Al Meggs: Life Writing - 5, 6, 7, Academia! (Jazz hands included)

Technecast

Finishing up our theme of life writing, Olivia chats to Al Meggs about his work on reclaiming cabaret.Al trained in dance and went on to a long career through the 1980s and 1990s as performer in cabaret, theatre, T.V. and film, before taking on various guises ‘behind the scenes’. Roles that ranged from stage crew to stage manager to production manager and dresser to wardrobe assistant to costume supervisor.Now, a second year creative writing doctoral student at the University of Brighton. Al's creative practice thesis, 'Reclaiming cabaret. A queer haunted autoethnography of real, researched and imagined stories of cabaret past and present' is in two parts. The creative element 'Blond Angel' is an autoethnographic novel recalling the life of a young male dancer in a small touring cabaret dance company in Italy in the 1980s, acknowledging an undocumented period in dance history. It also stories people and places from the origins of the modern cabaret in fin-de-siècle Paris, bringing the past and present together in a magically real space, where real, researched and imagined lives meet, haunt and interact within Al's lived experience. The critical element focuses on evolving unconventional approaches to autoethnographic and academic writing that resists the traditional patriarchal discourse of academic narratives. The podcast gives a glimpse into Al's life in Italy and the commercial dance world of the 1980s, and how he found himself, later in life, transforming from dancer to writer. It also touches on how Al uses storytelling to create critical, reflective academic work as a method tochallenge the heteronormative patriarchal discourse of traditional academic narratives.You can learn more about Al's research here: https://research.brighton.ac.uk/en/persons/al-meggs. ---------------Image credit: Mike Hornsby for the 'present day' photo & Al Meggs for the 'past' photo, from 1985.---------------Technecast is a podcast series showcasing research from across the arts and humanities. It is produced by Edwin Gilson, Felix Clutson, Izzi Sykes, Morag Thomas and Olivia Aarons. Fancy turning your research into a podcast episode? We'd be happy to hear from you at [e-mail].