Archif Newyddion 2008
Cydnabod yr Adran TFT ar gyfer ei ymchwil o safon byd-eang
Yn ôl canlyniadau'r RAE 2008, mae 30% o'r ymchwil sy'n digwydd yn yr Adran Astudiaethau Theatr, Ffilm a Theledu o 'safon byd-eang' (4*). Ystyriwyd 30% pellach i fod yn 'rhagori'n rhyngwladol' (3*).
Croesawodd yr Athro Adrian Kear, Pennaeth yr Adran Astudiaethau Theatr, Ffilm a Theledu, lwyddiannau'r Adran:
‘Rydym ni'n falch iawn o'n perfformiad ni yn Asesiad Ymchwil 2008. Mae cael 30% o'n gwaith ymchwil wedi ei ddyfarnu i fod o safon byd-eang (4*) a 30% pellach yn rhagori'n rhyngwladol (3*) yn ein gosod yn gadarn ymysg yr uchaf o brifysgolion Prydain yn ein maes. Yn ôl un o'r methodolegau graddio uchaf ei barch, sef cynghrair 'Pwer' Research Fortnight, rydym ni'n dod yn 3ydd yn y DU. Mae hyn yn dyst i'r ffaith bod Prifysgol Aberystwyth yn bwerdu rhyngwladol mewn Astudiaethau Theatr, Ffilm a Theledu, gyda dros 5% o waith ymchwil graddedig y DU yn cael ei wneud gan staff o fewn yr Adran.’
Adran TFT – 1af yng Nghymru, 3ydd yn y DU ar gyfer safon a gallu ymchwil.
I weld y canlyniadau yn llawn, ewch i dudalennau gwe'r Asesiad Ymchwil.
I lawrlwytho'r tablau cynghrair ymchwil, ewch i dudalennau Research Fortnight.
Cyfleoedd ariannu ôl-raddedig: cystadleuaeth nawr yn agored!
Ymddiheurwn ond nid yw'r erthygl hon ar gael yn y Gymraeg
Firmly located in Wales, and with an established international profile across its constituent disciplines, the 2008 RAE 4* rated Department of Theatre, Film and Television Studies provides a vibrant research environment for postgraduate study.
MA Funding Opportunities
We offer an exciting suite of MA programmes designed to prepare you for professional practice and/or doctoral research: MA Film Studies, MA Practising Performance, and MA Scriptwriting (Screen and Radio).
Outstanding applicants to any of the above schemes with a clear intention to pursue doctoral study within the Department will be considered for a TFTS research preparation bursary designed to cover a year’s fulltime fees and maintenance benchmarked to ensure equivalence with the AHRC (currently £8, 800). MA students in the Department also benefit from eligibility for a number of funded bursaries, notably from the Thomson Foundation for Welsh medium MA studies.
Application for nomination for an AHRC Professional Preparation Masters (PPM) award
PhD Funding Opportunities
The Department’s established reputation for conducting leading-edge, international quality research makes TFTS an ideal place to pursue doctoral study. We offer supervision and research training in both English and Welsh, focussing on topics such as: Landscape, environment and site-specific performance; Welsh and minority-language theatre, film and television; National and trans-national processes of production and contexts of reception; Broadcasting structures; histories and regulatory policies; Alternative and experimental theatre; and film and television drama.
PhD research may be practice-led, or through written thesis. PhD students in the Department receive funding from a number of sources: AHRC, Aberystwyth University, independent charities, employers and overseas providing bodies. We offer support and guidance in making applications to such organisations, and augment the opportunities they provide through a number of TFTS doctoral studentships awarded to outstanding students who have made excellent applications to other funding sources. The TFTS studentships are designed to cover three years fulltime fees and maintenance, benchmarked to ensure equivalence with the AHRC (currently £12,600).
Application for nomination for an AHRC Doctoral Studentship and consideration for a TFTS Doctoral Studentship
For further information and application forms please contact Ceris Medhurst-Jones, Departmental Research Administrator, on 01970 628648 or ekj@aber.ac.uk as soon as possible.
Potential applicants are invited to contact the Department as soon as possible and no later than 31st January 2009
World Premiere of David Rudkin’s Merlin Unchained, 23-27 January, Aberystwyth
Ymddiheurwn ond nid yw'r erthygl hon ar gael yn y Gymraeg
Aberystwyth University Department of Theatre, Film and Television Studies proudly present the world premiere performances of a new play by its Honorary Professor, David Rudkin: Merlin Unchained.
‘The aged magician has repudiated human society and lost all memory of his wondrous and tragic past. He lives like a beast in the wild wood, with only a wolf and the stars for company. But now the bitter winter is passing; his memories and powers begin painfully to re-awake: mysterious forces are summoning him to one last mission in the world, necessitating a purposeful and ferocious confrontation with the configurations of power, and obedience to power, which characterise our own present-day political and ecological dystopia.’
This remarkable new play blends the epic, the tragic and the savagely comic with a Shakespearean ambition and force.
To book tickets please visit the TFTS ticket booking page
7:30 pm, 23 – 27 January 2009
Theatr y Castell/Castle Theatre, Aberystwyth
Tickets £5 - £7
For further information please contact the Marketing and Management Team at merlin_unchained@hotmail.co.uk
Aberystwyth in Flux 1968-2008 - Fluxconcert by and for Fluxus
Ymddiheurwn ond nid yw'r erthygl hon ar gael yn y Gymraeg
29 November 2008: 8pm, Castle Theatre, Aberystwyth (featuring a Fluxclinic 4-6pm and from 7pm)
Admission is free. To book tickets visit www.performance-wales.org or ring 01970-621911
“The Fluxus Concert was a real success… Slides of cowboy drawings. We pull crackers, burst bags, howl. Somebody chases his mate around the parish hall to hit him. Flux-Pin-Up No. 1 showers down. It is a picture of Brian. … People howl and throw streamers, and stick coloured papers on their faces, and somehow behind the light Brian throws us another set of instructions. Caution, Art Corrupts.”
(John Hall, ‘A State of Flux – John Hall at the Aberystwyth Festival’, The Guardian 30 November 1968)
From the 27th to the 29th November 1968, artist Brian Lane came to Aberystwyth with his collaborators, the First Dream Machine, to organize a 3-day Fluxus event. He had been invited by the annual Aberystwyth Arts Festival, a committee that was made up of students from University College Aberystwyth. The participatory and imaginative nature of Fluxus appealed to the organisers who, as they stated in their invitation to Lane, were looking to “reach a wide enough audience” and were “attempting to revitalize the Festival by pushing the idea of Art as Fun, Art as something to be enjoyed”.
In response, Brian Lane devised an ambitious programme for Aberystwyth: a 12 hour concert of electronic music (which featured pieces by Karlheinz Stockhausen, Pierre Henry and Adrian Nutbeem), one of the first Fluxclinics in the country, an international graphics exhibition and a session of Total Theatre. At the heart of the festival was a Flux Concert, featuring performances of now classic Fluxus scores by artists such as George Maciunas, Ben Vautier, George Brecht and Chieko Shiomi.
Aberystwyth-based artists will pay tribute to this seminal example of experimental art practice exactly 40 years after it first occurred by performing their interpretation of the original Fluxus scores used in 1968.
...if you don't know what a Fluxconcert is you must come and see for yourself... [Brian Lane, 1968]
The restaging is part of What’s Welsh for Performance? Beth yw 'performance’ yn Gymraeg? - A major research project aiming to uncover and archive the history of performance art in Wales.
Project Director: Dr Heike Roms, Performance Studies, Aberystwyth University
With the support of the Sir David Hughes Parry Awards 2008.
Argentinian composer Oscar Edelstein to give talk at Parry-Williams
Ymddiheurwn ond nid yw'r erthygl hon ar gael yn y Gymraeg
“Music in the Universe of the Imagination”
Monday 24th November at 5pm - The Foundry Studio, Parry-Williams Building
Oscar Edelstein is known for his individuality and inventiveness, frequently being described as leading the avant-garde from Latin America. He is a composer of acoustic and electro-acoustic works and has - alongside his orchestral and ensemble works - made over forty works for theatre and dance, and over fourteen operas (or as he prefers to call them - "Acoustic Theatre"). His musical universe has been compared to that of composers such as Ives, Stockhausen, Varèse or Cage. His ensemble, the ENS (Ensamble Nacional del Sur), was compared to the work of popular musicians Hermeto Pascoal, Frank Zappa, and King Crimson. Partly inspired by Arnold Schoenberg and the Second Vienna School, Edelstein has taken this vision in his own uniquely Latin American direction. As a senior professor and research director of a centre of composers, musicians, mathematicians, physicists and acoustic engineers at Quilmes University (Buenos Aires), he has developed a new system of control and notation of the acoustic space, which he calls The Acoustic Grid. It incorporates an entirely acoustic (non-electronic) system of amplification utilizing the scientific principle of Sonic Crystals. The project represents new ways of thinking about aesthetics, composition, pitch and harmony.
Professor Edelstein will talk about his musical universe and the philosophy that has influenced it. He will address concepts of aesthetics, time, space, technology, and memory with reference to figures such as Nietzsche, Wagner, Cage, Stockhausen, Debussy, and Schumann.
Prifysgol Aberystwyth a Boomerang yn lansio partneriaeth strategol
Bydd gwneuthurwyr ffilm newydd a chynhyrchwyr teledu yn gallu arddangos eu gwaith ar blatfform fideo newydd ar y we yn dilyn cyhoeddiad o bartneriaeth strategol sylweddol rhwng y Brifysgol ac un o brif gwmniau teledu anibynnol Cymru, Boomerang Plus ccc. Mae Sesh TV, sydd yn cael ei gefnogi gan S4C, yn cael ei ddatblygu yn yr Adran Astudiaethau Theatr, Ffilm a Theledu gyda Cube Interactive, ac mae’n gaddo rhoi hwb mawr i’r sector. Hwn yw’r cyntaf o gyfres o brosiectau a ddisgwylir i esgor o’r cydweithrediad pwysig hwn.
Bydd Yr Athro Noel Lloyd, Is-Ganghellor Prifysgol Aberystwyth, a Mr Huw Eurig Davies, Prif Weithredwr Boomerang Plus, yn lansio’r bartneriaeth strategol dair mlynedd hon yn ffurfiol am 12.00pm ar ddydd Mawrth 28 Hydref yn Adran Astudiaethau Theatr, Ffilm a Theledu’r Brifysgol.
Rhai o brif nodweddion y bartneriaeth yw adnoddau swyddfa ac ymchwilydd llawn-amser yn y Brifysgol i edrych am gyfloedd pellach ar gyfer gweithgareddau trosglwyddo gwybodaeth a menter, ac i gyd-lynu datblygiad Sesh TV. Bydd cyfleodd profiad gwaith hefyd yn ffurfio rhan bwysig o’r cytundeb.
Croesawodd yr Athro Noel Lloyd y datblygiad: “Mae hwn yn gyfle arwyddocaol i’r Brifysgol weithio gyda un o brif gwmniau’r diwydiant darlledu yng Nghymru gan ddatblygu cynnwys arloesol a chyffrous a dulliau newydd o gynhyrchu teledu. Mae hwn yn tanlinellu pwysigrwydd gwaith y Brifysgol yn y sector greadigol a diwylliannol.”
Dywedodd yr Athro Adrian Kear, Pennaeth Adran Astudiaethau Theatr, Ffilm a Theledu: “Mae’r bartneriaeth hon yn darparu cyfle ardderchog i ddatblygu ffyrdd o rannu dealltwriaeth, creu gwybodaeth newydd a meithrin arloesedd. Bydd hwn yn dod â budd i fyfyrwyr, staff ymchwil, a chynhyrchwyr ffilm a theledu. Cefnogir y cynnydd mewn rhyngweithio ymysg y grŵpiau hyn gan amglychedd greadigol a deallusol yr Adran.”
Mae’r grŵp Boomerang Plus, sydd wedi ei lleoli yng Nghaerdydd, wedi adeiladu enw da cenedlaethol ar gyfer cynnwys adloniant, chwareon eithafol, rhaglenni ffordd o fyw, cerddoriaeth, ieuienctid a phlant. Ar ôl derbyniad llwyddainnus i Farchnad Stoc Llundain ar AIM yn Nhachwedd 2007 derbyniodd ail-gomisiynau sylweddol gan Channel 4 a S4C yn arbennig ym maesydd drama, chwaraeon eithafol a ‘ffordd o fyw’. Yn Hydref 2007 dechreuodd gynhyrchu ar “Planed Plant”, y dolenni parhad rhwng rhaglenni plant ar S4C sy’n werth dros £4 miliwn dros gyfnod o ddwy flynedd. Daeth hyn drwy dendr agored yn erbyn cystadleuaeth gref. Lleolir Boomerang yn y pump uchaf o ran cwmniau teledu annibynnol, yn ôl refeniw, yn y Gwledydd a Rhanbarthau yn ôl yr Arolwg Darlledu (Cenhedloedd a Rhanbarthau) 2007.
Bydd presenoldeb Boomerang yn yr Adran, ochr yn ochr a’u swyddfa yn Aberaeron, hefyd yn darparu hwb i’r cyfryngau yng nghanolbarth Cymru.
Croesawu staff newydd i'r Adran TFT
Mae'r Adran yn falch iawn o allu croesawu nifer o ddarlithwyr newydd, sydd wedi dechrau eu swyddi ers Chwefror 2008. Mae'r rhain yn cynnwys Dr Sabine Sörgel a Dr Andrew Filmer, a ymunodd â ni fel Darlithwyr Drama, Theatr a Pherfformio. Ym Medi 2008 fe groesawon ni Dr Carl Lavery, Uwch-Ddarlithydd Drama, Theatr a Pherfformio a Dr Stephen Greer, Darlithydd mewn Drama, Theatr a Pherfformio Ymarferol. Fe groesawon ni hefyd Dr Paul Newland a Dr Sarah Thomas fel Darlithwyr Ffilm. Yn ychwanegol i hyn rydym yn falch o groesawu John Burgan a Richard O’Sullivan fel Darlithwyr Cynhyrchu Cyfryngau. Yn olaf mae'r Adran wrth ei bodd i gyhoeddi y cafodd Kate Woodward ei hapwyntio fel Darlithydd Dwy-ieithog mewn AstudiaethauTheatr, Ffilm a Theledu.
Gweler y tudalennau staff am ragor o fanylion ar ddiddordebau ymchwil ein staff.
Llwyddiannau ariannu ymchwil
Mae nifer o'r staff wedi bod yn llwyddiannus yn eu ceisiadau am arian ymchwil - llongyfarchiadau iddyn nhw gyd!
Mike Pearson
In addition to departmental study leave in Semester 1 2008-9, Mike has been awarded funding from the Arts and Humanities Research Council’s Research Leave Scheme for the period February-May 2009. Mike will be completing work on his monograph Site-Specific Performance for Palgrave MacMillan and on a substantial contribution to a Dutch publication on the history of the Mickery Theatre in Amsterdam. Between 1965 and 1991 Mickery was one of the main receiving and producing venues in Europe, staging the early works of the Wooster Group, Tenjo Sajiki, Needcompany…Mike first performed there with RAT Theatre in 1973 and in 1989 Mickery produced Brith Gof’s Gododdin in Leeuwarden, Friesland.
Alison Forsyth
Alison has been awarded £500 from the British Academy Overseas Conference Award Scheme to present a paper on Illness, Disability and Trauma in Ethnic American Literature and Theatre panel - "The Trauma of 'Lack' in Arthur Miller's Broken Glass (1994)' - at ALA Conference in San Francisco, US (March 2008). This seemingly pre-Holocaust play centres on an inexplicably paralysed Jewish American woman - a malaise seemingly precipitated by news coverage, and particularly a photograph of the atrocities that took place during Kristallnacht in 1938. Alison analyses this text and theorizes the events of the play in relation to photography, remembrance, traumatic loss and 'lack' from a post-Holocaust perspective.
Alison has also been awarded £4,210 from the British Academy Small Research Grant Scheme for archival research in US (Washington, Delaware and Texas) into Arthur Miller's Holocaust Plays - After the Fall (1964), Incident at Vichy (1964), Playing for Time (1981) and Broken Glass (1994) - awarded in June 2008. This formative research will result in three/four articles (some already commissioned) on Arthur Miller's response to the Holocaust as a feted, yet controversial Jewish American writer. Research entails detailed analysis of texts but also the different approaches to representing the unrepresentable, and what these difficult plays reveal about Miller - all groundwork for Alison's next monograph, The Trauma of Articulation: Arthur Miller's Holocaust Plays (for which Ashgate have expressed interest - due 2011)
Jamie Medhurst
Jamie Medhurst has been awarded £3117 by the British Academy to fund research into a project on 'The Early Years of Television and the BBC, 1923-39'. He has also been awarded a further £3000 for the same project by the University's Research Fund. The project will trace the development of television from the early experiments of Baird, through the triangular tensions that existed between Baird, EMI and the BBC, the beginning of the high-definition service in 1936 and the outbreak of war in 1939. It will also consider the phenomenon of the ‘amateur’ interest in television which emerged during this time. This formative stage in British television will be set within an historical context of Britain in the 1920s and 1930s, picking up on Sean Street’s argument in Crossing the Ether that the ‘prevailing mood’ during these decades was reflected by the BBC’s values. The main outcome will be a book to be published by Edinburgh University Press in 2012. Jamie is currently on AHRC-funded research leave completing a book on the history of ITV in Wales which will be published by the University of Wales Press next year. He is also in the process of applying for AHRC Research Network funding on early broadcasting history.
Louise Ritchie
Louise has been awarded a full time AHRC Doctoral award that will commence on October 1st 2008. Louise will be undertaking a PhD on 'Digital notation: new approaches to physical theatre and its documents' under the supervision of Professor Mike Pearson and Dr Heike Roms. Her intention is to research, develop and assess new approaches to the notation of physical theatre and to apply and test them in both live and mediated environments. The proposed research is situated within the field of physical theatre where it could be argued that there is no broadly recognised means of representing and transmitting techniques beyond the oral traditions of workshop practice. The most sophisticated approaches to the recording of corporeal expression have taken place in the field of dance. Louise will investigate and employ these initiatives in order to develop technologies appropriate to the notation of physical theatre, examining in the process the creative possibilities they offer. This practice-led PhD will include: the staging of three performance presentations; the creation of a dedicated web-based platform; and the completion of a critical analysis of its outcomes.