University of Kent

Profile

Duška's research interests include contemporary British and European theatre practice as well as more specifically – dramaturgy, the creative process and total theatre. Most recently Duška was employed as the Higher Education Programme Manager at the RSC where she engaged with the issues of kinaesthetic learning and teaching innovation at the university level. Between 2002-2005, as the Dramaturg at Northern Stage and Newcastle University, she worked with a selection of local, national and international writers and theatre artists on devised and new writing projects. Since 1998, Duška has been a member of The Stage Awards for Acting Excellence panel of judges at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe and has written over 500 theatre and dance reviews for the Stage Newspaper. At Northern Stage: Duška was heavily involved in the development and articulation of the company's artistic vision as well as the creation and delivery of practical theatre and creative writing courses in the School of English. Her production credits for the company include 1001 Nights Now, Manifesto for a New City, Goldfish, Kaput!, The New Tenant, Geneva, Wings of Desire, Cinzano / Smirnova's Birthday and The Black-Eyed Roses. She was instrumental in the programming of the Newcastle and Gateshead Gypsy Festival in 2003 and the Barcelona Connection Festival in 2004, and has successfully obtained arts council funding for a research trip to the US and Russia as part of the development of the Chekhov/Carver project – Kaput!.

In addition, she created a series of performance poetry and music events in Newcastle including Witness in Survival, Flying Homages and Valentine Verses with the writers Julia Darling, Linda France, W.N.Herbert, Gillian Allnutt, Colin Teevan and Cynthia Fuller.

As a freelance dramaturg : Duška has worked for New Writing North, Dance City, Dramaturgs' Network and the National Student Drama Festival. Her long term research interest in theatre translation led to a collaboration with the West Yorkshire Playhouse on the production of Huddersfield by Uglješa Šajtinac – the first Serbian play ever to be produced in Britain. In the early stages of her career, Duška was also involved as a performer and director with a number of young theatre companies both in the north of England and in her native Yugoslavia.

Duška is the author of Beginners' Serbo-Croatian and co-author of Serbian Phrasebook and Dictionary (Hippocrene Books, New York), and maintains a publication record in the areas of dramaturgy, pedagogy and aspects of theatre production and reception.

Publications

Journal articles

• ‘Emma Rice in Interview with Duska Radosavljevic’, Journal of Adaptation in Film and Performance, Volume 3, Number 1, 2010.
• The Alchemy of Power and Freedom – A Contextualisation of Slobodan Šnajder’s Hrvatski Faust (The Croatian Faust) – Contemporary Theatre Review, Vol. 19 (4), 2009.
• The Need to Keep Moving: Remarks on the Place of a Dramaturg in 21st Century England – Performance Research: ‘On Dramaturgy’, Vol. 14 (3), September 2009.
• ‘Translating the City: A Community Theatre Version of Wenders’ Wings of Desire in Newcastle upon Tyne’ – Journal of Adaptation in Film and Performance, Vol. 1 (1), 2007.

Conference Papers

• Research Methodologies for a Consideration of the ‘Ensemble Way of Working’ – TaPRA, 7-9 September, Plymouth.
• Huddersfield as a Balkan Casablanca – IFTR, 13-14 July 2009, Lisbon.
• From Milford Haven to Milford Junction: The Golden Age of Kneehigh – Cultures of Translation: Adaptation in Film and Performance, 26th-28th June 2008, Glamorgan University, Cardiff.
• Sarah Kane's Illyria: A Balkan reading of Blasted –  'Sarah Kane: Reassessments', University of Cambridge, 16 February 2008.

Chapter contributions in books

• Believe it or Not? Suspension of Disbelief and Emotional Responses to Fiction in Daniel Meyer-Dinkgrafe (ed.): Consciousness, Theatre, Literature and the Arts, Cambridge Scholars Press, 2006.

• Staging Theatricalised Reality: Yugoslav Metatheatre and its Political
  Significance in Birgit Haas (ed.), Macht Performanz, Performativität, Polittheater seit 1990 . Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann, 2005

Other articles

• Kako pokrenuti kritičara: Edinburg 2008 - Eksperimenti u političkom teatru – TFT: Teatar Film Televizija, Sluzbeni glasnik, Beograd, Br 1/12/2008, ISSN 1821-0120.
• The Canterbury Tales Study Day: Learning and Teaching Methodology at the CAPITAL Centre – English Subject Centre Newsletter Issue 10, June 2006 (also available at the Higher Education Academy).
• From Dramaturg to Chocolatier: The Working Process on Margaret Wilkinson's new play Kaput! – on dramforum.com, 2005.
• Foreword to Kaput! by Margaret Wilkinson, New Writing North, 2004.
• Introduction to Huddersfield by Uglješa Šajtinac, in a version by Chris Thorpe, from a translation by Duška Radosavljevic, Oberon Books, 2004.
• Numerous reviews and features in The Stage Newspaper.

 

Practice as research

Der Fall Des Ikarus – a music and dance-theatre piece with story by Duska Radosavljevic, directed by George Rodosthenous and music by Demetris Zavros, commissioned by the Cypriot Embassy in Berlin and co-produced by the University of Leeds; performed 28 October 2009, Koeln, Germany.

Symposium by Plato – adapted by Duska Radosavljevic and George Rodosthenous; presented as part of ‘Song, Stage, Screen II’ conference, 25 March 2007, School of PCI, University of Leeds.