I did an English degree, but I should’ve done drama and theatre, as I spent most of my time with the Guild Theatre Group at the University of Birmingham. Over the next few years, I did a variety of jobs. I did bits and pieces of acting, which was great, but I could never get enough of it. I worked as a personal trainer, in a recruitment firm, and as a financial advisor, before I really thought to myself, what do I want to do with my life?
I did a part-time PGCE, and got a job at a college teaching drama, theatre studies and performing arts. I also did a Masters in Drama and Performance Studies, and loved it. That marked a shift for me, and I thought this was now where I was meant to be. I loved the intellectual side of it, and the discovery both in the practical space and the library. I went on to do a PhD, and I'm now a lecturer in Theatre here.
The posthuman is the notion we are evolving alongside, and with, advancing technology in fundamental, wonderful but scary ways. It’s an area that isn’t well explored in theatre. Notions about human evolution derive from us changing very slowly over millennia. Now, alongside encroaching technology, we’re evolving exponentially.
What kind of effect is this having on theatre? How is theatre capturing this? I’m interested broadly in these kinds of questions, but more specifically in robots coming onto our stages. What are they doing there? Can we call a robot a performer? What sorts of robot characters are being staged? Why? How does this connect to science fiction? Science fiction isn’t a popular intellectual research area in relation to theatre, but robots are straddling the world as it is today and the science-fiction future.
In the first year, you'll spend a lot of time in the rehearsal room and workshop environment. In 2nd Year, you'll move into our two major theatre spaces, and start to work in production teams, putting on your own productions. By 3rd Year, you'll be project-managing full-length plays. At this point, my role becomes much more of a supervisor: facilitating work, and guiding, steering and responding to sessions.
You'll gain transferable skills by managing your own major projects with budgets. You'll have to staff it yourselves, run and organise your own schedules, and do the PR and marketing as well. You have the space to really explore where your strengths and interests lie.
Professionally, my proudest achievement was getting my PhD. It's hard, and it changes you in quite fundamental ways. It can be lonely, it can make you vulnerable, and I’ve never felt so stupid as I felt at certain points doing the PhD! But it literally changed how I think, and it changed my relationships to people. It's really quite a powerful thing.
Having been a teacher previously, I have a good sense of how students have been taught before they arrive here, and the challenges that face them. At university, ways of learning are different. My goal now as an educator is to develop you as an independent critical thinker. You're going to assess all the evidence, make up your mind, and then formulate rigorous, persuasive arguments based on facts, and not on what you’ve been told to think.
I love teaching here; I’ve found it a very friendly place to be, where staff and students all get to know each other really well. Our Theatre team loves teaching, and we are very supportive of each other.
Teaching and working with our Theatre cohorts is fun - it’s creative, lively, dynamic, and it’s hard. To anybody who is dismissing Theatre as an easy degree - it’s not. Here, it's academically rigorous and creatively challenging. This means it's exciting!
