I will create an audio essay which revisits Peter Weiss’s canonical play, Marat/Sade (1963), asking how the play represents madness through sound. Drawing upon my experience as a composer and sound designer, I will record a history podcast that considers the overlooked and unheard aspects of this play. The podcast will be an audio collage built around a critical analysis of the play, including direct audio quotations from multiple documented versions of the performance, scene reenactments from voice-over actors, snippets of existing interviews with past production members, rerecorded songs, and various forms of experimental sound processing.
Research Description
For my PSI project, I will be creating an audio essay which will revisit Peter Weiss’s canonical play, Marat/Sade (1963), asking how the play represents madness through sound. Drawing upon my experience as a composer and sound designer, I will record a history podcast that considers the overlooked and unheard aspects of this play. The podcast will be an audio collage built around a critical analysis of the play, including direct audio quotations from multiple documented versions of the performance, scene reenactments from voice-over actors, snippets of existing interviews with past production members, rerecorded songs, and various forms of experimental sound processing. By combining original and found sound, I will create a polyvocal narrative that challenges the single-voiced chronologies of conventional research. Marat/Sade is a landmark production in theatre history and a key text in my research area of Mad Studies. The play is about a performance inside a “lunatic” asylum in the early nineteenth century. Since its premiere, Marat/Sade has been widely adapted, translated, and staged -- the most famous performance being a 1964 production by Peter Brook and the Royal Shakespeare Company. The Brook production is one of the most notable reifications of madness on the twentieth century stage and its understanding of mental distress is highly spectacularized and orally troubling. As such, my project’s main intervention is to unpack the play’s tropes, stereotypes, and ideologies within a new methodological framework (i.e., Sound Studies) in order to reveal how aural conventions of Mad representation have been enacted and imagined. This arts-based research project will function as a creative dissertation chapter and a podcast, but I'm also looking forward to imagining other venues for the audio, including radio broadcasting, sound installation, and online access.
What does being a Public Scholar mean to you?
In some sense, being a public scholar means resisting the insularity of academia and the tendency for scholars to only share their findings within their in-groups. As I see it, scholarship becomes "public" through multiple efforts, and I think accessibility is a crucial element of public-facing writing. For me, it means thinking more broadly in terms of the reception of my research, defining my wider audience, and conducting research with an eye to public interest. Many of the PSI projects I've seen have had some kind of activist impulse and I think that is another key component.
In what ways do you think the PhD experience can be re-imagined with the Public Scholars Initiative?
In my case, the PSI helps me to re-imagine the dissertation in particular. Following others who have adapted the dissertation to other media, including the graphic novel, I am interested in how conventional academic research can be made more accessible through other formats. In general, I think the PSI can help us as scholars to shake up our default modes of knowledge production and dissemination.
How do you envision connecting your PhD work with broader career possibilities?
As a sound designer, I am always thinking through my creative work in terms of my research findings and the ways in which the criticality of Sound Studies can be brought to bear on my compositional practice. In producing a podcast for my PSI project, I will have the opportunity to experiment with a new audio format and potentially open doors for more of this kind of audio production in the future.
How does your research engage with the larger community and social partners?
My project not only connects with Mad Studies performance theory, but also aims to connect to Mad arts activism. As a means of public knowledge transfer, the podcast should be relevant to, not just the general public, but other Mad-identified artists.
Why did you decide to pursue a graduate degree?
I decided to pursue a graduate degree because I'm passionate about my research and exploring subject matter that I find meaningful, engaging, and challenging. I also enjoy connecting with others, collaborating, and sharing resources. And, of course, I would be remiss if I didn't say that a long and prosperous teaching career would be nice.
Why did you choose to come to British Columbia and study at UBC?
I came to UBC specifically to study with my current supervisor, whose expertise and equanimity have made the doctoral process feel a lot less like the gauntlet it is made out to be. Thanks, Kirsty! It's all about the people, really.
Being a public scholar means resisting the insularity of academia and the tendency for scholars to only share their findings within their in-groups. As I see it, scholarship becomes "public" through multiple efforts, and I think accessibility is a crucial element of public-facing writing.
