Dr Amanda Stuart-Fisher

BA, PGCE, MA, PhD
Job title
Reader in Contemporary Theatre and Performance, Course Leader Writing for Performance

Profile

I am a researcher and educator whose research focuses on verbatim and testimonial practices, socially engaged theatre and the relationship between care ethics and performance.

I grew up and went to school in Stevenage. After graduating from a degree in Performing Arts at Middlesex University I went on to work as a teacher of drama and dance at Fortismere School in Haringey. Later I moved on to work in the education department at the Royal Court Theatre. It was at the Royal Court that I began to fully explore the potency of new writing as a critical element of the theatre making process.

After then working as an applied theatre freelancer for a short time, I joined The Royal Central School of Speech and Drama in 1999.  Since then I have received funding from the Performing Arts Learning and Teaching Innovation Network and the Higher Education Academy and have developed teaching and learning projects to examine the relationship between the academy, our industry partners and the applied theatre and social care sectors.  Following a collaboration with Mosac and Little Fish Theatre company, I wrote From the Mouths of Mothers (2013) a verbatim play which explores child sexual abuse from the non-abusing mother’s perspective.

I am currently the course leader for the BA (Hons) Writing for Performance. I contribute to the MA Applied Theatre and the PhD Programme and supervise a number of PhD candidates in subjects ranging from refugee theatre making, disability and playwriting and the dramaturgy of trauma. My research has been published in a number of international journals and edited books. 2020 saw the publication of my monograph Performing the Testimonial: Rethinking verbatim dramaturgies and my co-edited collection (with Professor  James Thompson) Performing Care:  New perspectives on socially engaged performance, both by Manchester University Press.

I also work closely with Little Fish Theatre. I led the evaluation process of the company’s Embrace project, a multi-arts initiative aimed at young men at risk of having unhealthy sexual relationships and I wrote the final evaluation report for this project, which was published in 2021 (https://littlefishtheatre.co.uk/community-project/embrace/).

Areas of Expertise

  • Playwriting
  • Applied and Socially Engaged Performance
  • Ethics and performance
  • Solo Performance
  • Verbatim and documentary theatre
  • Testimonial and verbatim theatre
  • Performance and Care
  • Ethics and performance
  • Practice as Research

PhD Supervision

To date, I have externally examined 3 PhDs in areas that include verbatim theatre, oral history and community performance.  I am currently supervising or interested in supervising doctoral projects in the areas of: disability, socially engaged performance, refugee theatre, dramaturgy and trauma, verbatim and testimonial theatre.

Key Publications

2020. Performing the Testimonial: Rethinking Verbatim Dramaturgies, Manchester. (Manchester University Press).

2020. Performing Care: New perspectives on socially engaged theatre. co-edited with James Thompson (Manchester: University of Manchester Press). 

2016. ‘Imagining Theatre in Auschwitz: Performance, Solidarity and Survival in the Works of Charlotte Delbo’ in Performing (for) Survival: Theatre, Crisis, Extremity. eds Duggan, P. and Peschel, L. (Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave), pp. 78-99.

2015. ‘A Choreography of Words: Reflections on Justitia’ in  Justitia: Multidisciplinary Readings of the Work of the Jasmin Vardimon Company in Johnson, P., Dobkowska, S. and Vardimon, J. (Bristol: Intellect), pp. 133-143.

2015. (with Leonard, K., Gupta, A. & Low, K.) ‘From the Mouths of Mothers: Can Drama Facilitate Reflective Learning for Social Workers?’, Social Work Education, 22.10,pp.430-443, Doi: https://doi.org/10.1080/02615479.2015.1113247

2013. From the Mouths of Mothers in Plays for Today by Women, edited by C. Robson and R. Gillieron (London: Aurora Press), pp. 55 – 112.

2011. ‘That’s who I’d be, if I could sing’: reflections on a verbatim project with mothers of sexually abused children‘ Studies in Theatre and Performance, 31.2, pp. 193 – 208, DOI: 10.1386/stap.31.2.193_1

2011. ‘Trauma, Authenticity and the Limits of Verbatim’, Performance Research, 16.1, 112-122, DOI: 10.1080/13528165.2011.561683

External Practice

2017 – 2019 Leader Evaluator, ‘Embrace’ for Little Fish Theatre Company 

2016 – 2010 Performing Care and Social Resilience, a series of workshops for social works developed in partnership with Cleve Jackson, Social Work Department Royal Holloway, University London.

2013 Writer, From The Mouths of Mothers ( Aurora Metro Books)

2013 Co-Creator with Tony Fisher Zdenka’s Journey – an experimental documentary that follows one women’s journey through the nightmare of the Holocaust.

Register of Interest

Little Fish Theatre Company (CIC) - Trustee