in February 2011 to test ethical ways of collaborating through its productions, Whose Story Is It Anyway staged at the Tron Theatre and Leave Your Shoes at the Door staged at the CCA. I am invested in exploring non-hierarchical collaborative theatre production within capitalist economy.  BloodWater Theatre is currently applying the methodolody from these two productions to develop an online drama series.

I am committed to researching and developing radical theatre pedagogy where the politicisation of teaching and training actors/performers is made explicit. My research interest stems from my intention to develop intersections between professional and community performance.

I have a special interest in applied and participatory performance. I lead on the undergraduate provision for contemporary and applied theatre. I am currently developing research projects which focus on utilising drama pedagogy in nursing homes and to promote healthy aging through exercise. I have delivered conference papers on dialectical collaborative theatre, original research and rehearsal methodology I developed and am currently publishing on this as well as the politics of transmission when training actors who have disabilities.

The theorectical underpinning for my practice research is developed from my doctoral thesis where I use a Marxist framework to interrogate the concepts of ownership, capital, collectivism, collaboration and artistic vision in theatre-making today. I continue to develop a dialectical relationship between process and product in the hope of progressing renewed definitions for the ownership of theatrical artefacts

I disseminate the findings of BloodWater Theatre's production process in character as Fatima Rateb at conferences and publishing on dialectical collaborative threatre.

I am researching the role of applied theatre and participatory arts within undergraduate performance programmes in Scotland beyond postgraduate provision in this field.

I am developing drama projects for older people in nursing homes and in drop-in centres for adults with support requirements. I am working in partneship with colleagues from Life Sciences in a bid to promote healthy aging through exrercise. I am developing a creative participatory programme for disabled school pupils in Japan to complement arttistic activities around Paralympics 2021

I am facilitating the application of dialectical collaborative theatre, a new rehearsal methodology I developed, to the creation of online drama series BloodWater Theatre is producing.

I intend to develop projects in collaboration with ArtWorks Scotland particularly for disabled participants and unemployed youth premised on Freire's dialogic pedagogy in the belief that dialogic processes can empower individuals within state regeneration agendas.

I would like to research intersections between economy and society; commodity and artist; the leader and the led in developing radical performance training models.

I would like to test dialectical collaborative theatre beyond BloodWater Theatre. 

Schools

Nuffield Foundation

Nursing Homes

ArtWorks

Scottish Refugee Council

Local Authorities

The Necessary Stage (Singapore)

British Council