Research in Drama

World-leading research

Drama made its first submission to a Research Assessment Exercise in the 2008 round and, as a small but flourishing unit, received ratings that put all its research at the level of national or international importance and some that was world-leading in terms of originality, significance and rigour.

Current projects

Current projects of this emerging research unit include:

• A ten-day workshop on devising with Coatian dramaturg Marin Blazevic
• Pantomime project with the Hackney Empire
• A book on devising
• A book on te history of black and Asian theatre in Britain

Research in Drama at Kingston University has practice at its heart

Research into practice is carried out through conventional academic and scholarly investigation, textual analysis, creative writing and devising, and through performance. The research is organised in two linked areas:

• Theatre history and historiography
  
  Research in this area ranges from Renaissance and Victorian theatre (e.g. mask, carnival, commedia dell'arte and melodrama) to analysis of contemporary theatre practice of both individuals (e.g. actors, playwrights, director and choreographers) and institutions (e.g. companies such as Complicite, the Royal Shakespeare Company, Forced Entertainment and Random). It includes: combining criticism, theory, archaeology and practice, working with the professional theatre and local communities, and undertaking cross-subject study.
• Practice as research (research into performance practice and through performance practice itself)
  
  Research in this area includes: scrutiny of different theoretical frameworks and languages (verbal and non-verbal) that are used to describe, analyse and implement visual, sensual and kinetic aspects of performance; the nature of creating meanings in the act of performance; the documentation and examination of the department's own theatrical practice as well as the pedagogy of assessing practice; and internationally-renowned professional practice that is connected to and contains research elements.

Theatre making

In regard to theatre making, there is research on the relationships between visual, spatial and aural elements of performance, and on the connections between historical carnival, popular theatre and contemporary practice. Contributions to scholarship in the discipline cover both areas.

Cross-discipline

Research has also been undertaken with staff from other disciplines, for example, with Jane Manning and others in music on Schoenberg's Pierrot Lunaire, and with Hampton Court Royal Palace on projects related to performance space and historical study.