The Performance Research Group at King’s College London presents The Anomalous, Meeting, a seminar series bridging the Arts and Humanities and the Social Sciences. Curated by Penny Newell, the series brings together scholars from various disciplines hoping to begin conversations around and about anomalies, in theory and in practice.

For info on the full series, see: http://www.kcl.ac.uk/artshums/depts/english/research/rescentres/perf.aspx

Monday 23rd March (6.30-8pm): Anomalies as Waking Dreams: Karoline Gritzner (Aberystwyth) and Theron Schmidt (KCL)

This session stages the anomaly within the expanded field of Performance Studies and the growing field of Performance Philosophy. Karoline Gritzner will draw on her extended research into the interconnected practices of performance and philosophy, focussing a definition of anomalies through her recent work on Adorno’s overlooked dream notebooks. In a piece written partly during states of insomnia, Theron Schmidt will explore the problem of darkness as a representational anomaly – how do you ‘show’ it? – as well as a phenomenological limit-case.

Karoline Gritzner explores the interconnections between philosophy (Critical Theory and continental philosophy) and theatre, drama and performance. Her other research interests include contemporary British and Irish Drama, Modern European Theatre, Gender and Sexuality. She co-organised a symposium on ‘Theatrical Aesthetics of Eroticism and Death’ at Aberystwyth University in 2004 and, with Prof David Ian Rabey, the first international conference on ‘Howard Barker's Art of Theatre' in July 2009. Her recent publications include, ‘Thoughts which do not understand themselves: on Adorno’s Dream Notes’ in Will Daddario and Karoline Gritzner (eds), Adorno and Performance (Palgrave Macmillan, 2014).

Theron Schmidt has most recently reflected on the practice of artists such as Back to Back Theatre, Tim Crouch, Richard Maxwell, Rabih Mroué, Walid Raad, Rimini Protokoll, and Christoph Schlingensief. He is particularly interested in the ways that certain problems of speech and gesture in the political realm can be considered as essentially theatrical problems –problems for theatre, but also ideas that theatricality makes problems of – such as problems of representation or of authenticity. Theron is a core convener of the Performance Philosophy network and Assistant Editor for Contemporary Theatre Review.