Dr Claire French researches and makes multilingual theatre and performance with minoritised languages.
Her documentary theatre practice carves out processes of making performance that privilege the storyteller in their unique social, epistemological and interactional context – to unearth new truths, new connections and new cultural literacies. Borrowing from her research, she seeks to situate linguistic hegemonies in these multilingual, applied and autobiographical performance contexts.
UK
Claire has recently completed Courage Songs (2024), a documentary theatre play in tribute to Birmingham-based women about ambition and family, love and independence, faith and criticality. She will soon release the documentary 'Already emancipated: Soul City Arts in conversation with the nation', funded by an Arts and Humanities Research Council award with sociolinguist Dr Kamran Khan, University of Birmingham (2023-2024).
South Africa
Claire has recently completed research exploring culture and multilingualism in actor training with Dr Samuel Ravengai, University of the Witwatersrand, supported by the Birmingham International Engagement Fund award (2023-2024). The two are currently co-authoring work on the differences between the embodiment of culture in actor training across UK and South African HE institutions. Before this, Claire's practice as research project 'Decolonising language ideologies in the body' with Sibusiso Mkhize developed improvisational approaches to multilingual South African (isiZulu, isiXhosa, Sesotho, English) performance making, part of her Arts Research Africa and Mellon Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship at the University of the Witwatersrand. The two have published several articles (see publications) on this research.
Australia
Claire has ongoing collaborations with sociolinguist Prof. Jakelin Troy, University of Sydney, exploring the role of performance and dramaturgy in Indigenous language revitalisation. The two have published on this topic. Other Australian projects include producing a documentary with Dr Alison Grove O'Grady on the pedagogy of empathy in drama-based teacher training (see media).
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Claire is currently completing the monograph Making multilingual performance: Omission, alignment, disruption (Routledge).
She is Co-editor of: Applied Theatre Research (Intellect) with Taiwo Afolabi and Bobby Smith, and Reading Decoloniality with Teodora Todorova and Asanda Nogasheng.
More about her work can be found at clairefrench.com
