Theatre & Performance Studies News

TOP STORY: Professor Nicolas Whybrow is Retiring
Professor Nicolas Whybrow is retiring early at the end of October 2020 owing to recent ill health. He is a long-time member of Theatre and Performance Studies at Warwick, joining in February 2004. A former Head of School (2014-2017), Nicolas taught across a range of modules, most notably Performance and the Contemporary City and Live Art and Performance. In 2010 he won the Warwick Award for Teaching Excellence.
Nicolas played a leading role in the University’s research culture, being appointed as thematic lead for two of its GRPs, Sustainable Cities and Connecting Cultures. In 2017-2020 he was the PI on a 3-year AHRC-funded practice-as-research project entitled Sensing the City, which culminated in a multi-medial exhibition at the Herbert Art Gallery, Coventry and an edited book, Urban Sensographies (2021). Meanwhile, his book Contemporary Art Biennials in Europe: the Work of Art in the Complex City appeared in 2020.
Further details about Nicolas are available on his staff profile on the Theatre and Performance Studies website. Happily, he retains his connection to the University as Emeritus Professor.
David Coates has an article published: ‘Amateur Theatre Networks in the Archive’ Performance Research’s special issue ‘On Amateurs’
It is available through the library or https://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/67DYCCYI6AXQ9DQWCUEY/full?target=10.1080/13528165.2020.1736751
Theatres' David Coates is shortlisted for Warwick Awards for Personal Tutoring Excellence!
Well done to David, this initiative recognises the importance of academic support to our students and seeks to celebrate the work of the University's dedicated network of Senior and Personal Tutors. We will keep our fingers crossed for you!
David Coates receives funding from the Humanities Research Fund for Shelley family project
David Coates has been awarded £2000 impact/ pump-priming money from the Humanities Research Fund for his project exploring the tangible and mythical legacies of the Shelley family in Bournemouth and Boscombe. He has a public-facing event at the Shelley Theatre in Boscombe on 29 February 2020 which includes presentations from Dr Stephen Hebron (curator of the Shelley collection at the Bodleian) and Lord Abinger (the current Shelley title and estate holder). There’ll also be hands-on transcription and research activities, with the day culminating with a staged reading of a play by Percy Florence Shelley, son of Mary and Percy Bysshe Shelley, performed by members of Bournemouth Little Theatre. It’ll be the first time that the play has been heard in over 150 years – and what a treat that it’ll take place in Percy Florence Shelley’s former private theatre, for which the play was originally intended!
Dr David Coates receives funding to run a Heritage Open Day at the Shelley Theatre in Boscombe, Dorset.
Congratulations to Dr David Coates, who has received £1000 from the Public Engagement Fund to run a Heritage Open Day at the Shelley Theatre in Boscombe, Dorset. This venue was originally built as a private theatre in the home of Sir Percy Florence Shelley, the son of Percy Bysshe Shelley, the poet, and the Mary Shelley, the novelist. The event is being run to pump-prime a larger project titled ‘The Legacies and Cultural Heritage of the Shelley family in Dorset’, which he hopes will be supported by the Heritage Lottery Fund. The Open day will include three expert-led interactive workshops on the Shelley family’s legacies, a rehearsed reading of two manuscript playlets written by Sir Percy Florence Shelley, and an introduction to the proposed two-year project.