Edited by Matthew Reason, Lynne Conner, Katya Johanson and Ben Walmsley. Forthcoming 2021. Without an audience there is arguably no performance. Yet for a long time the serious and systematic … Continue reading
Welcome
Matthew Reason is Professor of Theatre and Director of the Institute for Social Justice at York St John University.
This site incorporates an incomplete archive of projects.
Current Projects
Suitcase Stories is a Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) funded public engagement project that used storytelling to explore climate adaptation with young people. When we talk about climate change and … Continue reading
Suitcase Stories
Projects Archive
A portfolio of research and practice in the areas of audiences, narrative, theatre and dance.
Archive, Empathy, Memory: The Resurrection of Joyce Reason This paper uses the prism of archival, ancestral research to consider the nature of our relationship to the lives of the … Continue reading The Watching Dance project used qualitative audience research and neuroscience to explore how dance spectators respond to and identify with dance. It was a multidisciplinary project, involving collaboration across four … Continue reading Drawing is at once immediate, and yet takes time. The marks on paper – pencil, crayon, ink, pen – appear instantly, they are real and absolute, but the process as … Continue reading After watching a dance performance with friends we often leave the theatre and find ourselves asking each other, ‘What did you think?’ Or perhaps, alternatively, ‘Did you enjoy it?’ That … Continue reading Promotional slogan, mystical evocation, or marker of ontological difference? ‘Liveness’ in contemporary performance is a highly contested term. Experiencing Liveness in Contemporary Performance, edited by Matthew Reason and Anja Molle … Continue reading Talking About Theatre consists of a series of booklets designed to facilitated children and young people’s post-show conversations about theatre and dance. Operating through a series of questions or instructions, … Continue reading During a conference in Melbourne in March 2018, Anne Kershaw of Deakin University asked me to do a video interview for their PG arts management students. Questions: Tell us about … Continue reading Qualitative audience research frequently produces large amounts of unruly data. For myself the process of beginning to make sense of or find routes through the unordered mass of material that … Continue reading ‘Where in your body?’ is a single question online audience research survey, piloted for performances of 5 Soldiers by Rosie Kay Dance Company and now also disseminated to Scottish Ballet … Continue reading 5 Soldiers, by the Rosie Kay Dance Company, is a contemporary dance performance that looks at how the human body remains essential to war, even in the 21st century. In … Continue reading One of my earliest pieces of research into theatre audiences explored young people’s perceptions of liveness in performance. Theatre is frequently defined by its ‘liveness’: that is by how it … Continue reading Palgrave, 2006 The documentation of practice forms one of the principal concerns of performance studies, provding an ongoing dilemma for theorists and practitioners alike who at once celebrate the ephemerality … Continue reading As a result of the collaborative partnership with Imaginate, and developing from the research into how children watch theatre, two resources were produced designed to help school classes enhance their … Continue reading Togetherness is an underlying principle of community arts, which values being with other people as we make theatre, music and art together. The lockdowns and social distancing required by Covid-19 … Continue reading Does giving children plasticine help when interviewing them about watching dance? I have previous used visual arts workshops with groups of spectators to explore their experiences of dance and theatre. … Continue reading Edited by Matthew Reason, Lynne Conner, Katya Johanson and Ben Walmsley. Forthcoming 2021. Without an audience there is arguably no performance. Yet for a long time the serious and systematic … Continue reading Thanks to the hard work and dedication of Kaori Nakayama, my book The Young Audience has been translated and published in Japanese (2018). To mark this publication the book has … Continue reading The International Centre for Arts and Narrative (ICAN) is a collaborative project between York St John University and York Theatre Royal. The focus of ICAN is to develop research and … Continue reading Applied Practice: Evidence and Impact in Theatre, Music and Art engages with a diversity of contexts, locations and arts forms – including theatre, music and fine art – and brings … Continue reading Over the past decade the work of disabled performers in theatre and dance has received an increasingly high profile, wider audiences and presentation in established venues and festivals. At the … Continue reading
Archive, Empathy, Memory
Watching Dance: Kinesthetic Empathy
Drawing and Audience Research
Creative Writing and Audience Research
Experiencing Liveness in Contemporary Performance
Talking About Theatre
Video Interview, Deakin University (Aus)
Interactive Mind Map
Where in your body?
5 Soldiers Audience Research
Young Audiences and Live Theatre
Documentation, Disappearance and the Representation of Live Performance
Resources for Schools and Teachers
Creative Doodle Book
Researching with plasticine
Routledge Companion to Audiences and the Performing Arts
The Young Audiences – Japanese Translation & New Forward
International Centre for Arts and Narrative
Applied Practice: Evidence and Impact in Theatre, Music and Art
Theatres of Learning Disability
Matthew Reason 