Sabrina Speranza Signorelli

Department of Drama and Theatre Arts
Doctoral Researcher

Contact details

Email: sxs2104@student.bham.ac.uk

PhD title: Critical reception of information in Newspaper Theatre. From the Living Newspaper tradition to Augusto Boal´s Newspaper Theatre in the current times.
Supervisor: Dr Rose Whyman and Dr Ellen Redling
PhD Drama and Theatre Studies

Qualifications

Actress superior diploma by the Dramatic Art School "Margarita Xirgú" in Montevideo.
Bachelor of Education, Literature.
Post-baccalaureate diploma in Gender Policy , Facultad Latinoamericana de Ciencias Sociales (FLACSO).
MA Master of Arts, The accomplishments of Theatre of the Oppressed with teenagers in prison, Universidad de la República.

Biography

I am an Uruguayan Literature teacher and actress. I hold a MA by the Universidad de la República. Since 2005, I’ve been working as an actress, director, and researcher at the intersection of theatre and politics. Especially in relation to Theatre of the Oppressed as a methodology. I have studied it with Augusto Boal and his team at the Centre of Theatre of the Oppressed in Rio de Janeiro, with the Jana Sanskriti movement in India and with Julian Boal in Portugal, Brazil and USA.

Currently I am directing a devising biographical theatre project awarded by a public fund in Uruguay, with young people in prison and with young actors.

I have also worked as a secondary school literature teacher in communities affected by social harm. For more than fifteen years, I have been a popular educator and theatre teacher with children and teenagers in contexts of social vulnerability. Such work led me to understand the necessity of a gender studies approach as well as the prevention of drug use, I subsequently earned a diploma in Drug Use Prevention and a post-baccalaureate diploma in Gender Policy. I have served on the board of the office of the National Drug Secretary, leading the area on community and family prevention.

Currently, I am a professor at the Multidisciplinary School of Dramatic Art, where I am responsible for the area/focus on Drama History and Analysis, the course on Theatre Practices in Prison, and the school’s Gender Commission.

Teaching

Drama History and Analysis at the Multidisciplinary School of Dramatic Art and Theatre in context of deprivation of freedom (Theatre in prisons)
Drama History at the Uruguayan Diploma of Dramaturgy, Universidad de la República

Research

The purpose of my investigation is to explore the relationship between theatre and journalism, stage and news, spectators, and reception of information. I seek to analyse the tension between the dissemination of facts, their use by those who hold power, and the counter-hegemonic dispute within theatre.

Other activities

I am a scholarship holder by the Investigation and Innovation National Agency in Uruguay

Publications

'Práctica teatral con perspectiva de género', Teatro Situado, Num 3, 2021, p. 44
'Tirame el centro que puedo hacer un gol. Potencialidades del Teatro del Oprimido en la escuela ', Didáctica Primaria, 2020.
'Qué ganas de ser pared. Sobre teatralidades liminales feministas', Argus- a - Artes y Humanidades, 2020
'Hagamos la transición: sobre lo liminal en Ruido, ¿cuál es tu veneno? de Bruno Acevedo Quevedo', Telondefondo, 2019
'Veo, veo, lo que quieren que vea. Análisis de una obra de Teatro Periodístico' in Miradas movilizadoras desde el pluriverso del Teatro del Oprimido, ed. by Hjalmar Jorge Joffre-Eichhorn (Ac Europrint Gmbh: Hamburg, 2019), pp 398-409.
'NEWSPAPER THEATRE. The oldest branch of TO in the post- print present' in The Routledge Companion to Theatre of the Oppressed, ed. by Kelly Howe, Julián Boal y José Soerio (London: Routledge, 2018), pp 150-155.
'GTO MONTEVIDEO. A theatre within a campaign' in The Routledge Companion to Theatre of the Oppressed, ed. by Kelly Howe, Julián Boal y José Soerio (London: Routledge, 2018), pp 401-408.

'El teatro del oprimido en la actualidad' in Crisis de la dramaturgia y las prácticas escénicas en la contemporaneidad, ed. by Roger Mirza (Montevideo: FHCE Universidad de la República, 2017), pp. 101-108.