Provenance created and performed by Autopoetics - Maiya Murphy, Laura Hayes Chelsea Crothers - at the Drama Centre Black Box, Singapore October 2018. Photograph by Jacob Paint
By Laura Hayes, Vice Dean (Theatre Programme)
In January 2021, NAFA announced a new partnership with University of the Arts London (UAL), who will validate a suite of degrees for NAFA beginning in August 2021. This collaboration is significant for UAL as its first overseas partnership. Equally so for NAFA, it gives both staff and students the opportunity to learn and grow from a university that was ranked second in the world for art and design in the QS World University rankings in 2020. UAL unites illustrious centres of practice-based education, such as Central St Martin’s, Camberwell College of Arts, and Wimbledon College of Arts.
On a personal level, working with the lecturers at Wimbledon College of Arts developing the new Performance Making degree felt like coming back home. I grew up in Wimbledon and my parents still live a five-minute walk away from Wimbledon College of Arts. On my childhood walk to school, I would pass the art school, entranced by the strange sculptures and glamourous art students thronging outside. Better still, occasionally we would have art students to stay as lodgers. I remember visiting the graduation show of our lodger, Jo, who had made tiny, intricate, hand painted books. Even then, completely theatre-obsessed, I was delighted by the costume and set design sketches and the little box-set models on display - the school was renowned for costume and set design.
|
|
“During their study visit to UAL, students on the Performance Making degree will have the opportunity to explore state of the art digital performance tools and use them to create performance.”
|
While Wimbledon College of Arts now also teaches theatre and performance, it is this specialisation in theatre and performance design that is one of the aspects that most excites me on behalf of my students.
During their study visit to UAL, students on the Performance Making degree will have the opportunity to explore state of the art digital performance tools and use them to create performance. They will have the opportunity to “experiment with new technologies such as virtual and augmented reality, explore performance making for digital environments and platforms including acting for screen and interactive media adding an important new dimension to their learning’’.
1
The students’ creative output will also be fed by London’s rich theatre, dance, and performance scene, and by its art galleries, museums, and architecture. From Shakespeare’s Globe, to the Tate Modern, to the big musicals of the West End, the beauty of St Paul’s Cathedral, to the grungy fringe venues, markets, circus, opera, ballet, and contemporary dance – there are artists working at the top of their game in a city that has been evolving for 2000 years. For me, my hometown’s heart beats with a tug of war between history and anarchy that cannot help but inspire.
I am the third generation of performer in my family. My grandparents were both actors, as were my great aunt, uncle, and cousins. Consequentially, I was lucky enough to grow up being taken to theatre on a regular basis, and sometimes to go backstage afterwards. I remember the rush of adrenalin I felt standing on stage at the Barbican Theatre, looking out to the cavernous, empty auditorium; and up to the fly loft gaping above me. I was hooked.
|
|
“The students’ creative output will also be fed by London’s rich theatre, dance, and performance scene, and by its art galleries, museums, and architecture.”
|
Provenance created and performed by Autopoetics - Maiya Murphy, Laura Hayes Chelsea Crothers - at the Drama Centre Black Box, Singapore October 2018. Photograph by Jacob Paint
|
|
|
This led me to study for a degree in acting at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama, now the Royal Conservatoire Scotland, then onto the
École Internationale de Théâtre Jacques Lecoq in Paris for two years and finally, somehow, to Singapore and to NAFA. In Glasgow, I studied classical acting techniques. In Paris, I leant devising, physical theatre, mime, and worked with people from France, Spain, Israel, Germany, Sweden, Britain, Italy, Australia, America, and South Korea to make theatre. It was a multi-cultural preparation for my move to Singapore. In my time studying in Scotland and France, and now living in Singapore, I have learnt far more than only the things I explored in the studio. I feel sure the same will happen for NAFA students when they study at UAL. There is a very particular kind of excitement and way of learning that arrives when you are in a different country, a different culture. You see with new eyes. I am excited to share that with my students. Better still, I am excited to share my hometown and to see my students inspired.
|
Vice Dean of NAFA’s Theatre Programme Laura Hayes has taught extensively for companies which include the Royal Shakespeare Company, Touchstone Shakespeare Theatre, Polka Theatre, Dundee College and Oxbridge Programs.
She received an Entente Cordiale Scholarship and the Daebliz Award to study at Lecoq and was awarded the Percival Steeds Prize from the Royal Conservatoire Scotland.
Her theatre company performed at the Edinburgh Festival and in London where it played to sold-out houses and received excellent reviews. As casting assistant for one of the UK's top casting directors, Laura has worked with Oscar-nominated directors, Peter Cattaneo and Armando Lannucci among others.
In Singapore, Laura makes theatre with the collective Autopoetics.
|
1 See the module Digital Performance Lab
https://www.arts.ac.uk/subjects/performance-and-design-for-theatre-and-screen/undergraduate/ba-hons-contemporary-theatre-and-performance-wimbledon#course-overview [accessed 26 August 2021]