Prof. Sally Mackey, BA, PGCE, MA, PhD, FRSA

Sally Mackey is Professor in Applied Theatre and Performance having started teaching at Central in 1992 as a drama education specialist. (She is co-author of Drama and Theatre Studies, Stanley Thornes, 2000 and editor/author of Practical Theatre, Stanley Thornes, 1997.) She introduced ‘applied theatre’ to Central and still teaches predominantly in that field. An external examiner up to PhD level at several universities, Sally is a member of the AHRC's college of peer reviewers and was on the AHRC Commissioning Panel for the Landscape and Environment theme, 2005-2006, and Researching Environmental Change, 2010. She is on the Editorial Board of RiDE: the Journal of Applied Theatre and Performance. Having been awarded an AHRC grant of £130,000, Sally is now leading a research project on how we ‘perform’ place and reconsider notions of locatedness. She is co-investigator on another AHRC funded research project, ‘Performing Abergavenny’.

Sally is a governor at the BRIT School, chair of alumni company Full House and recently co-convened TaPRA’s (Theatre and Performance Research Association) Applied and Social Working group for four years.

As Pro Dean (Programmes), Sally’s ‘day job’ lies in assisting in managing staff and the programmes of Central, from admissions to completion.

Research Areas

•  Applied theatre and performance
• Performance and performative activities within community contexts
• Performance of ‘place’ and ‘site’

External Memberships

• Member of AHRC peer review college
• Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts
• Fellow of the Higher Education Academy

PhD Supervision

Supervision offered in the areas of place, site, applied theatre, dis/location.

Funding Awards

• AHRC research grant 2013-2014 (co-investigator) ‘Performing Abergavenny: creating a connected community beyond divisions of class, locality and history’.
• AHRC research grant, 2011-2014 ‘Challenging concepts of ‘liquid’ place through performance practices in community contexts’.
• Leverhulme Trust ‘Applying theatre: training through outreach’, 2007 and continuing.
• AHRC Small Grant, 2005, for the creation of a research DVD on the performance of place.

Publications

2013 ‘Cuckoos in the Nest: performing place, artists and excess’, Applied Theatre Research, Vol 1, No. 1, 43-61 (with a contribution by Sarah Cole)

2012  ‘Of Lofts, Evidence and Mobile Times: the school play as a site of memory’ in RiDE: the Journal of Applied Theatre and Performance Vol 17, No. 1

2012 (ed. with Dee Heddon) RiDE. Environmentalism Vol 17, No. 2

2012 (with Dee Heddon) ‘Environmentalism, performance and applications: uncertainties and emancipations’, RiDE. the Journal of Applied Theatre and Performance: Environmentalism, Vol 17, No 2, pp. 163-192

2011 (with Amanda Stuart Fisher) ‘Theatre Applications: locations, event, futurity’ RiDE: the Journal of Applied Theatre and Performance, Vol. 16, No. 3, pp. 357-364

2011 Co-editor of ‘Theatre Applications’, RiDE: the Journal of Applied Theatre and Performance, Vol. 16, No.3

2009 ‘Performing Place: an interrogation through praxis’ in Practice-as-Research: in Performance and Screen DVD, ed. L. Allegue et al Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan

2007 ‘Performance, place and allotments: Feast or Famine?’ Contemporary Theatre Review 17.2

2007 ‘Transient Roots: performance, place and exterritorials’, Performance Research 12.2: On the Road

2007 ‘Performing Place: the Caer Llan Trilogy’ (DVD Rom), Research in Drama Education 12.2

2007 ‘A point and a pilot on practice: recording performing place research’, Research in Drama Education 12.2

2007 editor with Nicolas Whybrow, Research in Drama Education 12.1: On Site and Place

2007 with Nicolas Whybrow, ‘Taking Place: some reflections on site, performance and community’, Research in Drama Education 12.1: On Site and Place

2006 ‘As I walked out one midsummer morning: remembering PARIP 05’, Contemporary Theatre Review 16.2

2006 ‘Community: performance related fray’, Performance Research: Keywords Lexicon, 11.3

Conference papers

2012    ‘Two Aberystwyths’, short paper in panel: ‘Dis-connected communities? Relational performances and cultural inarticulations’, PSi conference, University of Leeds.

2011    ‘Covert ecologies: sheltering in Scotland’ paper invited as part of an ‘environmentalism’ panel (with Steve Bottoms and Helen Nicholson), TaPRA, September

2011    ‘Collaborative methodologies: a resource for research’ short paper, TaPRA, September.

2009 ‘Cuckoos in the Nest: Artists as Transient Place-makers’, Landscape and Environment, University of Aberystwyth; IDIERI, University of Sydney

2009 ‘What’s the Evidence for Evidence?’, TaPRA, University of Plymouth

2007 ‘Performance, Communion and Young People’, How to Act, Central School of Speech & Drama

2006 ‘Transient Placing: authenticities and creolisation’, TAPRA, Central School of Speech & Drama

2005 ‘Outreach in Applied Theatre Contexts: an honourable cause’, What’s in it for us? Working with Arts Organisations, PALATINE, Oxford.

2005 ‘Performing Place’, Practice As Research In Performance, University of Leeds

2004 ‘FEASTing on London: Performance, Learning and Mud’, International Drama Education Association, Ottawa and Interventionist Theatre, University of Leeds.

2004 keynote address ‘ Shakespeare and Contingency’, Teaching Shakespeare in the contemporary classroom and Teaching Shakespeare through Performance, Shakespeare’s Globe