Dr James Frieze
Lecturer in Drama
Research Interests
Twentieth and twenty-first century US and UK theatre and performance, including feminist theatre; improvisation; devising; theories of performance, including theatre’s intersections and exchanges with philosophy and cultural studies.
Current projects
I am currently completing my first monograph, which will be published by Palgrave in 2009. Closely reading a range of work made in the US and UK over the last two decades, Naming Theatre explores theatre’s growing obsession with technologies and effects of naming. How does theatre/performance reflect, and intervene in, naming practices across domains such as philosophy, computing, television and print journalism, anthropology, advertising and brand development, semiotics, military training, and genetics?
My next book project will be on Ping Chong, the Manhattan-based artist whose live performance work comprises over sixty pieces spanning four decades. During the 1970s and 1980s, Chong produced two dozen, multi-media, allegorical works for the stage. Since 1990, he has produced: the East West Quartet (Deshima, Chinoiserie, After Sorrow: Viet Nam, Pojagi), exploring interactions of particular Asian countries with particular European countries and with the U.S.; a trio of large-scale, multi-media puppetry pieces (Kwaidan, Obon, and Cathay); and the ongoing Undesirable Elements documentary works, each incarnation of which assembles diverse groups whose personal histories catalyze autobiographical ensemble performances.
Following receipt of a Visiting Scholar Exchange Award from the American Society for Theatre Research (ASTR), Dr. Anita Gonzalez and I are commencing a collaborative project in which we will research various theatrical activities emerging from the Liverpool-America passage during the slave trade. We want to bring overdue attention to theatrical initiatives and events that have fallen through the cracks of scholarship based on genre and on nationhood. We have been invited to give a plenary presentation at the 2009 ASTR Conference in Puerto Rico.
Teaching
I am Third Year Tutor; Module Leader for Dissertation, Work-Based Learning, Specialist Study, Academic Tutorial, Improvisation and Ensemble, and Devising and Performance; and a tutor on other modules, including Adapting the Text. Via the latter, I have directed several devised pieces adapting non-theatrical sources for the stage, and have co-directed site-specific and promenade productions, including two pieces for Liverpool 08 (the Capital of Culture program).
Publications
2009 Naming Theatre (under contract with Palgrave)
2008 ‘“Whatever You Say…”: Making the Monstrous Phatic’ in Out of Silence, Caridad Svich, ed., Manchester University Press
2006 ‘The Mess Behind the Veil: Assimilating Ping Chong’ Theatre Research International (vol. 31, no. 1)
2003 ‘Playwrights in Rehearsal: The Seduction of Company by Susan Letzler Cole’ (Book Review). Modern Drama (vol. 46, no.3)
2002 The Articulation of Difference:Staging Identity in the United States (1986-92) (UMI Dissertations)
1999 ‘Layers of Perception’. Journal of Dramatic Theory and Criticism (vol. xiii, no.2)
1998 ‘Imperceptible Mutabilities in the Third Kingdom: Suzan-Lori Parks and the Shared Struggle to Perceive’. Modern Drama (vol. xli, no.4)
1998 ‘Making Space/Losing Face: Mimi Goese and the Penultimate Dis-’.PAJ: Performing Arts Journal (60) (vol. xx, no.3)
1997 ‘After Sorrow’ (Performance Review). Theatre Journal (vol. 49, no.3)
1997 ‘Channeling Rubble: Seven Streams of the River Ota / After Sorrow’.Journal of Dramatic Theory and Criticism (vol. xii, no.1)
1997 ‘Anglo-American Interplay in Recent Drama by Ruby Cohn’ (Book Review) Theatre Studies (vol. 42)
