Performance, Theatre Training, and Research

Abstract

John Russell Brown, who was a founder member and first Head of the University of Birmingham's Department of Drama and Theatre Arts, and subsequently an Associate Director of the National Theatre in London, here responds to the article by NTQ co-editor Clive Barker in our May 1995 issue, ‘What Training – for What Theatre’, taking as further text an editorial by Richard Schechner in the Summer 1995 issue of TDR. Currently, as a Professor of Theatre at the University of Michigan, John Russell Brown is teaching a production-based undergraduate acting course, and is also an advisor for Theatre Studies at the University of Singapore and a consultant to the School of Drama at Middlesex University. He draws upon this wide range of past and present experience to explore the issues raised by Barker and Schechner – and to suggest some possible ways forward.