Sharing practice reflections with others, whether students or fellow practitioners, keeps the work as a director, tutor and facilitator alive and growing. Here are some of the ways I’m engaging actively with a research community, making practice knowledge accessible in diverse contexts.

Practice Research

Directing music theatre as inclusive practice (practice-PhD project)

In order to consolidate the practice knowledge I gain as part of my performance and directing work, I have started a PhD at Goldsmiths, University of London in 2017. My project focuses on exploring the inclusive possibilities inherent in the music theatre form. My work shows, in theory and practice, how avant-garde theatre-making can actually facilitate community engagement in an age of diversity and for differently-abled participants. The PhD project, therefore, also wants to do away with the myth that avant-garde direction associated with the continental European auteur cannot be rendered productive for a contemporary, inclusive British theatre context.

Teaching

Music theatre and performance praxis

I have been teaching literature, cultural studies and music theatre-related topics for about ten years now, from MA students to primary school children. In my teaching, I care for a creative work atmosphere, bringing in different teaching methodologies - from the visual to the performative; even the awareness of newly emerging learning types such as humour and game show strategies has made it into a session or two. In 2016, I started teaching at Goldsmiths. Before, I also collected experience in Germany and the US.

German language, literature and songs

During the pandemic, I’ve gone back to my roots and started teaching German language, literature and songs (!) at the City Literary Insitute, Covent Garden. It’s been an enriching experience exploring the connections between drama education and language teaching.

Until 2016, I contributed regularly to Deutsche Lieder. Bamberger Anthologie. The academic publication project aims to make poetry analysis accessible through applying its tools to German lyrics. For educators and literary critics and fans of German-language songs - it’s worth a visit: here.

Publications

Occasionally, I go to conferences and publish articles in German and English on directing aesthetic, music drama facilitation and cultural studies analysis.

• ‘Nicht Artgerecht. Tiere in Musikvideos als Verkörperung menschlicher Ausbruchsphantasien und deren Entlarvungsstufen bei Coldplay, den Scissor Sistersund Roger Cicero.’ In: Eckers Bestiarium. Ein Festblog für Hans-Peter Ecker. Hg. Von Denise Dumschat-Rehfeldt und Martin Rehfeldt. Bamberg, 2013.

• ‘Suspensionen der Hoffnung im Stahlglanz des Lifts.’ NichtOrte in Bewegung: Zur Poetik des Aufzugdichters Gust Fuhá. Ein kommentierter Miniatur-Reader. In: Der andere Blick der Literatur: Perspektiven auf die literarische Wahrnehmung der Wirklichkeit. Ed. by Andrea Bartl und Nils Ebert. Koenighausen & Neumann: Wuerzburg, 2014.

• 'We're Merely Mammals.' The Genre of the Bestiary Song: Cole Porter's Let's Do it in Context of his 1920s Animal Texts.” (Music and Literature: Critical Polyphonies 2nd July 2015, Durham Castle)

• ‘Hotel Aesthetics. The Four White Horse Inn Sound Films and the 20th Century Hotel" Discourse.’ (Interdisciplinary Symposium on White Horse Inn and New Cultural-Historical Perspectives 1930-2015, April 16 and 18, 2015 in St. Wolfgang and Salzburg) (published in Im weissen Roessel. Kulturgeschichtliche Perspektiven. Hg. Von Nils Grosch und Caroline Stahrenberg. Waxmann, 2016

• ‘Gay Shame in Gay Paree: Re-contextualising Gender Progressiveness in Two Film
  Versions of Victor/Victoria. In: Paris and the Musical: The City of Light on Stage and Screen. Ed. by Olaf Jubin. Routledge: London, 2021.