ADSA invites entries for the Philip Parsons Prize for Performance as Research

ADSA was formed in 1977 at the instigation of the late Dr Philip Parsons, senior lecturer in drama at the University of New South Wales. To commemorate his life-long interest in making connections between theatre scholarship and the professional stage, ADSA has established an annual Philip Parsons Prize for a senior student (third year, honours or postgraduate) undertaking a PERFORMANCE AS RESEARCH project.  

The Prize consists of $400 from ADSA.

To be eligible for the award candidates must:

• have undertaken the project between 1 January 2009 and 31 March 2010;
• have been enrolled at the time the project was undertaken at a university or other tertiary institution in Australia, Aotearoa New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, South East Asia or the Pacific Island region;
• provide the judges with a submission, summarising information about the project (see form below);
• provide the judges will one or two brief (up to 500 words) appraisals of the performance by a full ADSA member, addressing the criteria (see form below); and
• be a current student member of ADSA at the time of application.

Click here for information on how to become a member of ADSA.

Judges for the prize for 2009 will be Dr Leah Mercer from Curtin University and Dr. Ben Knapton from Queensland University of Technology.

Application Process

and send to the contact address below before Friday 30 April 2010.

Please cut and paste into the form. Answers to the form should not exceed 8 A4 pages, additionally up to 4 pages of supporting material and a 10 minute video excerpt and or audio-visual presentation may be submitted. Applicants are encouraged to build an argument for their application, and to be selective in the evidence they adduce to support that argument, rather than submitting whole scripts or whole DVDs of the practice.

Applicants should refer to the discussion paper on Performance as Research available on the ADSA website. They may also find it useful to refer to scripts emerging from two previous Parsons Prize-winning projects which are published in Australasian Drama Studies, 31 (October 1997): Tim Benzie's "Personal Fictions" and Stacey Callaghan's "still raw".

Send applications to:

Leah Mercer
Senior Lecturer
Performance Studies Coordinator
Communication & Cultural Studies
School of Media, Culture & Creative Arts
Faculty of Humanities
Curtin University of Technology
GPO Box U1987
Perth WA 6845
l.mercer@curtin.edu.au

Past recipients

2009

• Ben Knapton (Queensland University of Technology) for Gaijin
  

2008

• Leah Mercer (Queensland University of Technology) for Complementary and the Uncertainty Principle as Aesthetic Principles. The Practice and Performance of The Physics Project.

2007

• David Fenton (Queensland University of Technology) for 'Unstable Acts' A practitioner's case study of the poetics of postdramatic theatre and intermediality

2006

• no award

2005

• Liza-Mare Syron (University of Wollongong) for EPHEMERA: Aboriginality, Reconiciliation, Urban Perspectives

2004

• Julie Robson (Queensland University of Technology) for Songs of knowledge: the Sirens in theory and performance

2003

• Amanda Lynch and Neal Harvey (University of Queensland)

2002

• no award

2001

• no award

2000

• Michael Noble (Murdoch University) for A body in 22 cycles

1999

• no award

1998

• Sandra d'Urso (La Trobe)

1997

•  Cracka Theatre Company - Nigel Pean, Mary-Ann Hunter, Stacey Callaghan, Steph Kehoe (University of Queensland) for Boneless Chicken Becht

1996

• Stacey Callaghan (University of New England) for still raw

1995

• Tim Benzie (University of Queensland) for Personal Fictions