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TMA 480 City of Women: Medieval Women’s Faith from Page to Stage

Would you like to create and perform a play about medieval women and their faith? Look no further! Some medieval women recorded their faith through words and music, writing remarkable Christian texts, for example Julian of Norwich’s “Revelation of Divine Love” (late 1300s), or Christine de Pizan’s “City of Women” (1405) to name but a few. Their faith echoes down through the centuries via these archival records. However, faith, whilst seemingly spiritual in nature, is fundamentally an embodied experience and practice. In other words, the spiritual is accessed through the body. Understanding and unpacking this dichotomy, “City of Women: Medieval Women’s Faith from Page to Stage” will explore the faith-filled (and faith-fueled) writings of these medieval authors in and through a richtheatrical devising process which culminates in performance, sharing their faith through our bodies and voices. Theclass will include the following: exploring the socio-political landscape these women were writing in and its resonances with our own time and cultures today; studying and applying various devising methodologies and approaches in workshops which practically explore these texts; a study of the discourse surrounding site-specific theatre, applied in the process of finding space(s) for this performance, and preparing and staging a performance for the public throughthese workshops.