Professor Ellie Nixon

I graduated from Middlesex University and trained at the Jacques Lecoq International Theatre School in Paris (1987-89). In 1989 I co-founded the La Mancha International Theatre Company and continue to be its UK Artistic Director. The company has produced over thirty theatre projects in English, Spanish, French and Norwegian, performing throughout the UK, Europe, Scandinavia, Central and South America. Each production has used the devising process to create highly visual new work and theatrical adaptations. La Mancha has received funding from The British Arts Council, Norsk Kassettavgiftsfond, Norwegian Embassy in Chile, La Corporación Nacional de Cobre de Chile (CODELCO), Centro Nacional de las Artes – CENART, Mexico, The Chilean Arts Foundation, The Pre-Colombian Museum – Chile.

In 1995 I co-founded La Mancha International School of Image and Gesturein Santiago, Chile with the theatre director Rodrigo Malbrán. The school offers professional training in contemporary theatre making and postgraduate courses in acting, directing, teaching and theatre in Human Development. Underpinned by the Lecoq tradition, the La Mancha School is unique in South America. Students come from all over the world to study there and graduates have gone on to form many innovative national and international theatre and dance companies. They are also successfully acting and directing in theatre, film and television.

My research explores embodied approaches to contemporary performance practice and performer training. Drawing on a range of interdisciplinary perspectives, material engagement theory and environmental humanities, I seek to articulate the projective interplay between the sensate imagining body and the material world as a dynamic force for creative practice.

Publications

• 2024 — Nixon, E. Imagining Bodies and Performer Training: The Legacies of Jacques Lecoq and Gaston Bachelard is a practical and theoretical exploration of the embodied imagining processes of devised performance. Forming part of the Routledge series, Perspectives on Performer Training, this book brings together the work of French theatre pedagogue Jacques Lecoq and the writings of French Philosopher Gaston Bachelard to offer twenty-first century perspectives on performer training in which the human and more-than-human are co-implicated in the devising process.
• 2022 — Judo as a devising practice: Yves Klein, La Mancha and Chile. Theatre, Dance and Performance Training journal published by Routledge Journals, Taylor & Francis Ltd
• 2019 – Nixon, E. Embodied correspondences with the material world: Marcel Jousse’s ‘laboratory of the self’ as a force for creative practice in performer training.  Theatre, Dance and Performance Training, 10(1), 97–112.

• 2018 — Nixon, E. Moving Rock, Embodied Correspondences with the Material World as a Force for Creative Practice, Theatre, Dance and Performance Training journal published by Routledge Journals, Taylor & Francis Ltd
• 2016 — Nixon, E (2016) La Mancha Theatre Company and School – Chile, in: Evans, M., Kemp, R. (eds.) The Routledge Companion to Jacques Lecoq, Abingdon: Routledge. 372-379

Practice and papers

• 2024: Co-Convenor – Body Matters AHRA International Conference, Norwich University of the Arts.
• 2024: Body-Space Workshop, exploring the expressive movement potentials between bodies, space and place. Body Matters AHRA International Conference, Norwich University of the Arts.
•  2022 — Nixon, E. Imagining Bodies and Creative Practice, Keynote presentation at the Sensory Storytelling, Imagination, and Wellbeing Project Symposium, University of Leeds
• 2021 — Nixon, E; Taylor, N; Russell, A. Possibility, Plurality, Planetarity, for Unrehearsed Futures (Drama School Mumbai, Embodied Poetics, CTDPS Centre for Theatre, Dance & Performance Studies)
• 2021 — Nixon, E. The Neutral Mask: International presentation, for Unrehearsed Futures (Drama School Mumbai, Embodied Poetics, CTDPS Centre for Theatre, Dance & Performance Studies)
• 2018 — Nixon, E. Moving Rock, Embodied Correspondences with the Material World as a Force for Performance-Making, presentation at Performing Mountains Symposium, Leeds
• 2018 — Nixon, E. Moving Rock, Embodied Correspondences with the Material World as a Force for Creative Action, presentation at the Holborne Museum, to the Performing Environments Forum, Research Centre for Environmental Humanities, Bath Spa University
• 2018 — Nixon, E. Moving Rock, Embodied Correspondences with the Material World as a Force for Creative Action, presentation to the Intercultural Communication through Practice research group, Bath Spa University
• 2017 — Moving Rock, interdisciplinary collaborative research project funded by HEQR Seed Funding, Bath Spa University and Kingston University
• 2017 — Embodied Poetics: The Poetics of the Imagination in Devising Practices, paper presented at the International Federation of Theatre Research (IFTR) Conference, University of Sao Paulo, Brazil. Funded by Bath Spa University and BSU Research Centre for Environmental Humanities (RCEH)
• 2017 — Sourcing from Within, practice-led presentation for Knowing From the Inside: Anthropology, Art, Architecture and Design (KFI), a 5-year project funded by a European Research Council – principal investigator: Professor Tim Ingold, University of Aberdeen. Funded by University of Aberdeen and Bath Spa University
• 2014 — The Threepenny Opera: Experiencing Intersections Bertolt Brecht and Jacques Lecoq, paper presented at Intersections: Colloquium of Performance Research, Central School of Speech and Drama (CSSD)
• 2013 — Processes of Transmission: A Laboratory of the Self, paper presented at The Performer Training Working Group, Theatre and Performance Research Association (TaPRA) Conference, University of Glasgow
• 2011 — Practice as Research: Models and Problems, paper presented at the Pre-Sessional Research Seminar, University of Exeter
• 2009 — Vivien Leigh: The Actress, presented at the Vivien Leigh Symposium hosted by University of Exeter and Topsham Museum
• 2007 — Risk-Taking and its Implications for an Acting Course: A Pedagogical Approach, paper presented at the Learning and Teaching Conference, Arts Institute at Bournemouth
• 2002 — Shakespeare a Dos Tiempos. Six-week residency: Centro Nacional de las Artes – CENART, Mexico