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Dr. Jodean Leigh Sumner (born 1986 in UK) iws a Brittish stage actress and theatre lecturer. She graduated from Manchester Metropolitan University with a first class degree in ‘Contemporary Theatre and Performance’ in 2008 and is now a masters student at Leeds Metropolitan University studying on the course ‘Performance Works’. Her particular interest are in theatre performance, site specific and interactive performance as well as performance that focuses on identity and the body. She has worked as a solo performance artist and a collaborative performance artist in a theatre company called Trace Theatre. Working practically informs her critical writing and provides her with a reference point when critiquing other artists’ work. These two processes go hand in hand for in her work, leading her writing about performance and understanding and developing her own performance practice. This practice can be considered in two parts; solo performance that engages with gender politics and notions of identity of the body and of place. The second part of her practice involves her work within Trace Theatre that bases their work around a collaborative process that explores the act of collaboration and the conflict between individuals that eventually form a cohesive group. Jodean would like to be a gauge at ITS Festival trying to feel out what is happening in our international context, what is happening in the world around us globally and how are each of the artists expressing this? Are the ideas we engage with so different? Believing that performance is its own language that can translate across different nations, she views international performance events as a locus for a political and beautiful action that she intends not only to witness, but to describe, to contextualise and ultimately criticise. Dr. Jodean Sumner is an artist, academic and educator with a focus on autobiography, embodiment and ethics. For the Grief Series she has edited text and offered dramaturgical support on the Journey With Absent Friends web project and is currently exploring publication and legacy. nnHere it is in Jodean Sumner's own words:nnThe character of ‘Jodean’, the princess in the story is a passive woman. Yet the woman on stage, is much more in charge, AND has directly broken out of the frame of the male authoritative by also directly addressing her action and role to the audience. Whilst pacing up and down the audience seating bank she says to the audience:nn‘Even if I come up to you and sit next to you, and you can feel the heat of another human body beside you, you still won’t see me. I’m just a prop, a construct, I am just part of the magic of the theatre’.nnIt is this moment that the spectators often comment upon or wish to discuss with me. Interestingly the most common comment is that the audiences watching couldn’t bring themselves look at my body. They felt that they shouldn’t look but instead become fixed on the words. The breaking of the theatrical frame and stepping barefoot in to the audience, challenging the gaze, in fact removing it and placing a focus on the words, is significant-isn’t it? Maybe it is a self-conscious act on the part of the audience. But the audience also consciously engage with their reaction and processing it, use the words as context for their more emotional reaction.nnPeople describe this part of the show as ‘brave’, or as ‘uncomfortable’. Often as a company we describe this scene as the lynch pin, as the crux upon which the internal commentary is made somewhat clearer. After all the jokes and the trickery are over, after the gag of nudity is calmed, or perhaps stifled by the ensuing monologue, you could usually hear a pin drop. If this is the ‘brave’ or ‘uncomfortable’ part it hopefully means that this is the risky part. The part where something is being attempted, and idea put out there and we, or I could possibly fail. I am trying to rupture the frame in which I am placed.n
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