Welcome to the first conversation* in the new series, Practicing Creative Fugitivity, funded by Arts Council England.It is with immense joy that I share this conversation I had, your host Dr.Sheree Mack, with the amazing Pauline Mayers. As mentioned before, Pauline was on the podcast in July 25 with episode 081, Ruptures, healing and reclamation with Pauline Mayers, the final episode of last season. And now she’s back. Pauline is part of the SistaCircle who are reading Fugitive Feminism by Akwugo Emejulu, and we base our conversation around this text and so much more.
In this episode we are talking about:
* . What brought Pauline to the Practicing Creative Fugitivity project?
* Our experiences of coming together with black and brown women to study and heal
* Racial capitalism and the system
* The Unearthing(s) exhibition at Leeds Art Gallery by Hannah Catherine Jones
* Homeplace – rest, reset, regroup, regenerate, remember
* Sci-Fi and Storm, and stereotypes surrounding black women
* Being in the academy and not, other knowledges
* Professor Jason Arday and the racial smear campaign
* Black women and humanity and non-human other
* Whiteness, white supremacy culture and race
* History, slavery and exploitation
* The beginning of scientific racism
* Fugitivity and refusal
* Fugitivity in the every day
And so much more …
Get comfortable and settle in to listen with your ears and hearts. This is an intimate, honest, unapologetically black conversation, which is a testament to our wholeness, our aliveness for each other.
Bio:
Pauline Mayers is a multi-disciplinary theatre maker, movement director and performer based in the North of England. She began her career as a Rambert-trained dancer appearing on stage, film and television. Her repertory dance company experience includes Janet Smith and Dancers, Diversions Dance, The Ensemble Group and Phoenix Dance Theatre. She also served as interim artistic director for Teeside Dance Initiative before transitioning to theatre in 2010.
Since then Pauline has developed a diverse background as a director, writer, movement director, performer and facilitator. She has collaborated with theatre and live art companies across the UK. Her most recent movement direction and performance work includes collaborations with Selina Thompson LTD’s
Twine(2024), live performance artist Paula Varjack’s
Nine Sixteenths (2024) – which went on to have a 2026 national UK tour – and Improbable Theatre on
An Improbable Musical (2022) and Improbaband: Day = Night (2024). In 2017 she was Associate Director on the Leeds Playhouse’s
Queen of Chapeltown,working alongside director Amy Leach.
In her own work Pauline explores themes of identity, participation, intimacy and care. Her critically acclaimed solo show
What If I Told You, written and performed by Pauline, premiered at Leeds Playhouse in 2016 and toured across the UK the following year. Presented at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in 2017, it was shortlisted for the Amnesty International Freedom of Expression Award. Returning for a sold-out four-night run at Leeds Playhouse in 2018, it also featured in the inaugural programme at Brixton House, London in 2022. Lyn Gardner of The Guardian described her work as “shaking up traditional theatre and power structures to put the audience in the picture”.
Pauline is also a published contributor to the anthology,
Weighted Words(Peepal Tree Press 2021) edited by Jacob Ross, and is an Open Space facilitator with Improbable Theatre.
Now in a new season of her life and creativity Pauline continues to write, and enjoys walking, photography and visual journaling.
*Trigger warning: may contain swearing. No ‘may’, it most definitely does.
The music used throughout this series is free music from Ketsa.uk
This track is Follow My Soul
This series is funded by Arts Council England
