Dr Mark Love-Smith
Senior Lecturer in Theatre

Profile

Biography

I am a Senior Lecturer in Theatre and, since 2023, Programme Leader for the BA: Writing, Directing and Performance.

I joined the School of Arts and Creative Technologies as a full-time Lecturer in 2017, having previously completed a Masters and PhD in Theatre at the School, and having worked here as an Associate Lecturer for a number of years. From 2016 to 2017, I worked at the University of Salford as a Lecturer in Drama.

My research interests lie mainly in writing and devising in contemporary theatre, with a special focus on the company Frantic Assembly. I have also published on Forced Entertainment, as well as on Battersea Arts Centre’s development of ‘scratch’ processes in supporting new work.

My own practice revolves around directing and dramaturgy. In 2025 I adapted and directed The Murder of Gonzago by Bulgarian dramatist and poet Nedyalko Yordanov, in its UK premiere (York International Shakespeare Festival). In 2019 I directed meet me at dawn (2019) in intimate pub venues around York, featuring colleagues from the School. My 2014 production of Twelfth Night for the York Shakespeare Project was performed at the York Theatre Royal Studio as well as in Stratford as part of the RSC’s Open Stages festival. I have directed a range of new writing and assistant directed large-scale shows within the School. I was the dramaturg for 2015’s staff-directed production of Demons, a devised adaptation of Dostoyevsky’s novel, and for 2016’s The Lumberjills, a site-specific production in Dalby Forest.

I also regularly review theatre and am the Yorkshire editor for the British Theatre Guide.

I teach across a range of modules throughout the undergraduate and MA courses, often focusing on contemporary rehearsal room practices and supporting student practical work. I have supervised practical projects and dissertation work at BA, Masters and PhD level, and have greatly benefited from lively and informed discussions and student work on gig theatre, community theatre, devising, and immersive theatre, among other topics.

Research

Overview

My research interests include devised and physical theatre; community theatre; the interplay of writing, directing and devising; performance and social media.

My PhD research focused on contemporary British theatre, especially theatre described as ‘devised’ or ‘physical’. In particular I explored ways in which the creative processes behind such works interact with processes of writing. I developed this thinking in my co-authored book on the company Frantic Assembly, published by Routledge in 2021.

In 2025 I co-edited Research and Development in British Theatre, a survey of R&D across multiple theatrical fields. My chapter, ‘R&D in public: Scratch at Battersea Arts Centre’, examines the Battersea Arts Centre’s development of ‘scratch’ from the 1990s onwards as a theatrical methodology, philosophy and ecology.

Other recent research interests include community theatre, and I am particularly interested in interrogating the exchanges and processes behind community performances on large scales. This focus derives from my interactions with the large-scale community plays staged by the York Theatre Royal, beginning with 2012’s Mystery Plays. Building on this, I have recently organised workshops and practitioner networks exploring the possibilities of large-scale community theatre.

Publications

Selected publications

Books

Research and Development in British Theatre, co-edited with Tom Cantrell, Katherine Graham and Karen Quigley (Bloomsbury, 2025).

Frantic Assembly, co-authored with Mark Evans (Routledge, 2021)

Chapters

‘R&D in public: Scratch at the Battersea Arts Centre’, Research and Development in British Theatre, co-edited with Tom Cantrell, Katherine Graham and Karen Quigley (Bloomsbury, 2025)

Articles

‘Performances in Footnote Form: While You Are With Us Here Tonight’, in Performance Research: A Journal of the Performing Arts, 20: 6 (2015), pp. 106-113

Reviews

‘Clare Finburgh, Watching War on the Twenty-First Century Stage: Spectacles of Conflict’ in New Theatre Quarterly, 34: 2 (2018)

‘Duška Radosavljevic, Theatre-Making: Interplay Between Text and Performance in the 21st Century’ in Platform, 8: 1 (Spring 2014)

Conference Papers

‘Manual labour: precarity, work and hands in Wish List and The Antipodes’, Theatre and Performance Research Association (TaPRA) Directing and Dramaturgy Working Group, September 2024

‘Can We Rehearse Yet?: Theatre R&D in HE Contexts’ (with Tom Cantrell, Katherine Graham and Karen Quigley), Performance, Pedagogy and Practice symposium at DramaHE Annual Conference, June 2023

‘Possible futures for a radically open community theatre’, Theatre and Performance Research Association (TaPRA) Applied and Social Theatre Working Group, September 2019 ‘Rhetorics of writing and devising’, invited guest lecture/seminar, Coventry University, January 2019

‘Archaeology and the Postdigital: Livestreamed spectatorship and Twitter as second-order performance’, TaPRA Performance and New Technologies Working Group, September 2017 ‘Large-scale community involvement in regional British theatre: politics, economics, aesthetics’, British Theatre in the 21st Century Conference, Paris-Sorbonne University, October 2016

‘Group Hug Retweet: Second screening and a sense of community with Forced Entertainment’, Live Theatre Broadcast symposium, University of York, June 2015