Personal Information
Name: Alan John Read
Nationality: UK
Date of Birth: 21/09/1956
Registered Disabilities under 2010 Equality Act UK: Impairments of Sight and Hearing
http://www.kcl.ac.uk/artshums/depts/english/people/academic/read.aspx
Education
1989 PhD, University of Washington, Seattle, USA
1979 BA Honours, Drama, University of Exeter, UK
Current Position
2006-Present: Professor of Theatre, King’s College London
Previous Positions
1979-1981: University Assistant Lecturer, University of Washington Seattle, US
1981-1983: Director, Council of Europe Workshop on Theatre and Communities, UK
1983-1991: Director, Rotherhithe Theatre Workshop, London, UK
1991-2003: Director, Public Programmes, London International Festival of Theatre, UK
1991-Present Founder and Director, Theatre Capital, Boston University London Programmes
1991-1994: Ethnographic field work, Street Ceremony and Corre Focpractices, Barcelona, Catalunya
1994-1997: Director of Talks, Institute of Contemporary Arts, London, UK
1997-2006: Professor of Theatre, Roehampton University, London, UK
2006-Present Professor of Theatre, English Department, King’s College London, UK
2016-Present Founder and Director, Theatre Capital Global Edge London Programme, UC Berkeley, USA
Awards UK/European Based
1981-1983 Council of Europe Workshop on Theatre and Communities (£125,000), PI
2000-2005 Arts and Humanities Research Board Major Award ‘Civic Centre’ (£257,000), PI
2010-2015 AHRC Creative Fellow Award (with Gregg Whelan), (£189,000), CI
2010-2013 Leverhulme Trust Major Award ‘Engineering Spectacle’ (£187,000), PI
2011-2014 EPSRC: Materials Innovation Hub (with Mark Miodownik), (£378,500), CI
2008 Honorary Degree, Dartington College of Arts/Falmouth University for 25 years ‘service to the field in community theatre and socially engaged arts practice’.
Supervision of Graduate Students
160+ Masters students supervised to date
12 PhDs supervised to date as first supervisor, 7 former students in permanent academic positions, currently supervising 4 doctoral students with 2 in receipt of Arts and Humanities Research Council Awards, UK, and 1 current PhD student, Yale University.
Teaching Activities 1996 to date:
Undergraduate courses in Theatre, Performance and Critical Theory
Undergraduate courses in Community Cultural Practices
Undergraduate higher-level courses in Performance Philosophy
Postgraduate courses in Theatre, Performance and Critical Theory
Organisation of Scientific Meetings
1983 A Council of Europe Workshop on Theatre & Communities, 200+ Participants (7 Days)
1991 Rotherhithe Theatre Workshop: A Decade at Work, 300 + Participants (7 days)
1994-1997 Curated 25 public Conferences and 500+ seminars at Institute of Contemporary Arts with Derrida, Baudrillard, Cixous, Guattari, Girard, Gilroy, Hall, Massey, Sennett, Hadid, Butler, Bhabha, et al
2003 Civic Centre: Reclaiming the Right to Performance, 180+ Participants (7 days)
2012 Caves: Underground Figures in Philosophy, Arts and Science, 100+Participants (4 Days)
2014 Bridging the Gaps, EPSRC, Materials Library and Performance Foundation, 200 + Participants
Institutional Responsibilities (selected)
1983-1991 Director, Rotherhithe Theatre Workshop (Artistic Director and Chief Executive)
1994-1997 Director of Talks, Institute of Contemporary Arts, UK, Senior Management Team
1997-2006 Director of Graduate Studies, Theatre and Humanities, Roehampton University
2006-2009 Director of Graduate Studies, English Department, King’s College London
2006-2010 Convenor, MA Text and Performance, KCL and Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts
1997-Present Search Committees for Professorial positions at: Yale University, Harvard University, Sussex University, Queen Mary University of London, Exeter University
2010-Present Director Performance Foundation, King’s College London
2014-Present Chair of Creative Committee, English Department, King’s College London
2016-Present Panel Chair, London Arts and Humanities Partnership, KCL, UCL, SAS
Commissions of Trust
1991- Present External examiner and assessor at: De Montfort University, Portsmouth University, Exeter University, Bristol University, Goldsmiths University, Queen Mary University of London, Yale, Harvard, Berkeley, Boston University, USA
1996 – Present Founding Consultant Editor, Performance Research
1993-2000 Board member: Forced Entertainment Theatre Cooperative, Sheffield
2000 – Present Board member: Contemporary Theatre Review, Theatre Topics
2005-2010 Board member: Centre for Performance Research, Aberystwyth / Falmouth
2010 – Present Board member: Battersea Arts Centre, London
2013 – Present Board member: Live Art Development Agency, London
2014 – Present Board member: Platform, London
- Research projects regularly assessed for: Arts and Humanities Research Council, Leverhulme Trust, British Academy, Gulbenkian Foundation, Arts Council England
- Book manuscripts refereed for: Cambridge University Press, Routledge, Palgrave, Bloomsbury
- 18 PhDs externally examined at: Queen Mary, Goldsmiths, Exeter, Dartington, Roehampton University, Bristol University, Royal College of Art, Aberystwyth University, Warwick University
Books
Theatre and Everyday Life: An Ethics of Performance(1993). London: Routledge, 260pp
The Fact of Blackness: Frantz Fanon and Visual Representation(1996). Ed. Seattle: Bay Press, 187pp
Architecturally Speaking: Art, Architecture and the Everyday(2000). Ed. London: Routledge, 288pp
On Civility(2004). Ed. Abingdon: Taylor and Francis, 142pp and 17 piece practice as research DVD
Theatre, Intimacy and Engagement: The Last Human Venue(2008). Houndmills: Palgrave, 323pp
Theatre in the Expanded Field: Seven Approaches to Performance(2013). London: Bloomsbury, 256pp
Theatre and Law (2016). Houndmills: Palgrave, 100pp.
Broadcasts
Plato’s Cave: The Invention of the Spectator. BBC Radio 4, Prod. Sarah Blunt. 2012. Audience circa: 2.4m
Dreadful Trade: On Shakespeare’s Cliff. BBC Radio 4, Prod. Sarah Blunt. 2014. Audience c. 2.6m
Soul Estuary: The Mouth of the River. BBC Radio 4, Prod. Sarah Blunt. 2016. Audience c. 2.3m
Major Cultural Collaborations
2008-2010 Conceived, fund raised and initiated: Anatomy Theatre and Museum,KCL (£1.5m) in collaboration with Centre for e Research King’s College London, and Higher Education Innovation Fund, UK. Project board member. Delivered and opened to budget, 2010.
2009-2012 Conceived, fund raised and initiated: Inigo Rooms, East WingSomerset House, KCL (£4.5m) in collaboration with King’s Business, Higher Education Funding Council, UK. Project board member. Delivered to budget and opened by HM Queen, Feb. 2012.
2016-present Co-Director (with Prof. Max Saunders), World Service: A Legacy Project for Bush Housecurrently commissioning and collaborating with 40 individuals and agencies from across KCL and beyond for the newly acquired Bush House complex on Strand, London.
Ten years track record: Summary
In 2006 I was appointed Professor of Theatre and Chair at Kings College London, the first to hold this position in the University’s 180-year history. I took immediate responsibility as Chair of Graduate Studies in the English Department and assumed the direction of a 50 strong, international MA programme collaboration with the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, a role I maintained until 2011 with a full undergraduate teaching load of 5 or 6 modules annually and a single semester research leave during that time. Prior to coming to King’s I had followed a dynamic, publicly engaged career pathway combining academic positions with international curatorial and theatre direction roles, running a London community theatre for eight years, directing talks at the Institute of Contemporary Arts, London, for four years, working on ethnographic field work in Barcelona for three years and directing the Council of Europe Workshop on Theatre and Communities for two years. On arrival at King’s, to continue this public/academic interface, I created the Performance Foundation delivering the conversion of F.W Troupe’s historic Anatomy Theatre and Museumspaces on the Strand (2010), in collaboration with the Centre for e Research, providing state of the art facilities for performance research at King’s for the first time, in the process securing £1.5m from the Higher Education Innovation Fund UK. Having established Theatre and Performance Studies at King’s at undergraduate, MA and PhD level, with the rapid appointment of three full time members of staff forming a robust disciplinary team within English, I secured three major grants that were to further enhance the international profile of performance at King’s College. The first was the last of the prestigious Arts and Humanities Research Council (UK) five-year Creative Fellowships with the theatre artist Gregg Whelan who joined the King’s performance faculty in 2011. The second was a three-year EPSRC ‘Bridging the Gaps’ Award with the King’s College London Materials Library. The third was a Leverhulme Major Award that I secured as PI for work between 2010 and 2013 that led to the creation of the first publicly accessible cultural facilities for King’s built in the newly refurbished East Wing of Somerset House, a suite of twelve performance and exhibition spaces, the Inigo Rooms, and the creation of King’s Cultural Partners therein, that was subsequently to become the King’s Cultural Institute. HM Queen opened the Inigo Roomsin February 2012, a project for which I had provided the conception, framework and delivery, as well as leading on the securing of the required cultural resources, £4.5m from the Higher Education Funding Council UK. Given these infrastructural interests that have run throughout my career, and have accelerated exponentially with the opportunities offered by King’s, I have not sought further management responsibilities despite being asked to consider such senior bureaucratic roles on a regular basis.
It is satisfying that throughout this multi-pathway career, and despite having been registered with serious impairment of sight and hearing under the 2010 Disabilities Act (UK), my research productivity and publishing record has remained continuously buoyant with monographs and edited collections produced every three or four years. This productivity has if anything increased over the last ten years at King’s with three sole-author monographs (and a further monograph due for publication in 2018), twenty peer-reviewed chapters and articles, and three BBC 4 radio programmes with a combined audience of 6m, produced during this time, an unusual number of outputs in a field in which practice-based researches and infrastructural responsibilities are intense. My scholarship has been translated into French, Italian, Norwegian, Latvian and German. I am regularly invited to give keynote addresses at international universities and conferences including in the last ten years at Yale, Cambridge University, Oxford University, School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Prague Academy, Frankfurt University, Athens Biennale, Amsterdam Theatre Festival, and the Homo Novus festival Riga in which my book, Theatre, Intimacy and Engagement: The Last Human Venue(2008) was taken as the overarching curatorial umbrella for the international artists’ programme (2013). Each year during this time I have enthusiastically taken responsibility for sole convening and teaching of 5-6 undergraduate courses with numbers ranging in each seminar from 20-40, a continuous cohort of PhD students acting as first and second supervisor, and 2 MA courses (during the period 2006-2011 taking personal supervisory responsibility for all 50 students annually). I act as an advisory board member to Battersea Arts Centre, Platform, and assess publishing projects, promotion cases and grant applications for publishers, universities in the UK and internationally, and the AHRC, the British Academy and Leverhulme Trust. My two most recent completing PhD students (2015), Guy and Quigley, secured tenured lectureship positions at Royal Holloway and York Universities and Guy has already published a substantial monograph.
Research Monographs 2008-2018
Theatre, Intimacy and Engagement: The Last Human Venue.(Houndmills: Palgrave, 2008) 323pp
Theatre in the Expanded Field: Seven Approaches to Performance.(London: Bloomsbury, 2013) 256pp
Theatre and Law.(Houndmills: Palgrave, 2016) 100pp
The Dark Theatre: Performance in the Capitalocene (Forthcoming: Bloomsbury, 2018) 320pp
Radio Broadcasts 2012-2016
Plato’s Cave: The Invention of the Spectator. BBC Radio 4, Prod. Sarah Blunt. 2012. Audience circa: 2.4m
Dreadful Trade: On Shakespeare’s Cliff. BBC Radio 4, Prod. Sarah Blunt. 2014. Audience c. 2.6m
Soul Estuary: The Mouth of the River. BBC Radio 4, Prod. Sarah Blunt. 2016. Audience c. 2.3m
10 representative articles from the period 2007-2017 (selected from 20):
- ‘Child and Co: In The Company of Your Own Making’. 2017. ‘On Children’. Performance Research, (eds) Anderson, Gary and Senior, Adele. Vol. 23, No. 1. Abingdon: Taylor and Francis. pp. 1-16.
- ‘The English Garden Effect: Phyto Performance, Abandoned Practices and Endangered Uses.’ 2016. The Green Thread.(ed.) Vieira, Gagliano, M, Ryan, J. New York, Lexington, pp. 255-280.
- ‘In the Ruins of the University: Institution in Personal and Public History’. 2015. ‘On Institutions’. (eds.) Argyropoulou, G, and Vourloumis, H. Performance Research, Vol. 20, No. 4, pp. 14-25.
- ‘The Emaciated Spectator and the Witness of the Powerless’. 2013. Performance, Politics and Activism. Lichtenfels, P and Rouse, J. (eds). Houndmills: Palgrave, pp. 87-104.
- ‘Uber Auffuhrung uberhaupt und uber die Auffuhrung des Menschen: Bemerkungen uber das Theater vor der Identitatstheorie’. 2012. Die Auffuhrung: Diskurs-Macht-Analyse.Fische-Lichte, E. (ed). Munich: Willhelm Fink, pp. 49-68.
- ‘Immunity to the Scene: Performance Before Depth’. 2011. Expanding Scenography: On the Authoring of Space. Brejzek, T. (ed.) Prague: Prague Quadrennial, pp.16-25.
- ‘Romeo Castellucci: The Director on this Earth’. 2010. Contemporary European Theatre Directors. Delgado, M. and Rebellato, D. (eds.) Routledge, pp. 249-262.
- ‘The Obtuse Angle: On Gentle Gradients Between Literature and Performance’. 2009. In: Performance Research. 14, 1, pp. 123-137.
- ‘The Ceramic Age: Things Hidden Since the Foundation of Performance Studies’. 2008. In: Performance Research. 13, 2, pp. 47-58.
- ‘TO Public’2016. Curated Scandinavian Festival critical exchange with Cecila Sjoholm, Chantal Mouffe and Jacques Ranciere (to be published as a collection in 2017): http://www.motoffentlighet.no/#!Hvordan-kan-kunst-være-eller-bli-politisk-av-Alan-Read-og-Cecilia-Sjöholm/c1hgd/56f6d9bc0cf28bf0e6ed667f
Invited International Conference Presentations (indicative examples from 26 sessions):
Prague Academy, 2017, Tate Liverpool, 2016, Cambridge University, 2016, Frankfurt University, 2015, Yale University 2015, Queen Mary University of London, 2015, Surrey University, 2015, Birkbeck College London, 2014, Stanford Performance Studies international, 2014, Leeds PSi, 2013, Utrecht PSi, 2011, Zagreb PSi, 2010, Wroclaw, 2006.
Invited Public Lectures (indicative examples from 24 events):
Athens Biennale, 2016, Tate Modern London, 2016, Liverpool Biennial, 2016 and 2015, Amsterdam Theatre Festival, 2014, Abandoned Practices Prague, 2014, Centre for Research in Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities, Cambridge University, 2014, Homo Novus Festival Riga, Latvia, 2013, Ljubljana, Maska, 2012, Oxford University Faculty of Anthropology, 2010, School of the Art Institute of Chicago, 2006.
Contribution to early careers of excellent researchers:
Supervised PhDs of now established figures in the field: Ilana Salama Ortar (Artist), Simon Bayly, (Reader), Ernst Fischer (Artist), Zoe Laughlin (Institute of Making), John Matthews (Lecturer), Georgina Guy (Lecturer), Ioli Andreadi (Theatre Director), Karen Quigley (Lecturer) and assumed in 2016 responsibility for three new PhDs, 2 with prestigious AHRC/London Arts and Humanities Partnership awards in collaboration with UCL and SAS.
Examples of Leadership over the last 10 years:
2008 Performance Foundation created and directed at King’s College London
2010 Conceived, fundraised and delivered build of Anatomy Theatre and Museum, KCL
2012 Conceived, fundraised and delivered build of Inigo Rooms, East Wing Somerset House, Strand
2015 Conceived, developed and initiated annual Berkeley Global Edge Theatre CapitalProgramme
2015 Panel Chair, London Arts and Humanities Partnership, KCL, UCL, SAS
2016 Conceived, developed and initiatedWorld Service, a Legacy Project for Bush House, London