On October 8th 2019 I chaired and participated in the post-show discussion of David Edgar's play, 'Trying It On'. The show had premiered at Warwick Arts Centre in June 2018, and it was back there before a short national tour. It is a Warwick Arts Centre presentation in collaboration with the China Plate Theatre Company, and through my connections with China Plate I had spoken to David about his objectives when he set out initially to research the play. It takes the form of an introspective conversation between him now and his twenty-year-old self in 1968, asking whether that younger version would recognise the path he has subsequently taken as living true to his principles.

David's play has been very favourably reviewed in the Guardian. (However, there are some spoilers in this write-up.)

For the second year running I organised a whole day's event to allow the China Plate Theatre Company's artists-in-residence at Warwick Arts Centre to engage with the academic research of my colleagues in the Department of Politics and International Studies. The artists were at Warwick for intensive meetings for the whole of the week beginning 14.03.16 in the hope that discussions with academics might lead to the spark for their next major project.

In March 2016 I hosted a week-long visit to my Department from Abbi Greenland and Helen Goalen, the founder members of the Rashdash Theatre Company (http://www.rashdash.co.uk/). They were at Warwick to attend meetings that I had put together with a number of my colleagues as a fact-finding mission for one of their future shows. It will have the wonderful title of 'Capitalism: The Musical'.

On May 6th 2015 I participated as one of the panel members for the after-show discussion held by the Dumbshow Theatre Group following a performance of their new play, ‘Electric Dreams’, at the Camden People's Theatre, London. This was a play that took shape during a two-week residency at the University of Warwick in January 2015 and for which I was able to offer advice on the political content of the script. I appeared on the after-show discussion panel alongside Michael Bryher (Director/Actor/Writer, Dumbshow), Nicola Cutcher (Actor/Writer, Dumbshow) and Ryan Shorthouse (Chief Executive, Bright Blue Think Tank).

The transcript of that discussion can be found here: http://electricdreamsdumbshow.tumblr.com/post/125174653356/post-show-talk-at-camden-peoples-theatre-on-the.