Dr Melissa Trimingham is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Drama. She studied English at St Anne’s College, Oxford and worked at the BBC and the new Lyric Theatre Hammersmith. She helped to found Horse and Bamboo Theatre Company in Lancashire in the early 1980s. After freelance directing  work and teaching she undertook a PhD at the University of Leeds where she was one of the first practitioners to base her doctorate study on practice, obtaining her PhD in 2001.

Dr Trimingham took up a post as Lecturer in Drama at the University of Kent in 2004. Her publications include a seminal essay on the methodology of practice as research and articles on the theatre of the Bauhaus. Her monograph The Theatre of the Bauhaus: the Modern and Postmodern Stage of Oskar Schlemmer is published by Routledge, 2011.

Dr Trimingham is co-director with Dr Nicola Shaughnessy of the University  of  Kent’s Research Centre for Cognition, Kinesthetics and Performance (CKP). She is co-investigator on the major Arts and Humanities Research Council funded project Imagining Autism (running 2011- 2013) investigating intermedial drama and performance interventions with autistic children, using light, sound, puppetry, masks and digital media. She is consultant to the Barbican Art Gallery on their Bauhaus exhibition in summer 2012 ‘Art as Life’, delivering workshops and  a guest lecture.

Dr Trimingham frequently collaborates with Torsten Blume, Director of the Bauhaus Stage Workshop at Dessau, and this resulted in a joint project with Kent Architecture in September 2011 on urban regeneration, Walking in Motion. Future plans include developing this work in collaboration with the Turner Contemporary Gallery in Margate.

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Dr Trimingham teaches both theoretical and practical classes. Her lecture and seminar series on the history of performance art for example (now from Wagner to the Virtual) is a second year history and  theory based module which traces the development of  avant garde performance through the  twentieth century from the perspective of the  visual  arts, and this material is reconfigured in a practice based module in the  third year (Performance: Twentieth and  Twenty-first Century). In many ways this epitomises Dr Trimingham’s approach to historical studies of the avant-garde, actively demonstrating the links between past and present, and showing how these ideas can be translated into making contemporary work. She published a book on the stage of the Bauhaus of the 1920s entitled The Theatre of the Bauhaus: the Modern and Postmodern Stage of Oskar Schlemmer, in which she demonstrated the absolute relevance of an experimental stage that existed 80 years ago to contemporary performance practice.
She also teaches visual or ‘scenographically driven’ theatre, where the visual and sonic elements of the stage come to the fore. This includes puppetry, which she has pioneered in the Kent Drama curriculum. She has convened Theatre Workshop (now Theatre Skills) in Year 1 which benefits from this creative approach to the stage crafts of scenic arts, sound and  light. The picture shows first year students with a puppet made on this module under the supervision of Sam Westbury in the drama workshop. This work is developed through her module Making Performance in Year 2 where students have the chance to produce highly visual and original pieces of theatre, including puppetry of all kinds (shadow, ultra violet and hand held figures). Dr Trimingham has a specialist research interest in puppetry, and is currently investigating puppetry as a tool for developing communication  with autistic children.

Courses and modules taught/convened

• The History of Performance Art, 1900-1970 (now From Wagner to the Virtual)
• Theatre Skills (stage practice)
• Making Performance (puppetry)
• Performance: Twentieth and Twenty-first Century
• Applied Theatre (MDrama)
• Contemporary Performance Practice (MDrama)
• European Theatre (MA)
• Practice as Research (MA PaR)

PhD Supervision

MA Practice as Research supervision

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Dr Trimingham’s current research centres on embodiment, phenomenology, the plastic and sonic properties of scenographic space, and puppetry. She investigates the connections between the ‘materiality’ of performance and the autistic perception of the world.

Dr Trimingham is co-director with Dr Nicola Shaughnessy of the University  of  Kent’s Research Centre for Cognition, Kinesthetics and Performance (CKP). She is co-investigator on the AHRC funded project Imagining Autism (2011-2013) investigating intermedial drama and performance interventions with autistic children, using light, sound, puppetry, masks and digital media. The project is  run in conjunction with the Tizard Unit  at Kent University and the Psychology Department, applying quantitative and qualitative  measures to the work. She is responsible for all production aspects of the project as well as delivering the research outcomes.

Dr Trimingham is consultant to the the Barbican Art Gallery on their exhibition in summer 2012 ‘Art as Life’ on the Bauhaus, including workshops and  a guest lecture. Dr Trimingham collaborates with Torsten Blume, Director of the Bauhaus  Stage Workshop at Dessau, and this resulted in a joint project with Kent Architecture in September 2011 Walking in Motion. Live images of passers by and performers were projected on the facade of the Westgate Towers in Canterbury as part of a larger  project investigating urban movement in connection with urban regeneration.

Publications include a seminal essay on the methodology of practice as research and articles on the theatre of the Bauhaus. Her monograph The Theatre of the Bauhaus: the Modern and Postmodern Stage of Oskar Schlemmer is published by Routledge, 2011.

Current Research

Applied Theatre and Performance
Puppetry and autism
Cognition and performance
Contemporary Performance
Puppets and Object Theatre
Bauhaus stage and early Modernism
Scenography and architecture
Methodology in practical research

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Dr Trimingham is  currently supervising a doctorate  student who is establishing synergies  between the  training of  actors and  dyslexic learning. She is external  examiner for PhD students in Central School of Speech and Drama and Royal Holloway. She has  supervised and examined postgraduate  students studying Drama Practice as Research MA, and MA by thesis, as  well as  taught MAs.

Dr Trimingham is interested in hearing from students wanting to study at postgraduate level in areas such as

• Modernism
• Puppetry: twentieth century and contemporary
• Contemporary theatre, mise en scène, visually led stages
• the twentieth century avant garde
• the Bauhaus and its stage
• the interface of philosophy and performance, history of phenomenology/embodiment
• the synergy between visual art and performance
• performance art past and  present
• special needs, autism and performance
• theatre interventions

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