I am happy to be launching today my Embodied Monologues Research Series hosted by Maynooth University and taking place in different institutions across Ireland.

Embodied Monologues seeks to generate responses and challenges to the idea of solo or ‘mono’ performance. What, it asks, is the role of the intertextual, the multimedial, the intercorporeal in this mode of performance?

Under the aegis of the Performance, Practice and Interactivity Cluster, the series will explore solo performance through practice and research across the humanities, investigating the multiple forces at work during the production and performative processes. Embodied Monologues aims to promote an interdisciplinary exchange among research clusters, performers, researchers, and practitioners whose work is based primarily on solo performance.

With the goal of offering a framework for training purposes and intellectual exchange inside and outside academia, Embodied Monologues will foster a number of smaller events taking place between 2016 and 2017 at Maynooth University and its research partners. The event proposes to reach out to Irish higher education institutions, arts providers and individuals engaged in practice-led and artistic research.

The series commences with Ben Spatz’s workshop offered to performance students on the 20^th of October in Riverstown Hall, and is still open to further adhesion. For more details and to flag your event, please contact main organizer, Dr Francesca Placanica @ Francesca.Placanica@nuim.ie.

“Hitlahavut is ‘the burning’, the ardour of ecstasy. A fiery sword guards the way to the tree of life. It scatters into sparks before the touch of hitlahavut, whose light finger is more powerful than it. To hitlahavut the path is open, and all bounds sink before its boundless step. The world is no longer its place: it is the place of the world.” – Martin Buber