Barry Edwards

Director and theatre maker. Studied at Universities of Sussex and Essex, and has taught at Open University, Huddersfield University, Manchester Metropolitan, Drama Centre and Central School of Speech and Drama. Has directed and created over 100 performances touring nationally and internationally.

Read Barry's interview with New Work Network

Research Interests

· Quality and innovation in performance development

· Theatre directing processes and skills

· Business models to improve routes to production

Teaching Activity

www.barryedwards.net

Recent directing credits for first public performances of new writing include After Care and Little Deaths by Steve Lambert, Up Against and Toasted by Mark Konik, and Shiver with Andrea Brady. Other premiere productions of new writing include Echo by Gabriel Josipovici, Stranded by Lou Glandfield, Toe Nailed to the Floor by David Drane. Barry Edwards produced and directed Howard Brenton’s debut piece Winter Daddykins and commissioned and directed the first production of Peter Flannery’s Savage Amusement. He is an award-winning creator and director of his own work that includes xstasis, In the Presence of People, stream, Takingbreath, with recent productions staged in London, Belgrade, Sao Paulo and Montreal. He is Joint Editor of Body, Space + Technology Journal, and from 2004 – 2007 was Director of Performance Initiative Network, producing 17 Festivals of new theatre work in London. He is Director of the performance company Optik and a joint director of ScenePool, a theatre production company run with producer Kerry Irvine. Recent productions have included Bloody Women by Emer O Connor, I am Woof by Robert Taylor, A Broken Part by the international company Big Odd, The Loser by Kim Wiltshire, and Up Against by award winning Australian playwright Mark Konik. In the past year ScenePool has worked as associate producers with Iron Shoes Theatre and their double Fringe First Award winning play Crush, and with the National Theatre Studio/Finborough production of Caryl Churchill’s Fen. The company is currently co-producing with the National Theatre Studio the new play Mad About the Boy by Gbolahan Obisesan, winner of the Jerwood Award 2009, at this year’s Edinburgh Fringe Festival. ScenePool produces and leads the Writers and Directors Lab in partnership with the Shaw Theatre.

Press reviews of Little Deaths

Emily Buist Bristol Evening Post September 2010 Rating 9/10

This is a play that explores the raw core of the human condition and displays its madness, violence and fragility. It is about hidden animalistic desires and the momentary power they hold over us. The characters seek to regain a warped power over their chaotic and haphazard lives, and despite being soaked in their own selfish obsessions are strangely watchable and deeply intriguing. This is a dark, seductive and evocative performance that gripped me from start to finish.

Steve Wright Venue Magazine September 2010 Rating ****

The erotic co-dependences between its three protagonists are revealed slowly, grippingly. Far from being a gothic melodrama it’s a softly realistic – and thus more shocking – account of the power struggles, compromises, epiphanies, and loneliness of life the other side of love. There are brilliant performances from Joanna Waters as Lisa, and Jo Morrison as Sam, an ingénue with a near bottomless appetite for self-abasement.

References

‘Make a Proposition’ Interview New Work Network Aspire series July 2011

http://www.newworknetwork.info/archive-correspondent/make-a-proposition

Optik History a film by Terry Tiernan

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lJwVKE0hNMQ

Optik Performance a film by Terry Tiernan

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MHfcDei8iGI

Broadhurst S Digital Practices: Aesthetic and Neuroesthetic Approaches to Performance and Technology Palgrave Macmillan 2007 pp 99 - 110

‘Body Waves Sound Waves: Optik Live Sound and Performance with Jarlett, B in Performance and Technology Practices of Virtual Embodiment and Interactivity Ed Broadhurst S and Machon J Palgrave Macmillan 2006

‘The World as Virtual Environment’
Chapter 7 Virtual Bodies - Serious Play
Ghislaine Boddington
TMA Hellerau 2007

‘Optik Processing and Performance’
Jarlett B
Body, Space + Technology Journal Vol 07 2007

Smart J ‘Meditations on space: talking to Optik’
Body, Space + Technology Journal Vol 4 No 1 July 2004

Warr, T ‘A Moving Meditation on a Dead Line’
Performance Research Journal Moving Bodies Issue Volume 8 No 1 pp 130 - 136
Routledge December 2003

Pavis P Analyzing Performance: Theater, Dance and Film UMP 2003 pp 315 – 316

Edwards, B ‘Performing Presence’ in Consciousness Reframed Ascott R (Ed) Intellect Books 1999 pp 191 - 196 

Dodds S ‘Optik Twice Over’
Dance Theatre Journal London Volume 13 No.1 Summer 1996 pp 42 – 43

Recent Grants

ESCR, Barclays Bank, Institute for Small Business and Enterprise 2009-10 Collaboration with Brunel Business School into entrepreneurship in the small-scale theatre industry.

British Council 2008 Travel Award to visit Korean National Academy of Dramatic Art Seoul Korea. 

Publications

Journal Papers

(2010) Edwards, B., Acting what happens, The Evidence February 2010

Conference Papers

(2009) Edwards, BE., Theatre making and real time sound composition, Theatre Noise

Book Chapters

(2006) Edwards, B. and Jarlett, B., Body waves sound waves: optik live sound and performance. In: Broadhurst, S. and Machon, J. eds. Performance and technology: practices of virtual embodiment and interactivity. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan 127- 140