Dr Bryan Brown

I am a specialist in performer training and collaboration with a primary focus on laboratory studies. I did my undergraduate degree at the New School for Social Research where I was taught by a heady and healthy mix of former Yale MFA graduates and existing faculty from NYU's Experimental Theatre Wing. Accepted into the presitgious MFA Dramaturgy program of Columbia Univeristy, I decided instead to cut my teeth in the experimental theatre world and the independent film of New York City. Working in every area from production assistant to dramaturg to actor to producer, I relished in the joy of ensemble-based film and theatre-making. While in NYC, I trained extensively with Stephen Wangh, Raina von Waldenburg and others in an American approach to the Polish Laboratory Theatre's psychophysical training which incorporated somatic and Overlie-based Viewpoints work. I then continued my training at RADA and in Poland with post-Grotowski practitioners from Singapore, Slovakia, Ukraine, Russia, and Poland.

I joined the staff at Exeter from Los Angeles where, together with Olya Petrakova, I spent nearly a decade developing a performance incubation house, Schkapf. While nurturing mutliple performance related companies and festivals, Schkapf's central mission was to develop a deeper understanding of the essential role of artistic and cultural venues in neighborhood cohesion and their necessity in civic planning. We continue this work in Exeter with the creation of the cultural laboratory, Maketank, which supports and mentors interdisciplinary artist and community-initiatives with the aim of developing cultural citizenship.

Ms. Petrakova and I also created ARTEL (American Russian Theatre Ensemble Laboratory), a company committed to the creation of our own training and devising processes, rooted in and inspired by the laboratory theatre tradition. The twin imperial nations (America and Russia) have deeply informed our work on the role of cultural practices in nation-building and citizenship. The 2022 full-scale invastion of Ukraine by Russia has furthered our own critical engagement with the implications of imperialism and I am currently working with Ukrainian theatre artists, culture makers and academics to resist the Putinist agenda and reconsider and reassess the place of Russian expansionist ideology in academia and the arts.

Alongside this work, other research I am developing revolves around plant performance, ecological imaginaries and what Timothy Morton calls 'the ecological thought'.

I received my PhD from the University of Leeds. My thesis, and its reiteration in the monograph A History of the Theatre Laboratory has been called “the first honest effort in clearly defining the phenomenon of the laboratory, creating the history of the theatre laboratory, and relating it to other arts, and to science”.

I have been a collaborator with the Laboratory Theatre Network organised by the Centre for Performance Research, and funded by the Leverhulme Trust. I have also worked as dramaturge and organisational consultant for the international physical theatre laboratory Studio Matejka and on the production of O Réjane with UNESCO-recognized Awake Projects.

I serve on the Editorial Board for Theatre, Dance and Performance Training and am co-editor of the journal's blog.

Research supervision:

I am always keen to supervise new research projects in my areas of specialty (see research interests), and particularly invite proposals for practice research that expands understandings of training for performance and/or ensemble/collective creation processes, develops ideas of the cultural laboratory through applications of placemaking, emergent thinking and specific communities, contributes to conceptions of ecological imaginaries or the ecological thought, or engages with magic and/or esotericism, imagination and performance. I would also welcome historical projects on pedagogies for performance training or projects focused on training places, such as Dartington, the Eugene O'Neill Theater Center, Hellarau, Institute of Applied Theatre Studies Geissen, Lecoq, Black Mountain College, etc. Interested applicants might wish to send me a 500-1000 word outline and CV as a starting point for discussion.