Gee Mumford is a dramaturg and theatremaker from East Devon, whose childhood participation in local theatre helped establish a lifelong love. Developing a fascination with the function of both space and audience during their actor training, their experiments have ranged from non-traditional use of traditional playing spaces to creating a site-specific piece of immersive children’s theatre on the tracks of an abandoned railway tunnel overtaken by nature.
Gee’s interest in theatre is both practical and academic, and their time on Birkbeck’s MA Dramaturgy was spent developing a strong theoretical understanding of the significance and use of scenography and space in theatre, methods of audience inclusion and immersion, and the responsibility theatre practitioners and organisations have to their audiences and local communities. The opportunity to gain insight from industry professionals through a series of workshops on the MA has added invaluable tools to their practical toolkit for future work.
Their dissertation project, In Collaboration: Exploring the Use of Site-Specific Theatre to Enable Cultural Participation in Rural Communities, for which they received the Michael Ross award, is a culmination of their long standing interests in space and audience, their personal experiences growing up in rural South West England, and the knowledge they gained while studying at Birkbeck. The project is in part presented as a guidebook for early-career practitioners, and develops a method for creating a piece of site-specific theatre in collaboration with the inhabitants of a rural community about an aspect of life or history in the chosen town or village. It includes a supporting exploration of cultural democracy and the importance of broadening both the availability and accessibility of theatre practice to people living outside densely populated areas.
Proposing site-specific theatre as an alternative route into engaging with theatre-making for people in rural communities, Gee hopes to grow this project further and begin making the work they conceptualised as the culmination of their time at Birkbeck. They are honoured and delighted to have received the recognition and support of Birkbeck and especially the Ross family, whose generosity will help them to continue building their skills and knowledge, developing practices to bring their project to life.