Emeritus Professor Baz Kershaw
Biography
Baz Kershaw was formerly Chair of Drama at the University of Bristol, and Director of the five-year research project PARIP (Practice as Research in Performance). He trained and worked as a design engineer before reading English and Philosophy at Manchester University and holds higher degrees from the Universities of Hawaii and Exeter. He has extensive experience as a director and writer in experimental, radical and community-based theatre, including productions at the legendary Drury Lane Arts Lab in London. More recently he has mounted site-specific productions on the Bristol heritage ship, the SS Great Britain. He has published many articles in international journals, and is the author of The Politics of Performance (Routledge 1992) and The Radical in Performance (Routledge 1999), and editor of The Cambridge History of British Theatre, Vol 3 – Since 1895 (2004). His current research includes investigation of the natures of performance ecologies.
Research Interests
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Performance/theatre ecologies
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Performance/theatre historiography, esp. twentieth-century British theatre
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Performance theory
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Performance addiction
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Performance as research
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Virtual/digital performances live and documented
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Performance/theatre research methods
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Pedagogies of performance/theatre research method
Selected Publications:
Engineers of the Imagination: The Welfare State Handbook
Methuen 1982; rev. ed. 1990
Since its foundation by John Fox in 1968, Welfare State International has developed a unique form of celebratory theatre that reaches popular audiences through remarkable combinations of archetypal and contemporary imagery. This is first and foremost a practical book rather than an academic treatise. It is a book to get thumb-marks and glue on.
‘Undoubtedly the greatest value of Engineers of the Imagination…is its enthusiastic and intelligent espousal of a theatrical vision … of art that is more vitally integrated with the life of the community.’ Theatre Journal, USA 1985.
The politics of Performance: Radical Theatre as Cultural Intervention
Routledge 1992
A detailed analysis of oppositional theatre as radical cultural practice through its various efforts to subvert the status quo. It demonstrates how oppositional theatre may have had a significant impact on social and political history.
“Thank goodness Baz Kershaw has written this book!’ New Theatre Quarterly, May 1993.
The Radical in Performance: Between Brecht and Baudrillard
Routledge 1999
The Radical in Performance investigates the crisis in contemporary theatre, and celebrates the subversive in performance. It is the first full-length study to explore the link between a western theatre which, says Kershaw, is largely outdated and the blossoming of postmodern performance, much of which has a genuinely radical edge. In staying focused on the period between Brecht and Baudrillard, modernity and postmodernism, Baz Kershaw identifies crucial resources for the revitalisation of the radical across a wide spectrum of cultural practices.
‘…the success of Kershaw’s book rests on its skilful manipulation of the larger general divide between modernism and postmodernism into a specific, long overdue reconsideration of the concept of radical performance.’ Theatre Survey, USA 2000.
The Cambridge History of British Theatre Volume 3
Cambridge University Press 2004
The collection presents an exciting evolution in the scholarly study of modern British theatre history, skilfully demonstrating how performance variously became a critical litmus test of the great aesthetic, cultural, social, political and economic upheavals in the age of extremes.
‘… the most valuable resource on British theater for some time to come. Essential.’ Choice USA 2005
‘In short, the volumes are excellent … they offer provocative readings and revisionings of standard historical narratives … collectively demonstrate a lucid grasp of the history of theatre as a history of performance…’ New Theatre Quarterly 2007.
Nominated for the Theatre Book Prize 2005.
