Emma Willis
Dr Emma Willis is an Associate Professor of Drama at the University of Auckland. Her research interests include: spectatorship and ethics in contemporary performance, the theatre of Aotearoa New Zealand, tourism and memorial culture, metatheatrical dramaturgies, and subjectivity and community in contemporary performance. Publications include, Metatheatrical Dramaturgies of Violence: Staging the Role of Theatre (Palgrave Macmillan, 2022), Theatricality, Dark Tourism and Ethical Spectatorship: Absent Others (Palgrave Macmillan, 2014) and articles in Theatre Journal, Text and Performance Quarterly, Theatre Research International, Gloabl Performance Studies, Studies in Theatre and Performance, Australasian Drama Studies and Performance Research. She is currently editor of performance studies journal, Performance Paradigm.
Phone: Tel: +64 9 373 7599 (ext 82254)
Address: English, Drama and Writing Studies,
School of Humanities,
University of Auckland,
Private Bag 92019, Auckland 1142
New Zealand
http://www.arts.auckland.ac.nz/people/ewil077
Phone: Tel: +64 9 373 7599 (ext 82254)
Address: English, Drama and Writing Studies,
School of Humanities,
University of Auckland,
Private Bag 92019, Auckland 1142
New Zealand
http://www.arts.auckland.ac.nz/people/ewil077
less
InterestsView All (7)
Uploads
Books by Emma Willis
Introduction: Staging the Role of Theatre,
Performative Violence and Self-Reflexive Dramaturgy: A Study of Guillermo Calderón’s Kiss and Other Works
“Touching Something Real”: The Critique of Historical and Theatrical Methodology in Jackie Sibblies Drury’s We Are Proud to Present…
The Ethics of Imagining Others: The Limits of “Performative Witness” in Michael Redhill’s Goodness and Erik Ehn’s Thistle
Staging Rage: A Feminist Perspective on Theatrical Self-Reflexivity in Ella Hickson’s The Writer and Tim Crouch’s The Author
Metatheatrical Dramaturgies of Reception: Mirroring the Audience in Ontroerend Goed’s Audience and Jackie Sibblies Drury’s Fairview
Conclusion
Sample chapter available at: http://www.palgrave.com/resources/sample-chapters/9781137322647_sample.pdf
Articles and chapters by Emma Willis
Editorials by Emma Willis
in different fields, while others pursue a qualitative approach, often looking to autoethnography to recount lived experiences of kindness. The richness and variety of research approaches in both the sources cited in this editorial and in the articles in the issue indicate the complexity of kindness – the ways in which it challenges and provokes – and it is the nature of this complexity that we are most interested in. We hope that the issue will contribute to ongoing conversations and scholarship about the value of kindness as well as its attendant cousins, such as care, compassion and empathy. Indeed, kindness shares with studies of care a fundamental concern with relationality – how we interact with one another – and
with interdependence – recognising the enmeshment of our own wellbeing with the wellbeing of others. According to Joan Tronto, care is the interdependence necessary for the subsistence and flourishing of ourselves and our worlds. As she writes, ‘When our public values and priorities reflect the role that care actually plays in our lives, our world will be organised quite differently’ (Tronto, 1998, p. 16). Similarly, recognising, understanding and mobilising kindness, we suggest, has transformative potential.
Introduction: Staging the Role of Theatre,
Performative Violence and Self-Reflexive Dramaturgy: A Study of Guillermo Calderón’s Kiss and Other Works
“Touching Something Real”: The Critique of Historical and Theatrical Methodology in Jackie Sibblies Drury’s We Are Proud to Present…
The Ethics of Imagining Others: The Limits of “Performative Witness” in Michael Redhill’s Goodness and Erik Ehn’s Thistle
Staging Rage: A Feminist Perspective on Theatrical Self-Reflexivity in Ella Hickson’s The Writer and Tim Crouch’s The Author
Metatheatrical Dramaturgies of Reception: Mirroring the Audience in Ontroerend Goed’s Audience and Jackie Sibblies Drury’s Fairview
Conclusion
Sample chapter available at: http://www.palgrave.com/resources/sample-chapters/9781137322647_sample.pdf
in different fields, while others pursue a qualitative approach, often looking to autoethnography to recount lived experiences of kindness. The richness and variety of research approaches in both the sources cited in this editorial and in the articles in the issue indicate the complexity of kindness – the ways in which it challenges and provokes – and it is the nature of this complexity that we are most interested in. We hope that the issue will contribute to ongoing conversations and scholarship about the value of kindness as well as its attendant cousins, such as care, compassion and empathy. Indeed, kindness shares with studies of care a fundamental concern with relationality – how we interact with one another – and
with interdependence – recognising the enmeshment of our own wellbeing with the wellbeing of others. According to Joan Tronto, care is the interdependence necessary for the subsistence and flourishing of ourselves and our worlds. As she writes, ‘When our public values and priorities reflect the role that care actually plays in our lives, our world will be organised quite differently’ (Tronto, 1998, p. 16). Similarly, recognising, understanding and mobilising kindness, we suggest, has transformative potential.
the catastrophe behind us.' How might memorial practices divide their gaze between remembered pasts and possible futures? In the absence of an official memorial, the people of Christchurch have found their own ways of memorializing the losses incurred through the quakes.
Created by Sally Stockwell with direction from Julia Harvie, sound by Chris Marshall and dramaturgy by Emma Willis, ‘We've Got So Much To Talk About’ asks a heap questions, but won’t necessarily give you the answers. If you are a mother, know a mother or have a mother, this show is for you.
A critically acclaimed dancer and performer, Rodney is internationally renowned for his physically integrated performance. In 2007 Rodney joined AXIS Dance Company (USA) as principal dancer, touring 32 states until 2012. After finishing with AXIS and before his return to New Zealand, Rodney experienced a period of homelessness on the streets of San Francisco: a life changing experience that inspired the creation of Meremere. The work is insightful, surprising, very personal and incredibly engaging.
‘Meremere is a small but beautifully formed production that takes us on a journey of undiminished hope and wonder’ Theatreview, June 23, 2018
Performer Rodney Bell Director Malia Johnston AV Design Rowan Pierce Music Eden Mulholland Dramaturgy Emma Willis Cultural Advisor Tūī Matira Ranapiri-Ransfield Set Design John Verryt Photography Tom Hoyle Graphic Design Ian Hammond Producer Romola Lang
Amanimal premiered at Q Theatre in February 2013 as part of the Auckland Fringe Festival, where it won two Auckland Fringes Awards: 2013 Best Production, Dance; Best Performance, Dance (Ross McCormack).
The work underwent further development in 2014.
Direction: Malia Johnston
Dramaturgy and Co-Direction: Emma Willis
Original Performance and Choreography: Ross McCormack, Paul Young
Performance and Composition: Eden Mulholland
Set design: John Verryt
AV design: Rowan Pierce
Lighting design: Amber Molloy
The cast of Body/Fight/Time was an eclectic mix of some of the most interesting dancers performing across the country, ranging in experience and age from a New Zealand School of Dance student to seasoned veteran and NZ dance icon Kilda Northcote.
Body/Fight/Time employed the motif of the body and its shadow to explore physical and psychological conflict at an abstract level. The ensemble performance used flighting as the basis for the work’s choreography, which featured movement patterns abstracted from gestures of kicking, striking, jumping and evading. The work’s scenes collapsed the distinction between inner and outer violence and explored the interconnectedness of violence between individuals and groups.
Choreography and Direction: Malia Johnston
Dramaturgy and Co-Direction: Emma Willis
Producer: Adrianne Roberts for SHOW PONY Performers and Co-Creators: Mariana Rinaldi, Kilda Northcote, Paul Young, Francis Christeller, Lucy Marinkovich, Emily Adams, Olivia McGregor, Emmanuel Reynaud, Carl Tolentino with contributions from Josh Rutter, Natalie Hona, Jingwen Xu, Alice Macann
Composer: Eden Mulholland
Set Design: John Verryt
AV Design: Rowan Pierce
Lighting Design: Brad Gledhill
Marketing Photography: Robin Kerr
Performance/Rehearsal Photography: Philip Merry
Dark Tourists was developed over an extensive creative development period and presented in the Auckland Arts Festival in 2007, and subsequently re-developed and toured to Te Whaea Theatre, Wellington, where it won ‘Best Dance Production’ in the 2008 New Zealand Fringe Festival Awards.
Dark Tourists was inspired by the term, “dark tourism,” coined by tourism scholars to describe the tourist practice of visiting sites of atrocity and disaster. The work explored how memorial sites employ attempt to enable to tourists to “feel” the force of the past.
Dark Tourists featured two layers: one that showed individuals struggling in the aftermath of an un-named disaster, and another that showed dark tourists who followed in its wake. The performance was a blend of dance and theatre where narrated text, dialogue, monologue and song were interwoven with choreographic sequences. The post-catastrophic stage – a debris-strewn set featuring jackets, shoes and hair and radio tape recorders – was marked by a series of material and psychological traces. The hanging jackets created a landscape of empty forms, shoes were carefully carried about in piles, and images of the performers’ hair were used to suggest their disappearance. These objects were responded to as if they were bodies.
Choreography and direction: Malia Johnston
Dramaturgy and co-direction: Emma Willis
Live music and composition: Eden Mulholland
This paper focuses on playwriting that takes up the topics of genocide and mass violence with a focus on the creative strategies of the writers – how do they carry out this difficult work? What is common to each of the plays is that fact that the writers are outsiders to their various subjects. I am interested in how they stage the perspective of outsiders and how they explore the responsibilities of distant bystanders and belated witnesses – those who come after or who watch from a distance. Each of the writers is interested in blurring the distinctions of then and now, here and there, you and I, often through the use of metatheatre. Foremost I want to think about how we might read such blurring from an ethical perspective: who may speak for whom? To whom does the experience of suffering belong?
Medical Humanities seeks to bring together the humanistic focus of arts disciplines with the scientific discourses of medicine. The mission statement of the NYU programme states that:
The humanities and arts provide insight into the human condition, suffering,
personhood, our responsibility to each other, and offer a historical perspective on
medical practice. Attention to literature and the arts helps to develop and nurture
skills of observation, analysis, empathy, and self‐reflection ‐‐ skills that are essential
for humane medical care.
For this presentation, I would like to share my own experience in bringing a humanities sensibility (my background is as a theatre maker) to the medical environment. In particular, I will focus on aspects of the course that students have responded to most energetically, as well as those which have generated resistance. I am particularly interested in the point at which the authority of scientific knowledge challenges the plurality and openness of arts practices, and the various ways that students respond to this charged meeting.