Broderick Chow

Dr Broderick Chow is an artist-scholar with experience in numerous fields of the performing arts. He has been an actor, stand-up comedian, performer, writer, director and song-and-dance man. This wide-ranging approach has influenced both his research and teaching.

His work intersects with performance practice, political philosophy, and social theory. In 2010, Broderick became the first doctoral graduate of the Central School of Speech & Drama, University of London. His thesis, How to do things with jokes: relocating the political dimension of performance comedy examined his practice as a stand-up comedian in relation to larger questions of the validity of satire in the age of global capitalism.

Recent work includes an auto-ethnographic study of professional wrestling training. Broderick is currently at work on a monograph on performance, physical cultures, and precarious labour (see Research and Teaching).

Broderick is one half of Dangerologists, a male dance and physical theatre duo. Their piece Work Songs was developed with support in kind of the School of Arts (see More about Broderick).

Research Overview

Broderick’s over-arching research question is the intersection between the event of performance and its material, economic, and ideological production, and consequences. His research takes two forms.

One strand focuses on questions of the political and ethical dimensions of performance practices, particularly ‘physical’ and/or ‘popular’ performances. His research often takes the form of auto-ethnography and practice-as-research (for example, immersing himself in the training practices of wrestling or parkour). He is at work on a monograph about masculinity, physicality, and performance in relation to the neoliberalisation of work and labour in the 20^th and 21^st century. It comprises five studies of ‘risky practices’: parkour, professional wrestling, stunt work, fitness modelling, and stand-up comedy.

A second strand of research is philosophy and questions of theatricality, visibility, and speech. This work is primarily historical and has (for instance) examined popular protest in 1980s Poland and its theatrical dimensions. Broderick is at work with Alex Mangold on Žižek and Performance, the first edited collection of its kind to examine Slavoj Žižek’s work in relation to theatre and performance.

Teaching Activity

With his dance and physical theatre duo Dangerologists, Broderick recently developed and performed Work Songs. A duet for two men in an office, the piece explored concepts of labour, work, attention, exhaustion through a unique physical language. Work Songs has toured all over the UK, including a run at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in August 2012, and was celebrated for its sheer physical exertion (‘the stuff of body-drenching sweat and winded lungs’ – Mary Brennan, The Herald). More on Dangerologists at dangerologists.co.uk.

Publications

‘On the theatrical ontology of political protest: bodies, representation, failure’. Somatechnics, Edinburgh University Press, 2013. [FORTHCOMING]

(with Darren O’Donnell) ‘Young Mammals: Mammalian Diving Reflex and the ethics of long-term collaboration with children in the new economy.’ in Emeljanow, Victor and G. Arrighi (eds) (2013). Children and Entertainment: The Participation of Youth in the Entertainment Industry. London: Palgrave. [FORTHCOMING]

Chow, BDV (2011) ‘Parkour and the critique of ideology’. Journal of Dance and Somatic Practices. 2:2.

Chow, BDV (2009) ‘Situations, Happenings, Gatherings, Laughter: Emergent British Stand-up Comedy in Sociopolitical Context’. Comedy Tonight! Theatre Symposium Series Vol. 16. ed. Malarcher, Jay. University of Alabama Press.

Conference Papers (Selected)

2012 Theatre and Performance Research Association, University of Kent: ‘Work and shoot: professional wrestling and embodied politics.’

2012 Performance Studies International #18: ‘Work Songs: immaterial labour in the office and everywhere.’

2011 American Society for Theatre Research, Montreal QC: Plenary Presentation - ‘Economies of Mobility, Economies of Impermanence: Towards a New Artistic Critique’. Co-written with Darren O’Donnell, Artistic Director of Mammalian Diving Reflex (Toronto).

2011 QUORUM, Queen Mary, University of London, Research Seminar: ‘Solidarity and the Orange Alternative: the limits of performing protest’.

2011 London Theatre Seminar, School of Advanced Studies, University of London: ‘Wrestling with Wrestling.’

2011 Theatre and Performance Research Association (TaPRA) Conference, University of Kingston: ‘Popular Performance and Populist Politics.’

2011 University of Surrey, Department of Dance, Film and Theatre, Research Seminar: ‘Parkour and the critique of ideology.’

2010 London Theatre Seminar, Birkbeck, University of London: ‘Kim Noble Will Help You Get Through It: the economies of exclusion and the terrible laughter of community’

Selected Productions/Performances/Exhibitions

2012 ROSE (dance for camera). Choreographed and performed by Broderick Chow and Tom Wells. Presented on Kafka’s Wound, by Will Self. BBC, The Space, London Review of Books.

2012 Work Songs. Choreographed by Broderick Chow and Tom Wells, directed by Broderick Chow. Performances in London, Manchester, Newton-in-Bowland, Leeds and Edinburgh, Giessen, Germany

2011 Easy, Tiger!, How The Light Gets In Festival, Hay-on-Wye (Solo Performance)

2010 We Live in Financial Times, Chelsea Theatre, London (Theatre)

2010 Easy, Tiger!, Royal College of Surgeons, Edinburgh (Solo Performance)

2009 Dangerology, Axis Open Space Gallery, Alsager, MMU Cheshire (Artist-in-Residence) (Installation)

2009 The Centre for Dangerology, CSSD, London (Exhibition with Thom Glen)

2008 Akira California, Tour (Solo Performance)

2007 Girl in Box, Tour (Physical Theatre)

2006 Heartbreaker, CSSD, London (Theatre)

2005 Miss Saigon (actor, Thuy), Arts Club Theatre Company, Vancouver (Musical)

Publications

Journal Papers

(2010) Chow, BDV., Parkour and the critique of ideology: turn-vaulting on the fortresses of the city, Journal of Dance and Somatic Practices 2 (2) : 143- 154

Book Chapters

(2008) Chow, BDV., Situations, happenings, gatherings, laughter: Energent British stand-up comedy in sociopolitical context. In: Malarcher, J. ed. Comedy Tonight!. University Alabama Press (Volume 16)