Performance@King’s is a cross-college performance and theatre research and teaching grouping. This was a corollary of several discrete conversations in different areas of the College, recognising that no such grouping existed, and of murmurs of hope, that articulating performance and theatre through cross-college overlaps of thought, collaboration, and a sense of community might lead to new thinking, to working groups, module sharing, events, performances, happenings, or to more conversations.

While its home sits within the Department of English under the Creative Practice, Performance and Theatrical Culture research strand, Performance@King's is a cross-College initiative to bring together expertise from across Faculties. The pedagogical practice and research initiatives led or convened by scholars working at King’s, has made the Department of English a suitable home for theatre and performance.

Research

The group is as much grounded in the creative collaborations and activities of its members as in their scholarly work. This research expands the boundaries of performance studies from within the expanded landscape of performance at King’s. The collective scholarly work of the affiliated members of Performance@ includes topics perhaps familiar to the field of performance studies: labour, liveness, virtuality, presence, film, dance, pageantry, folk culture, the everyday, gender, sexuality, museum studies, historiography, and archival imaginaries. Yet, dispersed across the many departments engaging in theatre and performance studies at King’s, these themes have also been carried out in the context of radically methodologically diverse enquiries into print cultures, Latin American Studies, the French Revolution, translation, Shakespeare, medical performance and corporeality, war, migration politics, domesticity, material culture, handiwork, and far more. Researchers work across creative practice and academic endeavours, reaching far into the cultural and public worlds outside King’s.

The Performance Research Group also operates out of the Department, taking a approach to the study of performance. The group’s members are involved in research in theatre, dance, and live art, as well as in performances operating within a wide range of disciplines, social contexts, and systems.

The network's doctoral and postgraduate research community regularly hold reading groups and seminars.

Education

English is also home to an MA in Theatre, Performance & Critical Culture and an MA in Shakespeare Studies, the latter of which is taught jointly between King’s and Shakespeare’s Globe through the Shakespeare Centre London.