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The University of Kent, Canterbury, Kent, CT2 7NZ, T +44 (0)1227 764000
Lecturer
Drama and theatre Studies
Helen Brooks teaches and publishes on theatre history from the eighteenth-century to the early twentieth-century.
I joined the Drama Department at Kent in September 2009. Before this I spent two years as a Lecturer in Drama at the University of Nottingham, and four years as an Associate Lecturer in Drama at the University of Exeter where I also gained both my Undergraduate BA (Hons) First in Drama and my PhD.
The majority of my research is in theatre and performance history, and spans the eighteenth, nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. My interests are diverse but tend to focus around the topics of women's involvement in theatre, cross-dressing, acting theory, histories of gender and sex, the economics of the stage, amateur and private theatricals, and the theatre as a site of social engagement. I have been the recipient of AHRC and British Academy funding, and in 2013 won the Southeastern Association of Eighteenth Century Studies, Annibel Jenkins prize for my essay 'One entire nation of actors and actresses': Reconsidering the Relationship of Public and Private Theatricals'.
As a teacher I am constantly exploring new ways of engaging students with theatre histories, and have developed innovative modules in which students combine primary historical research, practical work, and seminar discussion. As such my research is integral to my teaching and the synergies between these two areas are a central feature of my work. My achievements as a teacher have been recognised in recent years, when in Spring 2011 I was awarded both the Humanities Faculty Teaching Prize for my work on integrating new technology with archival research in teaching theatre history, and the Best Teacher award in the first Kent Union Teaching Award Scheme.
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Essays
Reviews
As a theatre historian much of my teaching focuses on the history and historiography of theatre and performance. I have particular interests in areas such as women’s involvement in theatre and performance, performances in fairs and in private contexts, drag and cross-dressing, race in historic performance, and ‘illegitimate’ performance and I explore areas like this in my modules. In teaching theatre history I place strong emphasis on both the use of new technology to bring history ‘to life’ and on practical engagement with archival sources so that students learn about the practice of history at the same point as they learn about the history itself. If you’d like to see some of the things we explore in the modules you will find a lot of information in the Moodle sites.
Modules I teach include:
A significant part of my research focuses on long eighteenth-century theatre and performance and I am particularly interested in women’s involvement in theatre of the period. I am currently writing a monograph called Actresses and the Eighteenth-Century Stage: Playing Women which is due to be published with Palgrave in 2014 and which has been supported by a grant from the British Academy and from the Society for Theatre Research. The monograph examines the relationship between the eighteenth-century actress and changing notions of gender. Within this I consider areas including female-to-male cross-dressing, the economics of the stage, the body in performance, motherhood, and notions of the ‘natural’ in performance. In addition I am Associate Editor for Drama for the forthcoming Wiley Encyclopedia of British Literature 1660-1789. I have previously published on areas including the relationship between actresses’ work and their choices in marriage (ECL, 2011); female rhetorical performance (STP 2011); and women as theatre managers (Engel, 2009 and STP, 2008).
Another key strand of my research is focussed on theatre and the Great War, and I am interested both in theatrical practices during the war years, as well as representations of the war in theatre since 1918. I am currently developing work in this area in collaboration with colleagues in History.
Another area of my research is in applied drama and performance, which is where my practice was focused prior to my PhD. In 2009 I was co-investigator with Professor Nicki Shaughnessy on the Innovation, Creativity and Enterprise Project which explored the application of applied drama tools in business contexts.
back to topI am interested in supervising students working in any of my areas of interest, which include