This week, new resident blogger Emma Dorfman introduces herself as an interdisciplinary researcher and self-proclaimed theatre nerd who is no stranger to putting down new roots time and time again…

If I were to describe the last 5 years of my life in one word, that word would be ‘pivot’. In May 2020, I graduated with a BFA in Acting. That was perfect timing. What I didn’t know at the time was that this massive shift would take me down the path I was always meant to go…

About Me

Hello SGSAH community! I’m Emma, your brand-new resident blogger. I’m a first-year PhD student undertaking a Collaborative Doctoral Partnership (CDP) with the University of Edinburgh and the Traverse Theatre. My research is at the intersection of theatre and digital technology, and my (current) home is at the University of Edinburgh’s Institute of Design Informatics (IDI), an interdisciplinary department across the Edinburgh College of Art and the School of Informatics. Currently, I’m working toward my first year progression (eek!), in which I will argue for the genre/body of work that will be at the heart of my thesis: digitally site-specific theatre.

The first thing many people ask when I share my research (other than, what in the world is digitally site-specific theatre?) is how I got here. That is a loaded question. Do they mean ‘here’, as in, my topic? Do they mean ‘here’, as in, my PhD? Do they mean ‘here’, as in, Scotland?

I grew up in Houston, Texas and began my young life as a competitive figure skater. The performative aspects of competition intrigued me so much that, at the young age of 10, I decided I wanted to be an actor. Eventually, I went to a performing arts high school (it’s kind of like The Brit School and exactly like High School Musical) where I specialised in – but what else? – acting. I always dreamed of moving to New York and, specifically, going to NYU’s Tisch School of Drama. When I got in, I was ecstatic. I had achieved pretty much everything I had set out to do in my career so far, but now what? This crisis of ‘what now’ was the most interesting space for me. Suddenly, I couldn’t possibly predict what would happen next.

Pivot #1: Pandemic Era Experiments

My first big pivot came in 2019 as a third year student at NYU. I took a seminar on “Virtual Reality and Theatre,” and this is where my research journey began. I decided to write a thesis at the intersections of social media, surveillance, and performance, with my supervisor as the professor from the very same VR seminar. When I submitted in April 2020, it was hard to ignore the tough times faced by the live performance industry. But it was also equally difficult to ignore the radical experimentation happening under theatre’s pivot to digital. As I moved back home to Texas for the foreseeable future, it felt like I had never left the vibrant theatrical hub that New York City has always been: weekly at-home showings were the new normal, consisting of productions from the National Theatre, Schaubühne, and basically anything that was on TimeOut’s list of The best theatre shows to stream online now.

In May 2020, with my chosen industry temporarily shuttered, no one to hire me, and plenty of online theatre to binge, I decided to start my first blog. Named after my undergraduate thesis, Apart, Together would cover a wide range of experimental performance work emerging from Pandemic times– from university Zoom productions to David Bryne’s American Utopia to cult documentaries on HBO and now-empty theatre venues that have always performed as vessels of exclusion.

Pivot #2: Change(s) in Scenery

My second big pivot came when deciding where to go for my MA. If I was going to get my Master’s, I was going to get it in dramaturgy, not acting. At this point, I was more concerned with the inner-workings of theatrical productions– how they developed, evolved, and came to fruition. Faced with a choice between going back to New York and going to London, I took a leap and decided on Goldsmiths in London. At 1/3 of the time and 1/3 of the cost of a Master’s in the US, it was a no brainer.

Being an international student was (and still is!) harder than I thought. But moving abroad was precisely the push I needed. It humbled me, taught me invaluable lessons in resilience and independence, and the UK now feels more like home than my own ‘home country’.

I would have never guessed that I would end up in Scotland. But also, when I look at the PhD journey in front of me – a collaborative partnership with an industry partner, an interdisciplinary supervisory team, in a city at the heart of the world’s largest festival for new performance work – I couldn’t imagine it any other way.

Coming Up Next…

So what can you expect from the SGSAH blog under my watch? From time to time, I’ll share my own reflections on my experience as a researcher (including the wild way I’ve decided to document my PhD). But most of all, I’m ready to promote and share diverse, personal experiences from past and present PhD researchers. I’m talking about international researchers, researchers with caring responsibilities, interdisciplinary researchers, researchers navigating neurodiversity, taking on industrial partnerships– tell me how you make it all work!

These are just a few of many ideas I have so far, but please don’t hesitate to get in touch if you have an idea for a post and would like to be featured as a guest blogger!