Profile
Project Title
Deviancy and Potential in the Heterotopias of Black British Women’s Theatre
Supervisor/s
Dr Tony Fisher, Dr Natasha Bonnelame, Dr Sarah Grochala
Abstract
Nadine’s research is concerned with the position of Black women playwrights within the Black Plays Archive (BPA). To understand the positionality of black women playwrights in the BPA, it argues for a heterotopic analysis, informed by Black feminist and Black radical thought, which rigorously analyses the different positions that Black women playwrights have occupied within the BPA, and therefore in British theatre. As well as highlighting the different positions of Black women playwrights, Nadine critiques the current archival practices within the BPA, to propose different ways of analysing and archiving the work of Black women, which is still often submerged.
Profile
I am a PhD researcher undertaking a Collaborative Doctoral Award between Central and the National Theatre. My thesis, ‘Deviancy and Potential in the Heterotopias of Black British Women’s Theatre’, aims to shed light on the different positions of Black women playwrights in the Black Plays Archive and consider new ways of archiving their work. I am interested in how we preserve and reproduce cultural memory in analogue and digital archives – particularly regarding the work and histories of Black women’s theatre. I am also interested in addressing the under-representation of Black voices, Black theatre, art and culture, by bringing marginalised voices into the academy in order to radically transform it. In September, I released a podcast on Black theatre history, That Black Theatre Podcast, in collaboration with the National Theatre, Central and LAHP. The aim of the podcast is to discuss and analyse Black British theatre on a public platform, which reaches beyond the confines of academic research. I also love film, and write regularly for the international film magazine, Sight & Sound.
Teaching
2020 – present, MA Tutor, Writing for Stage and Broadcast Media, Royal Central School of Speech and Drama
2020 – present, BA Tutor, Central School of Speech and Drama
15th October 2020 – ‘Black British Theatre History: An Overview’, Lecture, Bath Spa University
Conference Presentations
2020 ‘Rethinking Stories of Exclusion: Black Women, the Black Plays Archive, and Spatiality’, Journey Across Media Conference, Reading, UK (online).