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.
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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 Trenthem Books 2010. “This inspirational book, that cares passionately about the child’s gaze, should be welcomed and cherished.” (Tony Graham Artistic Director, Unicorn Theatre) “…a colourful and fascinating account of … 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 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 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 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 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
Researching with plasticine
Routledge Companion to Audiences and the Performing Arts
The Young Audiences – Japanese Translation & New Forward
Photography & the Representation of Kinesthetic Empathy
Video Interview, Deakin University (Aus)
Theatres of Learning Disability
5 Soldiers Audience Research
Suitcase Stories
Watching Dance: Kinesthetic Empathy
Archive, Empathy, Memory
Young Audiences and Live Theatre
Interactive Mind Map
“I’m Me”: Peer and Creative Research with Learning Disabled and Autistic Artists
The Young Audience: Exploring and Enhancing Children’s Experiences of Theatre
Theatre Pages
Drawing and Audience Research
Documentation, Disappearance and the Representation of Live Performance
Resources for Schools and Teachers
Creative Writing and Audience Research
Doodle Book (part 1)
Matthew Reason 