An 'Imaginary Invalid'

An 'Imaginary Invalid' Freely adapted from Molière by Gerard Boland Producer/Director: Gerard BolandFor CYCLE ProductionsSchool of Communication & Creative IndustriesVenue: Ponton Theatre, CSU-BathurstDates: 24-28 May 2011This project exemplifies practice as research into performance(PARIP). This research perspective has been theorised and developed over the past decade by an international community of scholar/practitioners who regularly meet under the aegis of the International Federation for Theatre Research (IFTR). I am a member of the IFTR and I participate in the Popular Entertainments Working Party. This creative work represents a project that was been engaged in order to realise three primary research outcomes: 1) as a practice-based learning and teaching project which was ordered around the need to successfully advance the knowledge and skills development of pre-professional theatre-makers concerning the specialised gestural performance orientation and staging demands of Molière's unmasked physical comedy as a style that features the inclusion of lazzi and live music (on the model of the commedia dell'arte); 2) the creation of a new script (one that is freely adapted from Molière's original) as a basis for documenting the performative outcome of this practice-based learning and teaching enterprise; and, 3) these are the necessary preparatory stages for the development of a theorised analysis of this project ' suitable for conference presentations and publication in Popular Entertainment Studies (ISSN 1837-9303) ' using John McGrath's (1981) propositions concerning 'popular theatre' and Baz Kershaw's (1999) 'points of process' for generating authentic instances of 'the radical in performance'. This latter research objective is currently in process for it is predicated upon the successful realisation of the educational, performative and documentary outcomes that define this creative work research project.