M4C Logo AHRC Logo

Kiana Smithdale

Drama and Theatre Studies, De Montfort University

Thesis title:

This Pussy Bites Back: An Exploration of Female Fury in Screen Horror to Create New Feminist Live Art Practices?

This practice research PhD will produce a new form of interdisciplinary, feminist Live Art that interrogates female fury provoked by #MeToo experiences. Amidst post-pandemic emotional exhaustion and desensitisation from seemingly never-ending horror stories of misogynist abuse, this practice will embody and verbalise different forms of rage to re-galvanise the performer and spectator’s anger, which Rebecca Traister declares has the ‘explosive power to upturn the very systems that have sought to contain it’ (2019: 44). Such explosive power will arise through innovative intermedial performances marrying screen horror’s potential to ‘expose the underpinnings of the social, political and philosophical othering of women’ (Harrington 2017: i) and Live Art’s capacity to transgressively explore transformative anger (Kershaw 2009: 20)

Research Area

  • Drama and Theatre Studies
  • Performance and Live Art

Public Engagement & Impact

Co-founder and organiser of Hysterical Hysteriaan interdisciplinary art event filled with rage, comedy, sexiness, love, and passion exploring today’s views on societal struggles through the lens of queer, multi-cultural, and gendered performances.

Other Research Interests

  • Gender theory
  • Feminist theory 
  • Film theory
  • Autobiographical performance
  • Spoken word
  • Multimedia performance
  • Immersive performance