Cathy Turner is a British artist and researcher, specialising in dramaturgy, site-specific performance and walking art.[1] She is a founder member of Wrights & Sites,[2] and a Senior Lecturer in Drama at the University of Exeter.[3] Turner's practice and research explore how one's life experience can influence one's perception of their environment.
Dramaturgy
Turner's dramaturgical research focuses on the relationship between performance and place,[4] an area she has explored and documented in her book Dramaturgy and Architecture: Theatre, Utopia and the Built Environment.[5]
Wrights & Sites
Turner is a founding member of Wrights & Sites, a group of artist-researchers who develop site-specific artistic works. They are best known for their walking misguides, and their use of the Letterist/Situationist practice of dérive.[6]
Walking Women
In 2009 Turner collaborated with Deirdre Heddon on a series of interviews with women walking artists. In their two essays, 'Walking Women: Shifting the Tales and Scales of Mobility' and 'Walking Women: interviews with artists on the move', Heddon and Turner argue that a fraternal lineage dominates walking, with the practices of female walkers erased or marginalised. Their work introduces the voices of contemporary female artists that walk into the historical record.[7][8]
Heddon and Turner's work has sparked a series of practice-based interventions that focus on women who walk. These include 'Er Outdoors' a series of radio programs curated by Jo Norcup that make 'audible the voices of women past and present';[9] and WALKING WOMEN, a series of exhibitions, talks and events curated by Amy Sharrocks and Clare Qualmann that actively 're-write the canon' and 'imagine a future in which gender bias and skewed vision is destroyed'.[10]
Nora and I (2009), Funded by Arts Council England.
Writing Space, (2008), Funded by The Arts and Humanities Research Council.[18]
An Infinite Line: (2007), contributed to Dramaturgical Labs for 2008 Brighton Festival[19]
Selected publications
Cathy Turner (2015). Dramaturgy and Architecture: Theatre, Utopia and the Built Environment. Palgrave.
Cathy Turner and Synne Behrndt (2007).Dramaturgy and Performance. Palgrave Macmillan.
Cathy Turner, Tony Weaver, Stephen Hodge, Simon Persighetti and Phil Smith (2006). A Mis-Guide to Anywhere. Wrights & Sites.
References
^Smith, Phil (1 January 2010). "The contemporary dérive: a partial review of issues concerning the contemporary practice of psychogeography". Cultural Geographies. 17 (1): 103–122. doi:10.1177/1474474009350002. S2CID55861501.
^Persighetti; et al. (2000). "Site-specific: "The Quay Thing" documented". Standing Committee of University Drama Departments. Studies in theatre and performance supplement.
