Dr Joanna Bucknall BA (Hons), MA, PhD, PGCTLHE & Fellow of the HEA

• Fellow of the Higher Education Authority
• PGCLTHE
• PhD
• MA Theatre Today
• BA (Hons) 1st Class in Drama & Theatre

I am a social entrepreneur and an immersive experience and transformation architect who works across the creative cultural industries and academia. As a founder of the Immersive Experience Network (IEN) I have been instrumental in establishing Live/location-based immersive as a discreet cultural sector. Through arts and humanities data-driven approaches IEN is working to build a credible and robust creative collaborative community through events, industry research, knowledge exchange, networking, capacity and resource building.

Joanna Bucknall is a performance maker and scholar. She is a lecturer at the University of Birmingham in the department for Drama & Theatre Arts. Joanna is the producer/host of the podcast series, Talking about Immersive Theatre, (TAIT) and the artistic director of Vertical Exchange Performance Collective (VEX). Joanna is co-founder of the Immersive Experience Network (IEN). Joanna has been the Principal Investigator for AHRC and ESRC funded projects and recently published Talking about Immersive Theatre: conversations on immersions and interactivities in performance with Bloomsbury. Joanna makes, supports, and writes about work that includes its audiences in fundamental ways.

• Theatre Practice
• Writing for Performance
• Performance Text Workshop
• Performance Project

I am the convenor for Applied Theatre

Balça, Jorge (2017 completed), ‘When a Voice Is Not Enough: the existentialist opera performer as auteur’, PhD Thesis, Portsmouth, UK: University of Portsmouth. I was the second supervisor offering support on PaR methodologies and documentation.
Smith, Victoria (expected completion 2019), ‘Painting on film: An interdisciplinary and performative exploration of Stan Brakhage’s hand-painted films’. PhD Thesis, Portsmouth, UK: University of Portsmouth. I am the second supervisor offering support on embodied and phenomenological methodologies and performative documentation.
Hayes, Laura, (Expected completion 2018). ‘Relationship between devised theatre and written performance script in the UK’, MA by Research at the University of Birmingham. I am the second supervisor, offering expertise in PaR and phenomenological methodologies.

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Find out more - our PhD Drama and Theatre Studies  page has information about doctoral research at the University of Birmingham.

My current and future research interests and reputation lie in dramaturgies of audience activation, inclusion, and participation (especially immersive theatre), gamification of experience, live/location-based experience design, and practice as research methodologies (especially embodied approaches to the documentation of performance and audience experience). I have published widely in traditional but also innovative formats on immersive theatre and Practice as research methodologies. I have developed:

 

• the concept of ‘elusivity’ (2023) as a way of conceptualising the role of secrecy and exclusivity in immersive and interactive theatre practices.
• on dramaturgies of dialogicality as a practical approach to engaging audiences in ethical, care driven ways. This is part of the emerging field of care aesthetics in art, (2018).
• A hybrid, interdisciplinary, immersive methodology for capturing and monitoring shifts in audience perceptions. This research was undertaken as an Arts and Humanities Research Council/Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council research project called Corpus Quod, (2018).
• two original practice-as-research methodologies: ‘the Daisy Chain Model’, (2017), and ‘the reflective participant’, (2017).

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My current and future research interests in audience-centric performance are divided into three strands, each of which is associated with grant capture, international, cross-sector, interdisciplinary collaboration, and high-quality publications. Over the next five years, I intend to consolidate my growing reputation in the fields of immersive theatre, audience-centric dramaturgies, the gamification of performance, practice-as-research methodologies, and embodied approaches to performance documentation. I will continue to work with external partners on funding bids, to expand my networks with non-academic organisations and to work in interdisciplinary ways. 

I am the producer and host of a monthly podcast series called Talking About Immersive Theatre (TAIT), where I travel around the UK meeting immersive theatre makers, producers and performers in their natural habitats to chat with them about all things immersive.

• Talking About Immersive Theatre podcasts
• @taitpodcast

Founded by me in 2005, Vertical Exchange. (VEX) is a performance collective. Nigel Tuttle, Kirsty Mills and myself are the core members but we collaborate with a range of different artists, makers and practitioners depending on the project. We make work that is audience-centric; immediate, intimate and interactive.

• VEX Twitter @PlaywithMeART 

KeepHouse Performance are a PaR company that seek to interrogate autobiography and heritage; particularly in relation to female representation and domesticity. KeepHouse Performance is a company that explores contemporary issues through interdisciplinary approaches. We are keen to record and document our processes in innovative and interactive ways. KeepHouse Performance was founded in 2011 by me and Dr Karen Savage.

UoB Admin role: Staff student committee liaison for Theatre Arts.

I am a member of TaPRA & IFTR.