Vaughan Slinn

Background

About Vaughan Slinn

I have over twenty years of experience as a teacher, researcher, actor, filmmaker, screenwriter, director, and producer. This includes nine years of tertiary teaching experience at Te Kura O Toi Whakaari: New Zealand Drama School. This role has allowed me to develop a refined teaching pedagogy which has enabled me to instil creative and critical competencies in a diverse range of students across numerous delivery areas. My areas of teaching expertise are screen performance, directing for film, creative collaboration, screen production, screen writing, and reflective artistic practice. My responsibilities also included designing courses and supervising student research projects from undergraduate to postgraduate level. My major area of focus in supervision has been the development of screen work, from ideation to realisation. My research areas include the relationship between neuroscience and performance, examining how to use psychophysical and psychophysiological sensation to create more effective and ethical emotional practices in screen acting. Currently I am completing a PhD in film studies, which examines how the concept of hauntology can be used in creative practice research. This project places particular emphasis on Mark Fisher’s re-animation of the concept to critique 21st-century cultural production, and attempts to explore hauntology’s relationship to embedded structures of power and their consequential (yet often invisible) impact on the individual. From a creative practice standpoint, I have been an actor, filmmaker and writer for twenty years, have produced over thirty short films, written ten, and directed nine. I have appeared in multiple television shows as a core cast performer, most recently in Wellington Paranormal. In theatre I have written several plays and was a founding member of the company, A Slightly Isolated Dog. In recent years, I have been more centrally focussed on screen writing and directing. In 2023, I am excited to join Massey University as part of the College of Creative Arts, where I will be lecturing in the Screen Arts Programme.