Mick’s talk will have three parts. The first considers historical pageantry’s relation to past, present and future, through a range of examples from the Popular Front, the village drama movement and professional producers. And it considers some of its rhetorical features, including plenitudes of number, scale or design; magical doubling; and self-evacuation. The second considers Mary Kelly’s early engagement with pageantry from 1905 to 1919, as witness, participant, co-maker and initiator. And it situates these in her status and role as a gentrywoman and vicar’s daughter. The third considers the related form of communal masque – variously as aristocratic manifestation, community pastoral, and reprise.

Speaker: Mick Wallis is Professor Emeritus of Performance and Culture at the University of Leeds, from which he retired in 2014 after 4 years as Pro-Dean for Research and Innovation in the Faculty of Performance, Visual Arts and Communications. Having become an academic at 40, he has pursued often interdisciplinary research embracing cultural histories of performance; performance theory; arts work with people; sexual politics and sexuality; and performance, design and technology. In retirement, Mick has returned to his long-standing interest in interwar village drama.