About the session

This session took place on Thursday 10 December 2020, 6-7pm AEDT.

Sherrill Gow is the Head of Postgraduate Performance at Mountview in London. She joins Music Theatre Futures to discuss the way she explores how musical theatre pedagogy might begin to dismantle modes of practice that perpetuate exclusion and a dualistic, gendered perspective. Sherrill draws on her experience of directing postgraduate musical theatre students at Mountview in a production of Pippin where she cast a trans-man as Pippin – in many respects an archetypal male hero role – which set in motion a process of queering and subverting norms.

However, casting is only one element of creating an inclusive practice: in this work, Sherrill developed a hybrid approach that honoured students’ identities and experiences and took a critical, political view of the material being presented.

Sherrill’s approach brings together Elin Diamond’s feminist theoretical framing of Brecht with queer concepts including heteronormativity and chrononormativity, which are then applied to David Barnett’s practical explanation of a Brechtian process. Sherrill argues that feminist and queer approaches can work together to meaningfully critique hegemonic forces influencing musical theatre training and production processes.

About the speakers

• Sherrill Gow

  Sherrill is Joint Head of Postgraduate Performance (Acting and Musical Theatre Pathways) at Mountview in London, U.K. She is also a Ph.D. candidate at the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama. Her research investigates the feminist potential of musical theatre and asks how feminist interpretations of this repertoire might be activated in the conservatoire rehearsal room. Sherrill’s thesis contributes to musical theatre scholarship and practice by demonstrating new, practical applications that builds on existing feminist performance theory and criticism. Before directing and teaching at various drama schools and universities across London, Sherrill was a freelance director and devised many site-specific projects. She was an Associate Director at the King’s Head Theatre in Islington, where she directed UK premieres of assorted Canadian plays and mentored talent on the young directors’ scheme. Originally from Canada, she trained at The Boston Conservatory, where she earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Musical Theatre with an emphasis in directing and completed a Master of Arts in Actor Training and Coaching at Central.

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