BCMCR Event Series – BCMCR Transgressive Identities and Subjectivities – Performing Transgression

BCMCR invites you to the research event ‘BCMCR Transgressive Identities and Subjectivities – Performing Transgression’.

Date: 9 April 2025 | Time: 16:00PM – 17:30PM UK TIME

Place: The Jazz Club, Ground Floor, Royal Birmingham Conservatoire, 200 Jennens Road, Birmingham, B4 7XR.

Tickets Available: In-Person

Due to the nature of the seminar containing live performances, this will be an in-person only event.

Please join us in The Jazz Club (RBC) at 4pm where refreshments will be served.

Event Bio:

We are delighted to have Marlene Mc Kenzie (Mooville Theatre Company), Michael Wolters (Royal Birmingham Conservatoire) and RED (Bristol) joining us for a unique set of live performances. In line with the theme of Transgressive Identities and Subjectivities, this seminar breaks away from the often-traditional approaches of our previous BCMCR seminars to bring you a live and interactive experience.

Presenter Bios:

Marlene McKenzie

For our seminar Marlene will be performing an excerpt from her groundbreaking production LITE. LITE is a powerful multimedia stage production exploring identity, self-image, and colourism through a Black woman’s eyes. Blending drama, humour, and vulnerability, it delivers a gripping take on skin lightening and conformity.

Marlene McKenzie is a Social Issues performing artists and is also the Founder and Creative Director of Mooville Theatre. Marlene graduated from Birmingham Theatre School in 2004. Since graduating, Marlene’s performances include:Birmingham REP Theatre, Coventry Belgrade Theatre, Language Alive/The Play House, Women & Theatre, The Drum Arts, ICU Transformational Arts, The Other Way Works, Open Stage Productions, Kajans, Letters To Eric, and The Shaw Theatre. Part of the Blacktress Theatre festival. She played Mother in Inside Out, Short film that won at the Black International Film Festival and Marlene performed in the BBC Drama, written by Lenny Henry and filmed by Red Productions, Danny and the Human Zoo, as Valda Graham.

RED

For our seminar RED will be performing a number of self-penned and self-produced songs that take inspiration from noughties pop singers such as Britney Spears and Dannii Minogue. Fusing together pop with “something you can bump and grind to” with every song “creating a different experiment” that transgress genre boundaries.

RED is a Bristol based singer, music and video producer, actor, Drag queen, anime and manga designer, and 3D modeller. Formerly known as Carmen Monoxide, RED has been doing drag since 2011 and runs the very successful Bristol based Drag Queen Bingo, with their long-term collaborator and “drag twin sister” Dominique Fleek. With a lifelong passion and desire to forge a music and singing career, Red has turned their creative focus towards doing that. In 2023 RED released their self-produced debut single Get It On, (that garnered several multi genre remixes), and accompanying self-produced video and 3D art.

Michael Wolters

For our seminar Michael will be asking the audience to engage in an interactive performance, whilst he simultaneously engages with the audience from a remote location. The content of Michaels interactive performance is yet to be fully revealed, as he seeks to transgress the boundaries of performance by being remote, spontaneous and reactive to the audience’s interactions.

Michael Wolters is a Professor in Composition at the Royal Birmingham Conservatoire. He studied Applied Theatre Studies in Giessen, Germany and Composition at the University of Huddersfield (BA, MA) and the University of Birmingham (PhD). Michael has maintained the position of an “other” in the world of contemporary music with works that queer traditional concert and performance situations. He has written music for traditional ensembles like Birmingham Contemporary Music Group and prefers to challenge conventional set-ups and rituals. This has resulted in pieces with unusual instrumentations, performances in unusual places (wahnsinnig wichtig on ice took place on and around an ice rink while product placement was set in a supermarket) or projects of unusual duration (his Spring Symphony: The Joy of Life, lasting 17 seconds in total is the shortest symphony in the world while the performance of Wir sehen uns morgen wieder lasted for a month).He strongly believes that the idea of a work is the driving element in the creation of an art work, informing the concept and all artistic decisions.