The literature, performance and art of the early twentieth century has interested me since my PhD. I am excited by the innovation, the experimentalism and, often, the political commitment. Until 2022 I was a member of the Executive Committee of the British Association for Modernist Studies (first as Secretary, then as Chair and now as Past Chair) where I particularly enjoyed encouraging new researchers as they explore modernist interests. One of my key interests lies in the way performance studies might shift conventional ways of understanding modernism. This was the theme of my keynote address at The Space Between Society conference in South Dakota in June 2019; this talk eventually became this article. It was also the drive behind a special issue of the same journal that I co-edited with Rebecca Kastleman and Kevin Riordan.
Russia
I am particularly interested in the historic diverse performance practices of Russia, and won the Society for Theatre Research's Anthony Denning Award (2014) and a British Academy Grant (2015) in order to study them. These enabled me to write some new publications:
‘A Glimpse of Another Russia: British Chekhov and the translations of Elizaveta Fen’. Theatre Survey (September 2019): 414-433.
'Alexander Tairov: Theatricalizing the Theatre', Amy Skinner ed. Russian Theatre in Practice: the director's guide (Bloomsbury 2019).
With Jonathan Pitches, 'Theodore Komisarjevsky', The Great Directors Volume III (Bloomsbury 2018).
Migrating Modernist Performance: British Theatrical Travels through Russia (Palgrave MacMillan, 2016).
'Moscow, St Petersburg, London: Hubert Griffith and the search for a Russian truth', Comparative Drama (2015).
'Salute the Red Army: Basil Dean's Russian Adventures', Theatre Survey (2013).
I've also been part of some excellent events, reappraising Russian cultural history and the artistic relationship between Russia and Britain in the early to mid twentieth century. These include a delivering a talk on Joseph Macleod for the Scotland-Russia Cultural Encounters Since 1900 project (2015), a reading group on Translation and Travel for the Anglo-Russian Research Network (2019) and, most recently, as a respondent to Professor Rebecca Beasley's fabulous reimagining of Huntly Carter (2023).
In June 2016 I spoke about the project in Moscow at the Electrotheatre Stanislavsky. Here is a recording of the talk in English and Russian (with thanks to HowlRound).
Russia
I am particularly interested in the historic diverse performance practices of Russia, and won the Society for Theatre Research's Anthony Denning Award (2014) and a British Academy Grant (2015) in order to study them. These enabled me to write some new publications:
‘A Glimpse of Another Russia: British Chekhov and the translations of Elizaveta Fen’. Theatre Survey (September 2019): 414-433.
'Alexander Tairov: Theatricalizing the Theatre', Amy Skinner ed. Russian Theatre in Practice: the director's guide (Bloomsbury 2019).
With Jonathan Pitches, 'Theodore Komisarjevsky', The Great Directors Volume III (Bloomsbury 2018).
Migrating Modernist Performance: British Theatrical Travels through Russia (Palgrave MacMillan, 2016).
'Moscow, St Petersburg, London: Hubert Griffith and the search for a Russian truth', Comparative Drama (2015).
'Salute the Red Army: Basil Dean's Russian Adventures', Theatre Survey (2013).
I've also been part of some excellent events, reappraising Russian cultural history and the artistic relationship between Russia and Britain in the early to mid twentieth century. These include a delivering a talk on Joseph Macleod for the Scotland-Russia Cultural Encounters Since 1900 project (2015), a reading group on Translation and Travel for the Anglo-Russian Research Network (2019) and, most recently, as a respondent to Professor Rebecca Beasley's fabulous reimagining of Huntly Carter (2023).
In June 2016 I spoke about the project in Moscow at the Electrotheatre Stanislavsky. Here is a recording of the talk in English and Russian (with thanks to HowlRound).
