FASS Staff Profile

DR MAIYA MURPHY

DEPARTMENT of ENGLISH, LINGUISTICS & THEATRE STUDIES

Appointment:
ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR
Office:
AS5/05-33
Email:
maiyamurphy@nus.edu.sg
Tel:
6516 6036
Fax:
Homepage:
http://profile.nus.edu.sg/fass/ellmm/
Tabs

Brief Introduction

I am a researcher, teacher, deviser, performer, and director. My practical background in acting, devising, and dance informs my research into the cognitive dimensions of performance. I work at the confluences of movement, acting, actor-training, performance, and 4E cognitive science. I have written about Lecoq pedagogy, theatre and imagination, practice-as-research, enaction, Edward Gordon Craig, the figure of the actor-creator, and shared heritages of physical theatre and postmodern dance. My current book project, Practice, Research and Cognition in Devised Performance (Bloomsbury Methuen Drama 2025) compares how different research methodologies help us understand the complexities of devising. One of my long-term projects, "Gazing Eastward," investigates Asian influences on Western and intercultural actor training. I coordinate the MA Coursework Programme in Theatre and Performance Studies and am co-director (with John Lutterbie) of the International Network of Cognition, Theatre and Performance. I received my BA in Theater Studies from Yale University, trained in Lecoq-based pedagogy at the London International School of Performing Arts (LISPA), and earned my Ph.D. in Theatre and Drama from the University of California, San Diego in its joint program with UC Irvine. I am the author of Enacting Lecoq: Movement in Theatre, Cognition, and Life (Palgrave Macmillan 2019) and make theatre with my collective, Autopoetics.


Teaching Areas

Courses Taught

  • HS2912 Polymaths: Innovating between Art and Science (co-created with Dr. CHNG Hui Ting, Department of Pharmacy), a CHS interdisciplinary course
  • TS1101e/GEM1003 Introduction to Theatre & Performance
  • TS2237 As if: Acting and Actors
  • TS2217 Introduction to Performance Studies
  • TS2221 Global Theatres
  • TS3231 Theory and History of Western Theatre 2
  • TS3245 Professional Theatre Internship

Courses in Development

  • Graduate Module "Collaborative Performance Creation"

 

Honours Thesis Supervision

2023 "Searching for Sensations in a Shackled Space: Body-Curiosity for Sensitive, Reflexive, and Culturally Responsive Prison Theatre"

2021 "How Does it Matter? Plastic Paradigms and the Material Entanglements of Gender"

2020 "Considering the Audience and the Other in Manipulacting: Looking at Nōe’s Action in Perception and the Enactive Approach"

2018 "B-Biography: Re-presenting b-boying as an enabling accompaniment to autobiographical performance"

2018 "Playing Games(ercises): Adopting an Acting Approach for Theatre for Young Audiences Based on Theatre of the Oppressed"

2017 “Gamers as dramaturgs: immersive practice in the theatre and the affective gaming experience”

 

Independent Study Module Supervision

2023 An account of affordances as a frame to reveal Asian Contemporary Dance Practices

2020 Gustatory Metaphors: Theorising Performance Practice

2018 Actors and the body in Chinese Drama from 1840 to 1930

 


Graduate Supervision

I welcome graduate students interested in body-based practices in theatre and performance such as physical theatre, devising, and dance, along with those interested in theories of the body in performance, acting, actor training, and the intersection of cognitive science and performance. I am also happy to supervise students interested in practice as research (PaR) or practice led research (PlR) projects.

Current Graduate Student Supervision:

  1. PhD: LIM Yu Cong Darryl - “Confronting Mr Grotowski: Allowing the Personal and the Specific to Emerge in Singapore”
  2. MA: LIM Wendy - “The Actor and their body: The case for the utility of the Suzuki Method of Actor Training as a foundational training practice in Singapore Theatre”
  3. MA: FENG Xiaolou - “Devising for Entry-level Theatre Education in China”

Current Graduate Committee membership:

  1. PhD: Philip Kwame BOAFO - Procession Performance: Performing Knowledge and Memory in a West African Community

Graduated Students:

      1. MA: LIM Yu Cong Darryl - Approaching Authenticity in Grotowski's Theatre of Productions (2022)

 


Current Research

My research centers on on body-based theatre practices, actor training methods, devising, cognitive science, and methodologies for researching embodied practices.

Currently I am working on my second book, Practice, Research, and Cognition in Devised Performance (Bloomsbury Methuen Drama Performance and Science: Interdisciplinary Dialogues Series, 2025). This book is an interdisciplinary study of devised performance that charts the complex relations between ways of knowing in and about arts practice. This book will explore how scientific approaches and practice as research (PaR) methodologies may (or may not) work together in performance research. This year my devising collective, Autopoetics, will present no there there 12-14 June at the NAFA Studio Theatre. With my collaborator Dr. CHNG Hui Ting (PI), Department of Pharmacy, I am engaged in a research project on our new interdisciplinary course, HS29212 Polymaths: Innovating Between Art and Science. In our course we have created what we call, "a comparative observational exercise" where we teach students a theatrical observational process and a scientific observational process, and then invite them to think and explore across both. Our Teaching Enhancement Grant, "Developing polymathic skills and attitude through a comparative observational exercise: an evaluation" investigates whether and how this technique might foster polymathic thinking.

My most recent publication in Interdisciplinary Science Reviews, "Thinking again: Enaction as a resource for practice as research in theatre and performance," considers how the cognitive scientific approach of enaction might be of use to performance practice researchers. I also published a chapter on PaR in Asia in Robin Nelson's second edition of his book, Practice (as) Research in the Arts (and Beyond): Principles, Processes, Contexts, Achievements (2022). In Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences (2021) I looked at imagination, predictive engagement, and affordances spaces from the perspective of an actor-creator inside the creation and performance process. Also in 2021, I published a Constructivist Foundations target article and author's response exploring the concept of autopoesis within the context of the liveness debates.

Future projects include work on my ongoing project, "Gazing Eastward," an investigation into Asian influences on Western actor training and histories of intercultural training approaches. 

 


Research Interests

  • The pedagogy of Jacques Lecoq
  • Cognitive science (4E appproaches with an emphasis on enaction, predictive engagement, cognitive ecologies) and performance
  • Physical theatre in pedagogy and practice
  • Actor training
  • Theories of the body in performance
  • Approaches to movement in performance training
  • Devising
  • Practice as research
  • Dance

Publications

BOOKS/MONOGRAPHS AUTHORED

  • Practice, Research, and Cognition in Devised Performance, Methuen Drama (Performance and Science: Interdisciplinary Dialogues series), under contract for publication in 2025.
  • Enacting Lecoq: Movement in Theatre, Cognition, and Life, Palgrave Macmillan (Cognitive Studies in Literature and Performance series), 2019.
    • For John Lutterbie's Spring 2020 review in Journal of Dramatic Theory and Criticism click here.
    • For Dick McCaw's July 2020 review in New Theatre Quarterly click here.
    • For Sebastian Samur's November 2020 review in Theatre Review International click here. 
    • For Jordan Rosin's March 2021 review in Theatre Topics click here.
    • For Martín B. Fons Sastre's December 2021 review in Acotaciones: Investigación y creación teatral click here.  

ARTICLES IN JOURNALS

  • “Thinking again: Enaction as a resource for practice as research in theatre and performance,” Interdisciplinary Science Reviews, 28 July 2023, https://doi.org/10.1080/03080188.2023.2215024
  • "Imaginative play for a predictive spectator: theatre, affordance spaces, and predictive engagements Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences 21, 1069-1088 (2022),  https://doi.org/10.1007/s11097-021-09783-6, (onilne December 2021 https://rdcu.be/cCr1H.
  • “From Liveness to ‘Lifeness’: Autopoiesis and an Enactive View of Performance,” Constructivist Foundations 17(1), November 2021
  • “What Happens in the Spaces in Between,” Constructivist Foundations 17(1), November 2021
  • “Training Ecologies for the Actor-Creator and Gordon Craig's School for the Art of the Theatre” Theatre, Dance and Performance Training, vol.11, no.3, September 2020.
  • “Edward Gordon Craig’s Continuity of Life, Mind, and Spirit: a Cognitive View,” New Theatre Quarterly, vol.35, no.4, November 2019.
  • "Enacting the Consequences of the Lecoq Pedagogy's Aesthetic Cognitive Foundation" Theatre Survey, vol.58, no.3, 2017.

CHAPTERS IN BOOKS

  • “Asia(s)” in Practice (as) Research and the Arts and Beyond: Principles, Processes, Contexts, Achievements, Robin Nelson, ed., Palgrave Macmillan, 2022.
  • “Language and the Body” in The Routledge Companion to Jacques Lecoq. Mark Evans and Rick Kemp, eds. Routledge, 2016.
  • “Fleshing Out: Physical Theatre, Postmodern Dance, and Som[e]agency” in The Oxford Handbook of Dance and Theater. Nadine George-Graves, ed. Oxford UP, 2015. This book received 2016 Honorable Mention for the Sally Banes Publication Award, American Society for Theater Research.
  • “The Weave of the Lecoq Pedagogy’s Auto-cours: Gathering Up Postwar Europe, Theatrical Tradition, and Student Uprising,” with Jon Foley Sherman, in Collective Creation in Contemporary Performance. Kathryn Syssoyeva and Scott Proudfit eds. Palgrave, 2013.

CONFERENCE PAPERS

  • Published Conference Proceedings: "Taking Up the Bodies and Bringing Forth a World: Lecoq's Actor Training and Enactivism," A Body of Knowledge: Cognition and the Arts conference, Claire Trevor School of the Arts, University of California, Irvine, Irvine, CA, USA, December 2016, published 2018, https://scholarship.org/up.bokconference.

BOOK REVIEWS

  • “‘Moritz to Fritz’:  A Response to Performer Training Reconfigured: Post-Psychophysical Perspectives for the Twenty-First Century by Frank Camilleri,” Theatre, Dance and Performer Training journal Comebacks blog, September 2019: http://theatredanceperformancetraining.org/?p=3158 . Based on invited respondent presentation at Camilleri’s Asian Book Launch organised by the School of Dance and Theatre at LASALLE College of the Arts, Singapore, 28 August 2019.

OTHERS

THESES/DISSERTATIONS

  • "In Corporation: Physical Theater, Cognitive Science, and Moving Toward a Paradigmatic Revolution in Epistemology," PhD Dissertation, UC San Diego Department of Theatre and Dance/UC Irvine Department of Drama, 2013.

Other Information

In the international collective of movement-based theatre artists I co-founded, Autopoetics, we develop new work, new ways of working, and are invested in developing our collective as a practice as research (PaR) platform where each project is comprised of a theatrical piece and a host of research outcomes around the practice of making and performing that piece. Our upcoming production is no there there which will be presented at the NAFA Black Box Theatre 12-14 June 2024. We presented Provenance at the Drama Centre Black Box theatre in Singapore 26-27 October 2018. Previously, we developed a project at Centre 42's Basement Workshop, Hujum (2015). Also in Singapore, I performed the role of Jitsuko as guest artist in Jonathan Vandenberg’s Yale-NUS production of Hanjo, October 2022. Selected body-based devising work includes directing UC San Diego’s undergraduate main stage show, Doctored and Devised, an original production based on the work of Dr. Seuss (2013); training and serving as theatrical director for Colorado men’s hip hop dance company, Elements of Motion, to produce a masked hip-hop piece Elixir (2005); and co-creating and performing in Your Nightgown is Jealous When you Dream with San Francisco's mugwumpin (2006).

I received the NUS Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences Excellent Teacher Award for the 2016-2017 academic year. I was awarded an NUS start-up grant for the project "Gazing Eastward: Western Body-based Actor Training’s Attraction to Asian Performance Practice, Theory, and Philosophy" (2015-2018). In the 2012-2013 academic year I was awarded the UC President's Dissertation Year Fellowship and served as graduate fellow at the UC San Diego Center for the Humanities. In 2013, I received the UC San Diego Theatre and Dance Department Teaching Excellence Award. In 2011, I was inducted into the UC San Diego Chapter of the Bouchet Graduate Honor Society recognizing outstanding scholarly achievement, diversity, and excellence in doctoral education.

Professional Association Memberships include:

  • International Network for Cognition, Theatre and Performance since 2019 (steering committee member 2020-2023, co-director August 2023-present)
  • Cognitive Futures in the Arts and Humanities since 2016
  • The International Federation for Theatre Research (IFTR/FIRT) since 2015
  • American Society for Theatre Research (ASTR) since 2008
  • Association for Theatre in Higher Education (ATHE) since 2007
  • Association of Theatre Movement Educators (ATME) since 2007

 


Conference Paper Presentations

“From description to method: Reflecting on implicit issues in cognitive theatre and performance studies, ”Cognitive Futures in the Arts and Humanities Conference, University of Warsaw, Centre for Research on Culture, Language and Mind, presented in a panel I proposed and organized, “Applying Cognitive Science to theatre and performance practice” with Rhonda Blair, Southern Methodist University, and Darren Tunstall, University of Surrey, July 2023

“What do pharmacy and theatre studies have in common?" co-presented with CHNG Hui Ting, Higher Education Campus Conference, National University of Singapore, Singapore, December 2022

“Cognitive Approaches to Performing Catastrophe,” American Society for Theatre Research working group, co-convened with Rhonda Blair of Southern Methodist University, July-November 2022, culminating in an in-person working group conversation presentation at the November ASTR conference in New Orleans, Louisiana, USA, November 2022

“Distributed Cognition for Navigating Shifting Centers,” Performance as Research Working Group, International Federation for Theatre Research, Reykjavík, Iceland, June 2022

“Cognitive ecologies for the actor-creator and Gordon Craig's School for the Art of the Theatre" for the panel "Cognitive Ecologies in Theatre History, Training and Performance" that I co-curated with Xristina Penna, University of Leeds, International Federation for Theatre Research, Galway, Ireland (moved online), July 2021.

“Navigating Cognitive Approaches to Theatremaking as a Springboard for Practice-as-Research." Cognition, Theatre and Performance group at the Myrifield Institute for Cognition and the Arts, Heath, MA, USA, July 2019.

“Framing Practice-as-Research in Performance as Enactive Research into Embodied Cognition.” A Body of Knowledge: Cognition and the Arts II, Deakin University, Melbourne, Australia, June 2019

"Provenance: A Cognitive Study of Practice-as-Research in Theatremaking." Cognitive Futures in the Arts and Humanities, Johannes Gutenberg Universität Mainz, Mainz, Germany, June 2019.

"Edward Gordon Craig, Movement, and Orientalism: Attemtps at Migrating Embodied Cognitive Possibilities." International Federation of Theatre Research's General Panel, "Migrating the Practices and Principles of Eastern Theatre Tradition," Faculty of the Arts, University of the Arts, Belbrade, Serbia, July 2018.

"Efficacies and Limitations of Using Autopoiesis to Describe Theatre and Performance." Cognitive Futures in the Arts and Humanities, University of Kent, Canterbury, UK, July 2018.

"Edward Gordon Craig, Gazing Eastward, and the Cognitive Theatrical Organism." Cognitive Futures in the Arts and Humanities Conference, Stony Brook University, Stony Brook, NY, USA, June 2017.

“Taking Up the Bodies and Bringing Forth a World: Lecoq’s Actor Training and Enactivism.” A Body of Knowledge: Cognition and the Arts, Claire Trevor School of the Arts, University of California Irvine, Irvine, CA, USA, December 2016.

“Gazing Eastward: Western Theatre Artists and Asian-Inspired Practice and Theory.” Presented a lecture and workshop at Arropaineko Arragua, in Leketio, Spain. Invited and sponsored as an artist-in-residence/project-in-residence to coincide with their summer arts festival, July 2016.

“A Necessary Temptation: How Cognitive Scientific Approaches Reveal Essentialism as Key to Creativity in Lecoq Pedagogy.” Cognitive Futures in the Humanities Conference, University of Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland, June 2016.

"The Embodied Cognition of Indian Classical Drama." The International Federation for Theatre Research's Special Panel on Indian Theatre, University of Hyderabad, Hyderabad, India, July 2015.

“Perception, Philosophy, Physical Theater.” Invited to become a member of the University of California Working Group on Perception and Philosophy and gave a presentation on my work about cognitive science, philosophy, and physical theater at the inaugural meeting, La Jolla, CA, USA, December 2013 and participated in final meeting, Berkeley, CA, December 2014. Conveners: Jonathan Cohen and Matthew Fulkerson, University of California, San Diego, and sponsored by the UC Humanities Research Institute and the UCSD Division of Arts and Humanities.

“Actor-Creator as Actor-Perceiver: How Enactive Perception Underpins Physically Based Actor Training.” American Society for Theatre Research’s Cognitive Science in Theater and Performance Working Group, Dallas, TX, USA, 2013. Conveners: Rhonda Blair, Southern Methodist University and Amy Cook, Indiana University.

“Communicating the Value of Our Embodied Work: A Philosophical Project.” Presented in panel on Artists and Academia at Around the Teapot’s Symposium on Ensemble Theatres, Los Angeles, CA, USA, 2013. Convened by American Russian Theatre Ensemble Laboratory (ARTEL). Blogged about this symposium for howlround.com: http://www.howlround.com/all-together-now.

“Throwing, Theorizing, and Trodding the Boards: How the Legacy of Sport in Lecoq-Based Pedagogy Informs the Quality of Play.” Association for Theatre in Higher Education’s Performance Studies Focus Group Panel Session, “The Performative Promise: Liberation, Coercion, and the Modality of Play,” Orlando, FL, USA, 2013.

“Physical Theater and Philosophy.” Gave a lightening talk at the Society of Fellows Meeting Graduate Panel entitled “Acting and Expressing the Self,” University of California, Los Angeles, CA, USA, 2013.

“Fleshing Out: Physical Theater, Postmodern Dance, and Believing in the Body.” American Society for Theatre Research’s Between Theatre Studies and Dance Studies Working Group, Nashville, TN, USA 2012. Conveners: Susan Manning, Northwestern University; Nadine George-Graves, UC San Diego; and Tara Rodman, Northwestern University.

“Moving into a Creative Body: How Cognitive Science Articulates Lecoq’s Body Schema.” American Society for Theatre Research’s Cognitive Science in Theater and Performance Working Group, Seattle, WA, USA, 2010. Conveners: John Lutterbie, Stony Brook University and Amy Cook, Indiana University.

 “The Making of the Body Machine: Western Movement Training’s Heritage of Technological Collaboration.” Association for Theatre in Higher Education’s Association of Theatre Movement Educator Debut Panel, Los Angeles, CA, USA, 2010.

“Bringing the Body Back: Lecoq Pedagogy Hitchhikes through Neurobiology in Search of the Actor-Creator. ” Presented paper and led roundtable discussion at the University of California International Performance and Culture Multi-Campus Research Group Retreat, “Somatics and Representation” Santa Barbara, CA, USA, 2010.

“Conversations in Corporation: Physical Theatre’s Contribution to Performance as Research.” American Society for Theatre Research’s Performance as Research Working Group, San Juan, Puerto Rico, 2009. Conveners: Kris Salata, Florida State University and Daniel Mroz, University of Ottawa.

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