Case studies: Beyond the Campus
Our Fathers: Reflecting on a creative collaboration between a researcher and a theater company
"Our Fathers" is a collaborative theatre project developed by Babakas Theatre Company and Dr. Laura King, University of Leeds.
Babakas was founded 2010 in Birmingham by a culturally diverse group of theater practitioners, who have previously created theatre together for various companies in Europe. Their work focuses on bringing together different cultural influences and languages in discussing social questions and combining entertainment with experimentation. Dr. Laura King is a research fellow at the Faculty of Arts, University of Leeds. She is a social historian with specialism on family studies, parenting and gender. Laura has a particular interest in questions around 'Fatherhood', which made her a perfect collaborator for the "Our Fathers" project. |
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Presentation & PodcastListen to Dr. Laura King, University of Leeds and Brian Mullin, Babakas Theatre Company, who presented at our Third Workshop in Birmingham – or download their presentation: Our Fathers: Reflecting on a creative collaboration between a researcher and a theater company
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Interview with Dr. Laura King and Brian Mullin
How did this collaboration benefit your academic work?
LAURA KING:
For me the process of the work with a theater company had huge benefits on my work and how I was approaching my own research. The different areas in which we work, made me question the concepts of my academic work around fatherhood, its history and fatherhood within the context of a theater production. Actually, how Babakas approached the concept through emotions and performance, really made me reflect on how I approach the concept of fatherhood.
LAURA KING:
For me the process of the work with a theater company had huge benefits on my work and how I was approaching my own research. The different areas in which we work, made me question the concepts of my academic work around fatherhood, its history and fatherhood within the context of a theater production. Actually, how Babakas approached the concept through emotions and performance, really made me reflect on how I approach the concept of fatherhood.
The production is based on 3 performers and their semi-autobiographical
stories. I find it really interesting to think about the way in which
those individual stories related to a wider tale about fatherhood,
family life and the history of that in Britain and beyond. The way in
which they conceived this relationship between individuality and a
wider history, was again important for me in terms of thinking about
that as a social historian. And as such you often think about what is
happening in a wider society. This really reinforced the importance
of remembering individuality within academic constructs. And as a
historian I obviously think a lot about why history matters. But again
the way the theatre company approached this and the way they told the
stories about history, memory and individual pasts, wasvery influential
for my own thinking.
Why would you recommend other academics to work with creative professionals?
LAURA KING:
What is really great with working with a theatre company or other creative professionals from an academic point of view, is that they are professionals at telling stories. Sometimes academics aren’t the best people to tell the stories they find. They maybe don’t tell it in the most interesting way.
Why would you recommend other academics to work with creative professionals?
LAURA KING:
What is really great with working with a theatre company or other creative professionals from an academic point of view, is that they are professionals at telling stories. Sometimes academics aren’t the best people to tell the stories they find. They maybe don’t tell it in the most interesting way.
How would you respond to that from a theater practitioner perspective?
BRIAN MULLIN:
It is really fascinating to hear you say that, because actually from our perspective of the dramaturgy of the play, Laura had a huge influence on us on understanding what the story was, that we had to tell. She came in when we had already developed quite a lot of material. We originally had 5 performers in the play. They essentially brought in their own relationship with their father and we’ve done some scatter shot interviews with various people we knew who were expecting or had children. But we didn’t have a comprehensive knowledge of issues around fatherhood, which Laura – as this being her area of specialism – brought in.
How did the collaboration with an academic reflect on the development of the play?
BRIAN MULLIN:
I found it fascinating when my artistic director and myself sat down with Laura. It wasn’t just that she tolds us to read a few articles, but she really reframed our way of thinking about fatherhood and helped us to understand which of the threads of the stories we had and started to uncover, connected to wider trends over the 20th century. And we had stories from Greece, Belgium and England, so we were working with aspects of different cultures. It really became clear that two of the stories we could jettison. I remember a conversation with Laura where she said "you know in many ways there is an idea of a father being the more distant parent than the mother, because the mother has carried the child to term". And she came from a very feminist perspective in her investigation, of saying is there a biological difference between fathers and mothers. So our play became very much focused around masculinity and the exploration of that.
We ended up really focusing on the issue of the 3 performers we had. In the finished play are a gay couple, who are contemplating whether they are becoming surrogate parents, and a daughter. So it very much became about a representation of complex issues of masculinity. Even though those stories seem so idiosyncratic, yet because spent quite a lot of time learning about evolving notions of the father as the breadwinner, we are able to see how those stories link to larger narratives.
Did the academic input influence how audiences perceived the play?
BRIAN MULLIN:
I remember our artistic director and I reading lots of the material that Laura had brought to us and her coming to rehearsals, we pumped that into our rehearsal process. We had done so much research and had engaged in such an interesting dialogue with Laura, that the finished piece doesn’t seem very research-heavy. It still is the story of 3 characters. The response from audiences has been that it doesn't seem odd to relate to an English-Belgian gay couple in relation to issues of fatherhood. It actually is a story that’s about fatherhood with a capital F. The issues Laura has raised with us were directly input in how we decided to structure the finished play. It is very hard to talk about this production because it involves memory, home videos, excepts from diaries, it is presented in 3 languages, there’s contemporary dance.
BRIAN MULLIN:
It is really fascinating to hear you say that, because actually from our perspective of the dramaturgy of the play, Laura had a huge influence on us on understanding what the story was, that we had to tell. She came in when we had already developed quite a lot of material. We originally had 5 performers in the play. They essentially brought in their own relationship with their father and we’ve done some scatter shot interviews with various people we knew who were expecting or had children. But we didn’t have a comprehensive knowledge of issues around fatherhood, which Laura – as this being her area of specialism – brought in.
How did the collaboration with an academic reflect on the development of the play?
BRIAN MULLIN:
I found it fascinating when my artistic director and myself sat down with Laura. It wasn’t just that she tolds us to read a few articles, but she really reframed our way of thinking about fatherhood and helped us to understand which of the threads of the stories we had and started to uncover, connected to wider trends over the 20th century. And we had stories from Greece, Belgium and England, so we were working with aspects of different cultures. It really became clear that two of the stories we could jettison. I remember a conversation with Laura where she said "you know in many ways there is an idea of a father being the more distant parent than the mother, because the mother has carried the child to term". And she came from a very feminist perspective in her investigation, of saying is there a biological difference between fathers and mothers. So our play became very much focused around masculinity and the exploration of that.
We ended up really focusing on the issue of the 3 performers we had. In the finished play are a gay couple, who are contemplating whether they are becoming surrogate parents, and a daughter. So it very much became about a representation of complex issues of masculinity. Even though those stories seem so idiosyncratic, yet because spent quite a lot of time learning about evolving notions of the father as the breadwinner, we are able to see how those stories link to larger narratives.
Did the academic input influence how audiences perceived the play?
BRIAN MULLIN:
I remember our artistic director and I reading lots of the material that Laura had brought to us and her coming to rehearsals, we pumped that into our rehearsal process. We had done so much research and had engaged in such an interesting dialogue with Laura, that the finished piece doesn’t seem very research-heavy. It still is the story of 3 characters. The response from audiences has been that it doesn't seem odd to relate to an English-Belgian gay couple in relation to issues of fatherhood. It actually is a story that’s about fatherhood with a capital F. The issues Laura has raised with us were directly input in how we decided to structure the finished play. It is very hard to talk about this production because it involves memory, home videos, excepts from diaries, it is presented in 3 languages, there’s contemporary dance.