Critical Mass: Sermon for the Church of the Atom (part of A Theatre to Address at Arnolfini, Bristol and Late at Tate Britain)

A Theatre to Address explores the work of contemporary artists who use text as both a visual and sonic form. In this programme, text appears not primarily as a means of communication, but as something which has shape and structure of its own. The Reading Room will also be displaying work that looks at text as concrete or visual poetry, and the script in artists' practice. Clare Gasson presents a new work The traveller - walking walking walking through ... that explores the connection between the text, the rhythm and the action. Maryam Jafri presents a performance-lecture Death With Friends, a body of visual and textual material that forms the basis for her new film of the same name. Pil and Galia Kollectiv present a radical worship for the apocalypse, featuring a sermon for the Church of the Atom with live music by Gelbart.

Watching the words: drama and poems

Some poems are inherently dramatic due to their narrative content or the events, characters, places and emotions that are their subject. Others have the potential for dramatisation because of some aural or visual quality of their poetic form. However, if dramatising poems is to be meaningful and effective children need to be taught something about the art form of drama rather than just being left to their own devices. This chapter explores the learning potential of considering the printed text of a poem as a notation of sound, movement, gesture and use of space. The chapter recognises a progression from simple nursery rhymes to the sophisticated use of poetic language in different types of literature that is mirrored in the journey from infants’ clapping games to the dramatic juxtaposition of aural and visual images in theatre and the performing arts.