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Personal Profile For Miss Emma Gersch
Senior Lecturer: Drama and Senior Teaching Fellow (PerformanceL. School of Music and Performing Arts.
BA(Hons) [Hull University].
Personal Statement:
Emma Gersch joined the Department of Drama at Bath Spa University in August 2005, as Senior Lecturer in Drama, and was appointed Artswork Senior Teaching Fellow for Performance Lab in November 2007.
Since graduating from the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama in 1999 Emma has worked as an Actress, Director and Teacher in the UK, Europe and the United States. As an actress, her work has spanned classical and musical theatre, touring and regional work. Emma has also worked in the medium of Film and Radio. In 2002 Emma began working with Howard Barker and the Wrestling School, on an international premiere of 'Gertrude the Cry' which opened at Elsinore Castle in Denmark. She went on to direct Barker's 'Judith' in London. Subsequent directing work included 'The Tempest' for the Franklin Stage Company in New York. Before joining Bath Spa University, Emma was Senior Tutor at Luton Sixth Form College, Creative Arts Department.
Emma set up Proactive Productions in 2000, establishing a collective of professional actors with the aim of extending the creative work of actors into the industrial and business sectors. Using drama as a training tool, the Company create bespoke role-play training courses for GPs, Psychologists, Executive Coaches and Sales Executives. The Company have also taken drama residencies in schools, facilitating specialist workshops in Shakespeare and Ancient Greek Theatre. Under the banner of ProActive Productions, Emma directed Ionesco's 'The Bald Prima Donna' at London's Kings Head theatre which was subsequently selected as the Arts Council East's Escalator show, supporting it onto the national touring circuit. In March 2009, Emma directed 'Moving Stories' at the Southwark Playhouse, which invited small audience groups to travel the streets of Southwark, meeting local people and listening to their stories.
Emma is Deputy Artistic Director for Full Tilt Theatre Company www.fulltilt-theatre.com and has directed over ten full scale touring productions, including a site specific production of 'Hamlet' for the 2006 Bath Shakespeare Festival, ('This is Shakespeare at its best and not to be missed!' Bath Chronicle), which then transferred to the Minack Theatre in Cornwall, playing to over 10,000 audience members. 'Macbeth' followed in March 2007, where audience joined the witches at an outdoor rave, and Malcolm was their DJ, and 'The Comedy of Errors - an Identity Affair' returned to the Minack in June 2008, and then toured the USA and Canada www.shakespeareinasuitcase.blogspot.com In addition to the Shakespearean adaptations, Emma has directed the neo-classic project for the third years and over the past three years has devised radical reinventions of each part of Aeschylus' 'Oresteia': 'Agamemnon: Stripped, Re-Loaded, Re-Told' (Theatre Royal Bath, BAC London, 2006), a multimedia interdisciplinary 'Complex: Electra' (Camden People's Theatre, 2007) and most recently, 'Orestes:Re-Examined' which opened at the University Theatre in Bath, and then toured to prisons in the South West in January 2009. This production will be revised for a London transfer in Autumn 09.
Emma works predominently with the third years on the Performing Arts Programme, and has introduced professionalisation modules into the curriculum, 'Into Industry' and 'Professional Portfolio' with a strong emphasis on employability and graduate skills. Here she has built up an industry interface, with regular visits and master-classes from leading practitioners. Emma introduced the model of students working alongside professional actors in productions at high profile venues. In 2006 Emma directed 'Heresies' by Deborah Levy at the Bristol Old Vic, with featured in Michael Billington's top 5 UK shows, in the Saturday Times. Emma also established, coordinates and directs the annual Graduate Actors Showcase, which this year took place at the Tristan Bates Theatre in London.
As Senior Teaching Fellow for Artswork Performance Lab, Emma has been working on new pioneering ways to weave entrepreneurialism and employability into the curriculum. Most recently, Emma created 'The Launchpad' - an incubation scheme for two fledgling performance companies to be nurtured and developed with resources, business training and mentorship, in order to launch onto the touring circuit. The first companies were selected in April 2009, 'Nice as Pie' and Ruffled Umbrella' http://www.bathspa.ac.uk/about/news/default.asp?article=681
Professional Qualifications:
Post Graduate Diploma in Acting - Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama (1999)
Post Graduate Certificate in Education - Greenwich University (2006)
Membership of Professional Bodies/Subject Associations:
I am a member of:
Equity
The Actors Centre, London
Spotlight
Teaching Specialism:
Employability and entrepreneurialism for the graduating artist
Professionalisation skills
Reinvention of the Classics
Devised ensemble theatre
Elizabethan and Shakespearian Theatre
Greek Classical Tragedy
Physical Theatre
Clowning
Theatre of the Absurd
Key Publications/Exhibitions/Performances:
Between 1999 and 2005, I have performed in radio, film and theatre in over 10 countries. Over this period of time I have refined and developed my performance skills, finding that my specialist areas for performance are classical text based work and physical theatre.
*June 2005 I performed at St. Paul's Cathedral at the John Donne celebration, with Harriet Walter and Michael Maloney.
*March 2006: I convened a Palatine Conference on Site-Specific Theatre
*2006-2009, directed over ten productions for Full Tilt Theatre Comapny, with an exploration of ensemble based, devising processes as relating to reinvention of classical work
Current Scholarship:
My current research interests are
Transformational teaching - the immersive experience
Reinvented theatre
The shifting trends within actor training in the 21st Century; physical versus cerebral.
The transition from actor training into the Performing Arts industry
Site-specific and 'Event' theatre
The 21st Century theatre audience - in an age of autonomy and technology
Other External Roles:
Founder and Director of ProActive Productions
Board Member for Hammerpuzzle Theatre Company
Panelist for the Bath Theatre Royal Endgames project, November 2005/6/7
Member of steering committee Theatre Locality Plan for Bath and North East Somerset.
Recent Professional Updating:
-April 2009, Awarded membership of Young Vic Theatre, Directors Genesis Programme
-March 2009: Directed 'Moving Stories' for the Southwark Playhouse
-October 08:March 09: Guest Director at Mountview Academy for Theatre Arts, directing 'Heyfever' by Noel Coward and 'The Rover' by Aphra Behn.
-January 2008: Employability skills for students, at University of Surrey's conference 'The Power of the Immersive Experience',
-August 2007: Director: 'They Think its all Over' The Egg, Theatre Royal Bath - Edinburgh Fringe Festival
June 2006:panelist at Performance Initiative Network's Symposium on innovative teaching, Teatro Technis
Last Updated: 28 May 2009.
This page is created by the above named individual. The views expressed are theirs and are not those of Bath Spa University. BSU is not responsible for the content of any external sites referenced.
