Artistic Statement
Ben Knowles is a Producer, Thinker and Performance Artist.
​
Knowles has trained as an Actor and Teacher whilst developing an interest in knowledge and seeking answers. It became imperative for Knowles to seek answers whilst training at university as an Actor, reading on Practitioners and developing their own dramatic Practice through research and experimentation, imbricating this with performance strategies. With a primary focus on Laban, Grotowski and Lecoq he investigates the psychophysical through movement and how we can translate this into gaining knowledge. Demonstrating these practices through adaptations of ‘Angels in America’ (2017), ‘Citizenship’ (2018) and his own creation of ‘CopyCat’ (2018) - investigating the maternal instinct and child murder.
Knowles explored his plural practice through working with ‘The Directors Cut’ (2021) a multidisciplinary collective, which works together as Directors, Actors and Writers to create performances. Working as a Director he engaged with the notions of Dramaturgy and developed his practice of knowledge transference further. He has also written plays such as ‘He Drinks’ (2021) - an investigation into the fine line between alcoholism and alcoholic from the perspective of a university student. And ‘A Conversation’ (2021) - The unspoken dialogue between a psychiatrist and their patient.
​
Exploring different mediums and dialogues Knowles now utilises their plural practice and expresses this through Contemporary Performance. Still investigating knowledge and seeking answers whilst employing their knowledge of working through various media.
Reduced Word Count
125 Words
​
I am a Performance Scholar, a Writer and Director. I experiment in finding answers through various mediums: movement, pedagogy, and research. Training as an Actor allowed me to develop my skills as a performer with a particular interest in performance theory. Through practice as research, I aim to investigate how we use performance to answer questions on the extra-daily.
​
As a plural-practitioner working as a teacher has allowed me to expand my skills in pedagogy and apply this into my practice. Writing has allowed me to compose my research into contemporary performances and directing allows me to tie it all together.
​
I aim to propose a new way of knowing, one which seeks to answer that which we cannot explain. While making a cracking brew.
Social Media
185 Characters
​
Manchester based Performance Scholar. Ben is a Writer, Director and Performance Artist, working collaboratively through practice as research to investigate trance and ritual practices.
​
10 Words
​
Knowles is a Performance Scholar, exploring the notions of knowledge.
Word Cloud
This word cloud shows all of the most shown words in my artistic statement. As you can see knowledge is one of the key principles of my practice. Blending together with my twelve month plan I wish to pursue acquiring knowledge in all areas both academically with a PhD but also in my creative practice.
​
Working is also another core to my practice as I constantly work to progress myself in both my academic, professional and personal life.
Research Interests
I am currently researching into 'Trance' as a mode of 'Liminality' (Turner, 1969).
I am focusing on the process of using this in varied disciplines such as Nunez's 'Anthropocosmic', (1996) Haraway's 'Cthulucene' (2016) to Ritual Anthropophagy.
A Night at The Theatre
'The last two decades have seen a gradual shift in the framing of arts organizations as presenters of pre-ordained programmes decided behind closed doors, to providers of experiences, participatory projects and events.' (Fenton, 2010: 217)
