Professor Stephen Greer
- Professor of Theatre and Performance (Theatre, Film & Television Studies)
telephone:
01413306354
email:
Stephen.Greer@glasgow.ac.uk
Theatre Film & Television, Studies
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9722-3643Research interests
My research is centred on the intersection of contemporary theatre and performance, cultural politics and queer theory.
I am the author of Contemporary British Queer Performance (Palgrave Macmillan 2012) and Queer exceptions: solo performance in neoliberal times (Manchester University Press 2018) as well as a range of essays and articles about British and European theatre. I most often write about live performance in relation to questions concerning sexuality and gender, but have broad interests in the cultural politics of visual art, TV, film and video-games.
My current research focuses on the histories and futures of Live Art and experimental performance in Scotland.
I am a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy, a member of the editorial board for the journal RiDE: The Journal of Applied Theatre and Performance and the advisory board for Contemporary Theatre Review. I am a former convenor of the Performance, Identity and Community working group of the Theatre and Performance Research Association (TaPRA), and a member of the Queer Futures working group of IFTR/FIRT.
I also work with arts and cultural organisations across Scotland and the UK. I am currently the co-chair of the Board for leading independent theatre group Company of Wolves, and a trustee of the international festival and live art sector support agency Take Me Somewhere.
Grants
In 2021/2I, I held an AHRC Leadership Fellowship for the Live Art in Scotland project.
Though Scotland has been home to some of Live Art’s most (in)famous events, existing histories of theatre and performance emphasize a literary dramatic tradition of plays and playwrights, and rarely address Live Art as a significant field of practice. This project intends to redress that omission while exploring the structures of curation, programming and funding that might enable experimental performance practices to thrive.
The broader ambition of the project is also informed by an understanding of how ‘resilience’ has become a significant concept in UK arts funding circles, often with very little regard for its consequence for individual arts practitioners, especially those who are already excluded from or marginalised within the cultural sector. This idea is especially consequential for a sector already characterized by risk and experimentation, and dominated by solo and/or freelance practitioners.
Supervision
I welcome proposals from prospective PhD or MPhil students who are interested in studying at the University of Glasgow. I am particularly able to support projects engaging with:
- contemporary British / European theatre and performance
- Live Art and solo performance
- queer studies / sexuality, gender and feminism
- new media and digital performance / theatre, performance and gaming
- social and applied theatre
- the cultural politics of neoliberalism
For initial conversations and to discuss possible funding routes, please contact me at stephen.greer@glasgow.ac.uk.
- Capaldi, Eleanor
To what extent can the use of digitised images of artwork facilitate polyvocality of interpretation online? - Kitzman, Daniel Robert
(un)Sung: An Investigation into the Impacts of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Opera Singers’ Artistic Identities and Creativity
Teaching
I am the Research and Impact Convenor for the School of Culture and Creative Arts.
I lecture widely across our undergraduate and postgraduate programmes, and lead specialist Honours courses including Live Art: Theories, Historices and Practices, The Activist Stage and Queer Exceptions. Focusing on contemporary and c20th performance, my teaching combines traditional university formats – lectures and seminars – with practice-based workshops. This approach is grounded in the belief that theory, history and practice can inform each other, and that performance can be used to ask and answer questions in the same moment. My areas of expertise include LGBTQ performance, political theatre, documentary and verbatim practices, as well as devising and improvisation.
In my previous roles as exams officer and convenor of level 1 Theatre Studies, I won an STA Award for Best Feedback and a College of Arts Individual Teaching Excellence Award.
Research datasets
Additional information
Invited talks
- University of Barcelona. ‘Feeling unsafe – queer affect on and off the British stage’. Barcelona, Spain. November 2023.
- Royal Holloway University of London. ‘Oral and archival histories: approaches to Cross-Historiographies of Theatre and Performance Art’, April 2023.
- Central School of Speech and Drama. ‘Live art and the risk of the radical’. November 2022.
- From the ‘miraculous’ to the radical: towards a methodology for researching live art and performance art in Scotland. Revolving Documents#1: Narrations of the Beginnings of Performance Art. Basel, Switzerland. June 2022.
- SCUDD (Standing Committee of University Drama Departments) Annual Conference. Futures Roundtable. Online. June 2021.
- Deakin Creative Arts Research Symposium. ‘The making of an arts-based career’. Deakin University. Melbourne, Australia. November 2019.
- ‘Queer optimism and theatre at the end of the world’. London Theatre Seminar, Institute of English Studies, University of London. December 2017.
External examiner roles
My expertise in live art, queer and contemporary British performance is recognised in a wide range of invitations to act as external PhD examiner for written and practice-based PhDs at institutions including the Royal College of Art, University of Nottingham, University of Manchester, Guildlhall School of Music & Drama, Goldsmiths University of London, Royal Holloway University of London, the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama, University of Hull, Queen Mary University of London, Deakin University (Melbourne) and the University of Barcelona.
I am currently external examiner for the MA Theatre Practice (Training and Performance, Applied Theatre) degree programme at University of Exeter and for the BA Drama, Applied Theatre and Education, BA Writing for Performance and Experimental Arts / Performance Arts programmes at the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama.
