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A rolling landscape of five green, rocky mountain peaks and two small lakes fading into the distance

AHRC Leadership Fellowship: 2016-18

Performing Mountains was a 24-month project culminating in the completion of an academic monograph (Palgrave, 2020), a new piece of practice-led research, based on the first ascent of Indian Face in Snowdonia, (stage@leeds, November 2017; followed by a screening at the Kendal Mountain Festival), several public talks and an international symposium.

KMF were close collaborators on the project alongside a postdoctoral researcher, Dr David Shearing, who developed the performance piece and gathered brand new data for the project. A wide range of public events has been delivered, including talks at Mountain Festivals in the UK and Canada and a very popular series of Mountainsides seminars, bringing together theatre academics, mountaineers and explorers to discuss common themes such as risk, light and composition. Two panels at the Kendal Mountain Festival have also featured research from the project.

“I’ve been working with KMF for two years to get this project together and I’m very excited to have the potential of this collaboration, and the research which will flow from it, recognised by the AHRC. The project promises to deliver unique understandings of the meeting points between mountains and performance and I am really looking forward to working with academics, mountaineers, festival organisers and outdoors enthusiasts to define and develop a new genre of theatre and performance”.

Professor Jonathan Pitches - AHRC Leadership Fellow