DrEmma Bennett

I teach and research performance in its expanded sense, with particular focus on devised theatre, live art, dance, and stand-up comedy. I'm also concerned with selected examples of mass media performance, especially those taking place via 'live' television and 'amateur' online videos. My current book project concerns direct audience address, considering interactions between contemporary theatre, entertainment media, public address, and advertising, and precarious, service-sector labour. 

My publications to date focus on performances that foreground the act, and art, of speaking. I understand speech in contemporary performance as a mode that often obscures its historicity through an illusion of spontaneity, and effects of immediacy. I'm most interested in critical practices that undo this illusion, attending to performance's material histories, conditions of production, and concealed labour. 

I have also worked as a performance maker, both solo and in collaboration. I've published about my practice in Performance Research journal, and you can watch selected performances online. I'm currently co-convenor of the Documenting Performance Working Group at TaPRA.