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Professor Experience Bryon

Professor Experience Bryon is Course Leader for BA (Hons) Acting. She has more than thirty years of teaching experience in acting for stage and screen, musical theatre and opera and is an early pioneer of Integrative Performance Practice for which her book of the same title is taught internationally. 

She comes to NUA after leading the Practice as Research MA/MFA at Royal Central School of Speech and Drama for the last ten years. As a course leader at Norwich Professor Bryon teaches acting, voice and movement, provides academic and managerial leadership, co-ordinates course delivery and ensures academic and professional relevance while working collaboratively with course teams, Deans of Faculty and Managers in the delivery of a high quality student experience.

Research and practice

I have been working with performers for over thirty years as an acting teacher, director for opera, choreographer, artistic director and practitioner/researcher.

My work lives equally between practice and research across science and the arts. I supervise and examine PhD’s in acting training, and interdisciplinary exchanges between performance and other areas of practice, industry and study.  

My own work is dedicated to the bending of performance genres, creating theatrical works that cross the boundaries between the classical voice, dance and physical theatre advancing new methods of training that allow a more effective practice for the performer and theatre maker who crosses disciplines.

I have a PhD in performance, a BA (Hons) in Music, and trained as an acting major at the New York High School of Performing Arts. I am also certified yoga teacher specialising in physical/vocal praxis.

Prior to joining NUA I ran the MA/MFA Performance Practice as Research at the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama, was Director of Performing Arts at KBCC, City University of New York and taught at the Australian Academy of Music, Auckland Opera, and Auckland University in New Zealand.

I have been an Artistic Director of Experience Vocal Dance Company (London and New York), The Front Room (Melbourne) and have directed and choreographed for opera throughout Australia, New Zealand and the US

Keynotes I have delivered include the Moscow Art Theatre as part of their International Movement Conference, the Embodied Cognition Symposium as part of the Society of Artificial Intelligence and Simulation of Behaviour at Goldsmith University and also for the Interdisciplinary Voice Studies symposium at Plymouth University.

I am honoured to be invited to deliver the lead plenary at the forthcoming Mayo Clinic Humanities in Medicine Symposium 2021, Engaging Across Disciplines: Toward a Practice of Transdisciplinarity.

Publications

  • 2018, Performing Interdisciplinarity: Working Across Disciplinary Boundaries through an Active Aesthetic, Routledge.
  • 2018, ‘Awareness Performing: Practice to Protocol’, Routledge Companion to Theatre, Performance and Cognitive Science, edited by Bruce McConachie and Rick Kemp, Routledge.
  • 2018, Embodied Cognition, Acting and Performance (Lead editor with Mark Bishop, Deirdre McLaughlin & Jess Kaufman), Taylor and Francis.
  • 2017, Transdisciplinary and interdisciplinary exchanges between embodied cognition and performance practice: working across disciplines in a climate of divisive knowledge cultures, Connection Science 29(1) pp 2-20.
  • 2014, Integrative Performance; Practice and Theory for the Interdisciplinary Performer, Routledge.
  • 2012, From Walking and Talking to Cartwheels and High Cs: An examination of practice-based laboratory work into physio-vocal integration, Theatre, Dance and Performance Training, Taylor and Francis.
  • 2009, Interdisciplinarity and Embodied Knowledge: Towards an Active aesthetic using Integrative Performance Practice, “Tanz im Musiktheater – Tanz als Musiktheater. Beziehungen von Tanz und Musik im Theater. Bericht über ein internationales Symposion, Hannover 2006”, ed. by Stephanie Schroedter, Thomas Betzwieser, Anno Mungen und Andreas Münzmay, 2009.
  • 2008, Reflections on Integrative Performance and the Moscow Art Theatre, for An International Conversation about Movement, CSSD UK Journal.
  • 2005, Pedagogy, Performance Theory & Historic Prejudice in Opera, Shakespeare Around the Globe, Voice and Speech Review No 3.
  • 2000, Stanislavsky and the Classical Singer, (Classical Singer, Vol 13, No 10).
  • 2000, Stanislavsky in Opera: the Forgotten Radical, (Soul of the American Actor Vol 3, No 2).

 Research presentations and conferences

  • 2020 Forthcoming, Keynote: MAYO Clinic’s 2020 Mayo Clinic Humanities in Medicine Symposium, on the subject of Performance, Medicine and Transdisciplinarity, Rochester Minnesota, USA.
  • 2015 Organiser for the Embodied Cognition Acting and Performance Symposium, AISB (Society for the Study of Artificial Intelligence and Simulation of Behaviour), University of Kent.
  • 2014 Keynote: at the Centre for Interdisciplinary Voice Studies, Portsmouth University; Opera and Integrative Performance Practice.
  • 2014 Keynote: at the Embodied Cognition, Acting and Performance Symposium, Goldsmiths University; Defining Embodiment, a Transdisciplinary Approach.
  • 2009 ATHE, Integrative Performance Practice, Interdisciplinary Workshop, NYC.
  • 2009 Performing Presence: from the live to the simulated, Remote creation and its implications for the work of Experience Vocal Dance Company, University of Exeter, UK, March.
  • 2008 Documentary Symposium, Remote Creation: Technology and the work of Experience Vocal Dance Company, Central School of Speech and Drama & Centre for Excellence in Training for Theatre, London.
  • 2007 Keynote: Moscow Art Theatre International Movement conference; Integrative Performance Practice.

External advisor and examining

  • 2019 – present External Examiner, Northumbria University, MA Theatre and Performance.
  • 2020 PhD Examiner University of Kent.
  • 2019 PhD Examiner University of East Anglia.
  • 2015-18 External Examiner, BA (Hons) Vocal and Choral Studies, University of Winchester.
  • 2015 External Advisor, MA Theatre Directing, St Mary’s University Twickenham London.
  • 2014 External Advisor, BA (Hons) Acting, Plymouth University.
  • 2013 Panel member for QA institutional approval, reviewing awards between performance degrees, Bournemouth and Poole College of Further Education.
  • 2012 Visiting Research Consultant, London College of Music: University of West London. Guided staff toward transforming their creative work into viable research outcomes.

Editorial boards and peer review

  • 2015-present Editorial Board, Journal for Interdisciplinary Voice Studies,
  • 2018 Peer Review, South African Theatre Journal, Taylor and Francis.
  • 2017 Peer Review, RIDE: the Journal of Applied Theatre and Performance, Taylor and Francis.
  • 2015-18 Peer Review, multiple book proposals for Routledge and Bloomsbury.

Professional memberships

  • ATHE – Association for Theatre in Higher Education
  • VASTA – Voice and Speech Teachers Association
  • SAR – Society of Artistic Research
  • AMH – Association For Medical Humanities
Email Professor Experience Bryon