This research seminar was particularly interesting for me as the play of focus The Frozen Deep, a melodrama originally scripted by two great writers of the Victorian era, Wilkie Collins and Charles Dickens was one of the texts I studied in the final year of my undergraduate degree for the Victorian Literature module taught by Dr Joanna Hofer-Robinson. I have a background in theater so volunteered to help perform a piece from the play in front of the class of 50+ students, a memorable experience but one which very much encapsulates one of the themes of this seminar “Practice-led research”. As an academic discipline Literature more than many others could be accused of not being at all practice based, as a scholar one reads in a library and then writes. However, when it comes to something like drama which by its very nature was not meant to simply be read but performed, spoken aloud to an audience. This is relevant to my own area of study as many works of Modernism such as T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land and James Joyce’s Ulysses have lead themselves spectacularly well to oral performance over the years.

The history of the play itself is as captivating as the narrative as Dickens himself not only took on the role of one of the chief characters Wardour, the vengeful “other man” but was apparently meticulous in its staging as a Christmas entertainment. The play would even go on to be performed for Queen Victoria herself. Dr Hofer-Robinson went on to recount her own experience of co-directing a performance of the play herself at Senate House Library in 2016 to learn more about Dickens and 19th Century theater through practical engagement. She discussed the various acting techniques that were used in Victorian melodrama to elicit a felt response in the audience; gestures and facial expressions used to convey specific emotions such as joy or fear, thus displaying them to full effect without the use of words.

As someone who has worked in theater and has studied drama modules since the beginning of my university career I have a great appreciation for how effective this practice led research could be in gaining a greater understanding of texts. When studying a novel or poem I always get as much out of discussions with lecturers and classmates as I do from my own interpretations. In this sense performing plays, speaking the words aloud as their writer had intended seems the best way of appreciating drama as its own art form. Though it may be a case that some of us may be a little more hesitant to sharpen our rusted acting skills in front of our peers. As Oscar Wilde once said “I regard the theater as the greatest of all art forms, the most immediate way in which a human being can share with another the sense of what it is to be a human being”