Bunker Talk #175: Viv Gardner

Viven Gardner is Emeritus Professor, Drama and Film at the University of Manchester. Their current research centres on gender, sexuality and representation in and through performance in the period 1890-1920, developing original work on the New Woman and the Actresses’ Franchise League. Projects include: an edited edition of the autobiography of musical comedy and music hall performer and suffragette, Kitty Marion (with Diana Atkinson); work on the theatrical and performative lives of the 5th Marquis of Anglesey and a study of the the intersection of radical and popular discourses on gender and sexuality in performance at the fin de siecle (provisionally called ‘Staging the New Sex’). This last project covers material on the New Woman and Musical Comedy Girl, ‘posing’ as performance, hypo- and hyper- masculinity and the court room as a gendered and contested site for performers. Viven is also working with contemporary dancers/performance artists, Marc Rees (‘Gloria Days’ on the 5th Marquis of Anglesey) and Liz Aggiss (‘Marjorie Irvine’) on the development of dance works that renegotiate archival performance material for the contemporary stage.