Isolated Acts: Theatre in Asylums and Hospitals

《孤立的行为》调查在精神环境中的戏剧和表演的实践。二十世纪见证了精神卫生保健服务的提供发生了多种变化。该网络特别关注从精神病院到医院再到以社区为基础的结构与在那里进行的剧场实践有关的活动。通过将广泛的学者、临床医生和从业者聚集在一起，这个研究网络探索了戏剧和表演在精神病学背景下被使用的多种方式。该网络考虑这些精神护理空间的表现历史和目前的做法。此外，它还询问了护理模式的变化、建筑环境的根本变化、对精神疾病的可变理解以及这些因素如何影响护理环境中的绩效工作。同时，该网络还探讨了专业戏剧实践如何寻求代表同一时期的精神环境。该网络将挖掘基本上被忽视的精神病学空间表演的戏剧史，并审查此类工作在伦理、政治和治疗方面的利害关系。该网络还将重新思考从业者试图将精神空间以及个人对这些空间的体验转化为戏剧美学的方式。该网络将发生在精神环境中的工作与发生在这些精神环境中的工作进行对话。通过这种方式，该网络能够更充分地反映在精神病学背景下的戏剧和表演的做法。这个项目试图对空间、幸福和现场表演的概念做出新的解释。通过汇集从精神病学到艺术史的七个学科的人物，以及与国际艺术家、卫生保健专业人员和庇护档案管理员合作，该项目将调查受控精神环境中戏剧和表演的历史和政治。2011年，该网络将包括两项活动：在埃克塞特大学举行的为期一天的实践研讨会；在剑桥大学举行的为期两天的会议。这些活动将在这一领域产生重要的新研究，并为未来的研究和合作播下种子。该网络将制作一期共同编辑的《医学人文》杂志特刊，还将通过一个动态网站向更广泛的在线社区传播这项研究。通过试图理解戏剧实践中被忽视的一部分，并探索其与精神病学的关系，这个研究网络将有助于更好地理解表演、心理健康、疾病和幸福。我们对剧院在封闭环境中的作用和性质的合作调查将为我们如何理解艺术在精神健康和护理方面的影响提供重要的启示，无论是在历史上还是现在。这个网络背离了一种敏锐的意识，即心理健康很重要。因此，它试图揭示戏剧在这一背景下的作用。

Isolated Acts investigates the practice of theatre and performance in psychiatric environments. The twentieth century has witnessed manifold changes to the delivery of mental health care. This network is particularly concerned with the movement from asylums to hospitals to community based structures in relation to the theatre practice taking place therein. By drawing together a broad range of academics, clinicians, and practitioners this research network explores the plural ways in which theatre and performance have been used within psychiatric contexts. The network considers the performance histories of, and current practices within, these psychiatric care spaces. Moreover, it interrogates the changing patterns of care, the radical shifts in architectural environment, and the mutable understanding of psychiatric illnesses and how these have impacted on performance work in care settings. Concurrently, the network deliberates how professional theatre practice has sought to represent psychiatric environments in the same period. The network will excavate the largely overlooked theatre history of performance in psychiatric spaces and examine what is at stake ethically, politically, therapeutically in such work. The network will also rethink the manners in which practitioners have attempted to translate psychiatric spaces, and individuals' experiences of these spaces into theatre aesthetics. The network places the work that takes place within psychiatric contexts in dialogue with work that takes places about these psychiatric environments. In this way the network is able to reflect more fully on the practice of theatre and performance in psychiatric contexts. This project seeks to shed new light on notions of space, well being, and live performance. By bringing together figures from across seven academic disciplines from psychiatry to art history, as well as collaborating with international artists, health care professionals, and asylum archivists the project will investigate the history and politics of theatre and performance in controlled psychiatric environments. The network will comprise two events in 2011: a practice-based one day symposium at the University of Exeter; and a two day conference at the University of Cambridge. These events will generate important new research in this field and sow the seeds for future research and collaboration. The network will produce a co-edited special issue of the journal Medical Humanities and also will also disseminate the research to a broader online community through a dynamic website. By attempting to understand an overlooked part of theatrical practice and explore its relationship to psychiatry this research network will contribute to a better understanding of performance, mental health, illness, and well being. Our collaborative investigations into the role and nature of theatre in and about closed environments will shed important light on how we understand, both historically and currently, the impact of the arts in mental health and care. This network departs from a keen sense that mental health matters. It seeks, therefore, to uncover the role of theatre in this context.