I’m Me is an AHRC funded project lead by Professor Matthew Reason that will work with learning disabled and autistic artists as peer and creative researchers to explore questions of … 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
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
Routledge Companion to Audiences and the Performing Arts
Projects Archive
A portfolio of research and practice in the areas of audiences, narrative, theatre and dance.
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 Theatre Pages is a (maga)zine produced by staff and students on the theatre and drama programme at York St John University. Launched in 2011 and produced three times a year … Continue reading 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 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 The Doodle Book was developed through the course of 2019/20 in collaboration with Mind the Gap, artist Brian Hartley and a group of learning-disabled artists. The objective was to create … 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 ‘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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 Matthew Reason with photographs by Chris Nash Photography has long been utilised as a medium that allows us to capture, see and reflect upon the world around us. This is … 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
Watching Dance: Kinesthetic Empathy
Theatre Pages
Suitcase Stories
Interactive Mind Map
Doodle Book (part 1)
The Young Audiences – Japanese Translation & New Forward
Where in your body?
Applied Practice: Evidence and Impact in Theatre, Music and Art
Resources for Schools and Teachers
Drawing and Audience Research
5 Soldiers Audience Research
International Centre for Arts and Narrative
Video Interview, Deakin University (Aus)
Routledge Companion to Audiences and the Performing Arts
Creative Doodle Book
Archive, Empathy, Memory
Experiencing Liveness in Contemporary Performance
Creative Writing and Audience Research
Photography & the Representation of Kinesthetic Empathy
Theatres of Learning Disability
Matthew Reason 