Emily Wardill and J.H. Prynne in Conversation at The Showroom

On 30 May 2023, The Showroom in London hosted a seminar featuring filmmaker Emily Wardill and poet J.H. Prynne. Wardill discussed her feature-length film 'Game Keepers Without Game' (2009), which adapts Pedro Calderón de la Barca's 17th-century play 'Life is a Dream' to contemporary London. The film follows a violent child adopted early in life who returns as a teenager to his family home, exploring themes of morality, incarceration, and truth. Prynne, a Cambridge-educated poet with 29 collections published between 1968 and 2009, has also written essays on Han Chinese lyric, a Willem de Kooning painting, a Shakespeare sonnet, a Wordsworth poem, and a lecture on 'Huts'. Wardill, based in London, has exhibited at Spacex Exeter, ICA London, Fortescue Avenue/Jonathan Viner, and STANDARD (OSLO), with screenings at Tate Britain, Oberhausen International Short Film Festival, Whitechapel Gallery, Witte de With, and the London Film Festival. In 2008 she was nominated for the Jarman Award and performed 'Life is a Dream' at the Serpentine Gallery in 2007. The seminar was part of Afterall's 'Artists at Work' series, with advance reading material provided by the participants.