Anna Birch
Lecturer, Research
Academic Development
Dr Anna Birch was delighted to joined the Academy in 2010 and welcomes applications from MPhil
and PhD students wishing to undertake research into current performance practice including
performance as research projects.
Anna is Artistic Director and founder member of
Fragments & Monuments performance and film company, based in Hackney, East London, UK.
As an academic, her research interests focus on gender and performance, artist led research and
collaborative research. A dialogue between theory and practice can be found through her research
outputs expressed in publications, websites and ongoing performance practice. Her areas of
expertise include, directing, 20
th century theatre history, site-specific theatre, performance as research.
Anna's latest essay,
Performing Research, cite, sight, site, is forthcoming in ‘On Making’ published by
Visual Identities in Art and Design, University of Johannesburg. Further academic
publishing includes editing a new collection:
P
erforming Site-specific Theatre: Politics, Place, Practice to include her new essay
Repetition and performativity: multi layered fresco as living monument forthcoming and a
special edition of Contemporary Theatre Research both edited by Anna Birch and Joanne
Tompkins.
As co-convenor of the Performance as Research Working Group for International Federation of
Theatre Research (IFTR/FIRT), Anna is committed to developing performance research from
an international perspective.
In May 2011, she has been invited to direct an early twentieth play, Pageant of Great Women
(by Cicely Hamilton, originally directed by Edith Craig) for an international conference (convened
by Prof. Katherine Cockin, Hull University, UK) film and DVD. She is developing a site-specific
project with partners in Johannesbourg, South Africa and continues her long term collaboration with
South Korean/London artist Taey Iohe.
Fragments & Monuments’ most recent DVD and art book The Wollstonecraft Live
Experience! is now available.
Fragments & Monuments’ exhibition, specially curated for Hackney Museum in East
London, UK, opened in February 2010 and received Time Out critics choice.
Chapters in edited collections:
Birch, A.
Sighting/Citing History through Performance: The Wollstonecraft Live Experience! in Modes
of Spectating, edited by Alison Oddey and Christine White, 2006. Bristol: Intellect:
231-242;
Birch, A.
Staging and Citing Gendered Meanings: A practice-based study of representational strategies in
live and mediated performance in Birgit Haas (Hg.): Der postfeministische Diskurs. Wurzburg:
Königshausen & Neumann: 79-100
Birch, A.
Wollstonecraft Live! in Allegue, L, Jones, S, Kershaw, B and Piccini, A (eds). 2009.
Practice-as-Research: In Performance and Screen. London: Palgrave Macmillan:193;
Reviews for journals such as Total Theatre.
Socialise with RSAMD