I co-founded two theatre companies: The Actor’s Touring Company in 1978 with John Retallack and The Medieval Players in 1981 with Carl Heap. From 1993 I was Artistic Director of The International Workshop Festival, and after being a visiting lecturer at Goldsmiths and Royal Holloway, University of London I became a Senior Lecturer at RHUL in 2007 until retiring as a Reader in 2024. 

My teaching and research centre on the work of the stage performer – how they train, make work through improvisation and devising, and how they perform. Drawing on a wide range of studies – particularly various branches of neuroscience - I demonstrate that the skills and competencies of the performer are a very particular development of the human body’s manifold potentiality. My books and articles are contributions to a growing body of research into a form of knowing that is evidenced through performance (ways of doing) rather than verbal description or theoretical analysis. The problem is summed up in the phrase: ‘We know more than we can tell.’ 

My Writings

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My two books on the Actor’s Body directly address questions of intelligent movement in the context of training for theatre and performance. Training the Actor’s Body – A Guide (2018), addresses how it is that an actor’s body is formed through training and reflects upon the nature and operation of practical exercises. Rethinking the Actor’s Body – Dialogues with Neuroscience (2020) examines how our muscular and skeletal structure is served by our nervous systems and how this can explain the formation of the actor’s body. 

I edited the Laban Sourcebook (2011) with the aim of giving English-speaking readers a representative selection of the writings of this ground-breaking pioneer of movement studies. Rudolf Laban offers a unique approach to reading and understanding how and why it is that we move. The Art of Movement (2024) consists of unpublished writings by Rudolf Laban that I discovered in the Special Collections of the Brotherton Library, University of Leeds where I have been working since 2007. Having produced the Online Catalogue of this material in 2015 in 2025 I aim to produce a comprehensive Guide. 

My first single-authored book was Bakhtin and Theatre – Dialogues with Stanislavsky, Meyerhold and Grotowski (2016). A philosopher rather than a man of theatre, Mikhail Bakhtin offered a unique perspective on the creative work of the actor. Drawing on an eccentric and encyclopaedic knowledge of theatre he uses the work of the actor to explain the dynamic relation between author and hero in the novel. Unwittingly, he identified a number of central questions of theatre, particularly the actor’s relation to their character and to the audience. In addressing these questions I offer a critical examination of the creative practice of three key figures in 20th Century theatre. 

I am currently working on a book for Routledge provisionally entitled, An Eye for Movement: key moments in a history of movement studies 1875 – 2010 and scheduled for publication in late 2027.

My claim is that by addressing the creative practice of the performer one can contribute to a broader understanding of what it is to be human. Mine is a contribution to an increasing body of writing and research which takes seriously embodied knowledge, something that has hitherto been undervalued, particularly in academia. I hope to offer a new approach to performance studies, a new way of doing theory, a new relationship between practice and theory.