Stephen Greer

Biography

Stephen Greer is currently working as a Lecturer in the Department of Culture & Creative Arts

Research Interest

I received my PhD from the University of Edinburgh, following an undergraduate degree in English Literature and an MSc in Writing and Cultural Politics. Between 2008 and 2013, I taught in the department of Theatre, Film and Television at Aberystwyth University as Lecturer in Theatre and Performance where my teaching ranged across areas including applied and social theatre, improvisation, sexuality and gender in performance and performance writing / writing for the stage. My research and teaching are focused on the intersection of contemporary performance practices, cultural politics and queer theory. I also write about identity, interaction and play in new media performance, including videogames. I am the author of Contemporary British Queer Performance (Palgrave Macmillan 2012), which offers a materialist genealogy of recent queer performance and argues for the significance of collaborative practices and non-traditional venues. Since 1999, I’ve regularly performed in and produced comedies, improvisation and dramas at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. Most frequently, I’ve worked as live producer and fixer for sketch comedy and theatre group, The Penny Dreadfuls: performers David Reed, Thom Tuck and Humphrey Ker, designer Neil E. Hobbs and executive producer Idil Sukan. Together, we have made a series of sell-out shows staged at the Greenwich Theatre (London), the Pleasance and Underbelly venues at the Edinburgh Fringe, the Glasgow Comedy Festival and elsewhere across the UK. Two sell-out mock Victorian sketch shows – Aeneas Faversham (2006) and Aeneas Faversham Returns (2007) – were followed by the full-length comic play, Aeneas Faversham Forever (2008). Bored of frock-coats, we then turned to the present to make two more funny, stupid shows: The Never Man (2009) and the eponymous The Penny Dreadfuls (2010). At Glasgow, I am the Convenor for Levels 1 and 3 of Theatre Studies, an Advisor of Studies for the College of Art and a member of the Gender and Sexuality Research Forum.