Research group: Performance

About our research

In the Performance Research Group (PRG), we nourish world-leading, industry-focused and interdisciplinary work in the field of performance. We build practices, structures and projects that bring performance artists and researchers into productive dialogue with each other.

Manchester Met’s history of innovation and impact is reflected in our practice-based artistic research. The work of our members includes:

Performance
Theatre studies
Acting
Contemporary drama
Laboratory theatre
Performer training
Dramaturgy
Cross-disciplinary dialogue, collaboration and praxis

We are internationally recognised theatre makers, performers, directors, scholars and curators. Our relationship with the theatre and performance community is broad and longstanding. Organisations and artists in Manchester and beyond turn to our specialist expertise for training, support and contextual research, as well as creative leadership.

Doctoral studies in performance

We are also keen to support and grow our community of doctoral student researchers. PhD students are a key part of our research culture. Recent PhD examples include actors’ mental health, the British Muslim community’s engagement with theatre, actor training, the performativity of photography and more. We are interested in hearing from potential PhD candidates with proposals in the areas we cover.

View our research degree subjects

Research-informed teaching

Our research informs our teaching on the BA Acting, BA Drama and Contemporary Performance and MA Performance programmes. The MA/MFA Performance includes specialisms in Contemporary Performance and Laboratory Theatre.

Our research team

Selected projects

Bunker Talks

Talks with artists and researchers about their work.
Go to project
Granny Jackson’s Dead

Explore how tradition, research and cutting-edge technology came together as part of an immersive performance.
Find out more
British Ritual Innovation under COVID-19 (BRIC-19)

Understanding how Britain’s religious communities adapted during — and responded to — the COVID-19 pandemic.
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Future Flares Festival

A curated programme of politically engaged performances.
Find out more

Key publications
Key publications
- Boll. J. & Edelman, J. (2023) ‘The Affective Underpinnings of British Toryism: Nostalgia, Futurity, and the Performativity of the Commons’, Coils of the Serpent.
- Deeney, JF and Gale, MB eds (2015) Fifty Modern and Contemporary Dramatists. London: Routledge.
- Edelman, J (2020) Mike Daisey’s False Witness in Theatre Scandals: Social Dynamics of Turbulent Theatrical Events eds Cremora, VA et al, Leiden: Brill.
- Edelman, J, Hansen, LE, and van den Hoogen, Q (2016) The Problem of Theatrical Autonomy Amsterdam University Press.
- Egan, K (2024) ‘A Score of a Score of a Score: Examining Concerto Through Ravel’s Composition.’ In Pinchbeck, M & Smith, O (eds.) The Ravel Trilogy: Following the Score. Bristol: Intellect.
- Egan, K & Pinchbeck, M (2022) Staging Scores: Devising Contemporary Performances from Classical Music, Open Library of Humanities 8(1).
- Gale, MB and Deeney, JF eds (2016) The Routledge Drama Anthology: From Modernism to Contemporary Performance. Second edition, London: Routledge.
- Pikes, M and Campbell, P (2019) Owning our Voices: Vocal Discovery in the Wolfsohn-Hart Tradition. London: Routledge.
- Pinchbeck, M (2020) Acts of Dramaturgy: The Shakespeare Trilogy Bristol: Intellect.
- Pinchbeck, M. (2023), The Ravel Trilogy: Following the Score. Bristol: Intellect.
- Pinchbeck, M & Baynton, R (2022) Co-creation In Reason, M, Conner, L, Johanson, K and Walmsley, B (eds) Routledge Companion to Audiences and the Performing Arts Routledge: London.
- Rimmer-Piekarczyk, R. (2024) “Constructing codes of behaviour: the ‘doxic agreement’ as a force for agency in contemporary dance technique training.” Theatre, Dance and Performance Training. 15(2), pp. 235 – 250.
- Rimmer-Piekarczyk, R. (2023) “Facilitating Individual Agency in British Contemporary Dance Technique Training: A Praxical Pedagogical Approach.” In Colin, N., Seago, C. and Stamp, K. Ethical Agility in Dance: Rethinking Technique in British Contemporary Dance. London: Routledge, pp. 81 – 96.
- Rimmer-Piekarczyk, R. (2023) “Destabilizing the habitus in contemporary dance technique training: the ‘reflexive-dialogical’ as a mode of ‘practising.’” Journal of Dance and Somatic Practices. 15(1), pp. 119 – 131.
- Turner, J & Campbell, P (2021) A Poetics of Third Theatre: Performer Training in Dramaturgy, Cultural Action, London: Routledge.
- Westerside, A & Pinchbeck, M (eds) (2018) Staging Loss: Performance as Commemoration. London: Palgrave MacMillan.
Videos

Videos

Dr Patrick Campbell

Patrick Campbell's academic research focuses on the ways in which contemporary theatre artists in Europe and Latin America are challenging monolithic, phallogocentric framings of subjectivity, representability and heritage through performance and training.

Dr Michael Pinchbeck

Michael Pinchbeck's practice-research explores the dramaturgy of devised and one-to-one performance. He is currently creating immersive adaptations from the books of John Berger and Jean Mohr. Another Way of Telling is the final piece of The Berger & Mohr Trilogy. Supported by Manchester School of Art Research Centre.

Dr Rachel Rimmer-Piekarczyk

Rachel Rimmer-Piekarczyk’s practice-research focuses on dance and performance training more broadly. Her work explores the relationship between critical reflection, embodiment and post-structuralist perspectives on agency, investigating how the presence of reflection in body-based training environments disrupts dominant understandings of training in the west.