Dr Michael Pearce

I am a theatre scholar and educator whose research explores how theatre produces embodied experience for performers and audiences. My work focuses in particular on performer training and embodied pedagogy, alongside research on race and representation in contemporary theatre.

I trained at the Jacques Lecoq School of Theatre in Paris and began my professional career with the Zimbabwean theatre company, Over The Edge. 

Since then, I have worked on theatre projects across the UK, Europe, the United States and southern Africa with support from national and international creative partners. These experiences continue to inform my research on how movement-based and sensory approaches to theatre training shape perception, creativity and collaborative practice.

My earlier research examines the theatrical representation of race and racism on the British stage, particularly in dramas by Black playwrights of African and Caribbean heritage. I am the author of Black British Drama: A Transnational Story, which was shortlisted for the Society for Theatre Research Book Prize. This research also informed Raising the Bar, an award-winning ten-part BBC Radio 4 documentary presented by Sir Lenny Henry that explored the history of Black performance on the British stage and screen.

Alongside this work, I have collaborated with the National Theatre for over a decade on the Black Plays Archive, an online catalogue documenting plays by Black dramatists of African and Caribbean heritage produced in the UK. My current research focuses on embodied pedagogy and performer training as sites of knowledge production. I work closely with theatre practitioners and companies to explore how training methodologies, including but not limited to Lecoq-based approaches, are adapted across cultural and environmental contexts. This work examines how movement, environment and sensory experience can shape theatrical knowledge, pedagogy and performance-making. My practice-based collaborations have included work with theatre practitioners in the UK, southern Africa and beyond. From 2010 to 2015 I co-founded the theatre company Fourth World Productions, producing international productions addressing themes of migration, reconciliation and racial justice.

Research supervision:

I welcome enquiries from prospective PhD students interested in projects related to:

• performer training and embodied pedagogy
• practice-as-research and theatre training methodologies
• race and representation in theatre
• Black British drama and performance
• ecological and site-responsive theatre practices