Interdisciplinary approaches to representing workers conditions in performance

My creative practice PhD will comprise of a portfolio of musical theatre works that simulate and
stimulate the precarious conditions of the contemporary workforce. The centrepiece of the
submission will be Heel and Toe, a large-scale work for clog dancers, voice, video and
instrumental ensemble. My work will explore how collisions of diverse artistic practices (e.g., tap
dance, instrumental composition, and multiscreen video) can be brought together to
create unexpected forms of interdisciplinarity. My project will ask: How might interdisciplinary
performance reflect on, represent or translate the rapidly changing set of demands placed on the
contemporary workforce? Can a rigorous engagement with post-fordist theory help sharpen
performance works which grapple with the theme? What's at stake politically here for audiences
and the wider society is whether the feelings created by these shifts of living and working should
be seen as the problem of the individual, leading to self-help thinking, or of the collective, leading
to broader discourse and political organising. I believe interdisciplinary performance is well set to
shine light on the complicated entanglement of issues around identity, agency, freedom and
power that the new world of work has produced.