ETlab Methods: Active Listening Methods from the Storytelling Theatre by Josiah Lulham

We aim to listen to many voices in our fieldwork. As anthropologists, listening well invoked considering our positionality, and aiming to be reflexive. In this workshop, Josiah will present an active listening methodology used in his storytelling theatre work - a method that informed his fieldwork in Melbourne with live action role players.

Josiah Lulham is a Melbourne-based theatre maker, theatre improviser, and anthropologist. Currently, alongside his work as ensemble members of the Melbourne Playback Theatre Company and The Soothplayers, he is involved in the production of interactive and playful experiences as a performer, deviser, and designer.

As a theatre maker he has been part of the devising ensemble behind Born in a Taxi’s 2022 remount of The Waiting Room; Grub Theatre’s 2016 processional interactive work Planning Atlantis which toured audiences around parts of Melbourne’s Docklands; and David Harris’s 2015 immersive work Wash Your Hands, which transformed four storeys of an office building into an immersive laboratory and quarantine experience. He has also worked on live performance works with Jude Anderson of Punctum Inc. including The Cooling House (2017-2021) and TheWay-TheWater-TheWalk (2020).

As an anthropologist and games researcher, Josiah is currently completing a PhD at the University of Melbourne in anthropology, researching playful communities and immersive spaces. His work looks at the production and performance of interactive immersion in live games, most notably LARP events. He has forthcoming publications reflecting on the relationship between performance and table-top role playing games, and on the playing of drama games in a third year university level criminology course to teach social theory.

Express interest in attending this session by writing to bianca.vallentine@monash.edu