Counting Her Dresses and other plays

Counting Her Dresses and other plays, devised by Lib Taylor, is a short, mixed-media, promenade performance based on theatre writings by Gertrude Stein. Gertrude Stein was an American writer who lived in Paris for most of her adult life and was a significant figure in the development of early twentieth century modernism. She was an artists’ patron and one of the first collectors of paintings by Picasso, Matisse, Cezanne and others. She wrote novels, short stories, poetry and criticism, as well as a number of very short ‘plays’ and opera libretti. Even though her plays are very rarely performed they have been very influential in the development of avant-garde theatre. The performance juxtaposes a soundcape of voices, live performance, an ‘exhibition’ of paintings and mediated images projected onto and across the space to evoke Stein’s sense of theatre as a place of experience and emotion, not as a place of story and action. The performance comprises five theatre fragments which have been combined in a collage that alludes to the experimental art that Stein promoted.

Promenades in Enlightenment Madrid: the tapestry cartoons and new social spaces

Discusses how the painters of the Royal Tapestry Factory of Santa Barbara in Madrid depicted the new social spaces of the capital in the cartoons designed to be turned into tapestries for Royal apartments. The cultural and sociological role of the 'paseo' or 'promenade' is also considered.