Mischa Twitchin

Mischa's interests include European theatres of the avant-garde; Afro-European cultural politics; historical-theoretical questions of empathy and mimesis; Performance Philosophy; Memory Studies.

Staff details

Mischa Twitchin

Position

Senior Lecturer

Department

Theatre and Performance

Email

m.twitchin (@gold.ac.uk)

Dr Mischa Twitchin FHEA teaches courses on Polish Theatre, the legacies of Artaud, East European theatres, an under-graduate workshop on “touch”, and a post-graduate workshop, “Thinking Theatre”. His book, “The Theatre of Death – the Uncanny in Mimesis: Tadeusz Kantor, Aby Warburg and an Iconology of the Actor” is published by Palgrave Macmillan in their Performance Philosophy series; and examples of his own performance- and essay-films can be seen on Vimeo.

Besides this academic and artistic work, Mischa is a founder-member of the performance collective Shunt, and has also worked as a freelance lighting designer (at the Young Vic, the Barbican Pit, and the Royal Court, amongst other places). He has taught at various institutions, including Central School of Speech and Drama, the University of Kent, and Queen Mary, University of London, where he did his PhD and also held a British Academy Post-Doctoral Fellowship (2014-17).

 

Publications and research outputs

Book

Twitchin, Mischa. 2016. The Theatre of Death - the Uncanny in Mimesis: Tadeusz Kantor, Aby Warburg, and an Iconology of the Actor. London: Palgrave Macmillan. ISBN 9781137478719

Edited Book

Twitchin, Mischa, ed. 2024. Wittgenstein and Performance. Lanham, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield. ISBN 9781538175095

Edited Journal

Twitchin, Mischa and Lavery, Carl, eds. 2019. On Animism, Performance Research, 24(6). 1352-8165

Book Section

Twitchin, Mischa. 2024. Mnemotechnics, Echo and the Discrete Voice. In: Bart Buseyne; Georgios Tsagdis and Paul Willemarck, eds. Bernard Stiegler: Memories of the Future. London: Bloomsbury Academic, pp. 205-215. ISBN 9781350410442

Twitchin, Mischa and Gruszczynski, Piotr. 2024. Tragedy and the Gender of Sacrifice: On "The Difference between Poetry and Rhetoric". In: Ramona Mosse and Anna Street, eds. Genre Transgressions: Dialogues on Tragedy and Comedy. Abingdon: Routledge, pp. 199-222. ISBN 9780367218300

Twitchin, Mischa. 2024. Philosophical Problems and Stochastic Parrots: Between Aphorism and Algorithm. In: Mischa Twitchin, ed. Wittgenstein and Performance. Lanham, Maryland: Rowman and Littlefield, pp. 219-233. ISBN 9781538175095

Article

Twitchin, Mischa. 2023. 'Do we still remember?' (Warsaw, June 2022). Contemporary Theatre Review, 33(1-2), pp. 162-165. ISSN 1048-6801

Twitchin, Mischa. 2023. Between a “Poetical Phrase” and Being “Led into Error” in "The Interpretation of Dreams". Widok. Teorie i Praktyki Kultury Wizualnej / View. Theories and Practices of Visual Culture, 35, ISSN 2300-200X

Twitchin, Mischa. 2023. Kantor’s encounters with a rhinoceros: ‘Costumology’ between material and metaphor. Studies in Costume & Performance, 8(1), pp. 11-34. ISSN 2052-4013

Conference or Workshop Item

Twitchin, Mischa. 2024. 'Exposed memory'. In: Subtle Transitions. Prague City University and Charles University Prague, Czech Republic 5 April 2024.

Twitchin, Mischa. 2023. 'What’s Hamlet to us? (Or us to Hecuba?)'. In: "Acting, Reacting, Enacting. Theory and Practice in Performing Arts." ANTS Conference 2023. Latvian Academy of Culture Theatre House, Latvia 3-4 November 2023.

Twitchin, Mischa. 2023. 'Translation, memory, and an “aesthetics of care”'. In: Post-Socialist and Comparative Memory Studies (PoSoCoMeS) Conference. University of Tallinn, Estonia 20 - 23 September 2023.

Art Object

Twitchin, Mischa. 2020. "Perspective(s)".

Film/Video

Twitchin, Mischa. 2023. The Warsaw Ghetto.

Twitchin, Mischa. 2020. Cologne, 25.1.20.

Twitchin, Mischa. 2020. Merthyr Tydfil, 24.12.19.

Show/Exhibition

Twitchin, Mischa. 2020. Sokolowsko. In: "Konteksty Festival 10", Sokolowsko, Poland, 23 – 26 July 2020.

Twitchin, Mischa. 2019. Poem Films: “…not only in your theatre but also in the world” (Brecht). In: "Contexts: International Festival of Ephemeral Art", Sokolowsko, Poland, 25-29 July 2019.

Research Interests

Mischa's main research interests include: European theatres of the avant-garde; Afro-European cultural politics; historical-theoretical questions of empathy and mimesis; Performance Philosophy; Memory Studies; and dialogues between anthropology, museum ethnography, and art. He would welcome PhD applications in any of these fields.