dr lucy tyler (she/her) is Associate Professor of Performance at the University of Reading.
She is a UK-based theatre-maker, writer and researcher in theatre and performance, and facilitator of work in progress (WIP). WIP is an ACE-funded project running since 2016 in conjunction with South Street Arts Centre. Alongside John Luther, AD of South Street, lucy seed-funds, facilitates and writes about the emergence of new works for performance by artists of national and international claim. Her written work orbits the generative phase of artistic research & development (r&d), with lucy facilitating, supporting, and/or observing how artists in theatre begin a new work. Her research asks what it is to care for artists and new performances as they develop in this sometimes baffling historical moment, and what the economics, politics and practices of UK-regional performance development are. She is curious about what it is to give audiences and communities early points of access into artistic process, what democratic co-creation genuinely looks like, what opening up the usually hidden spaces of performance development does for people – as well as projects, and what it is to push against the boundaries of theatre’s spaces: who gets to be in them, when and why. Her written work explores artistic r&d broadly: its practices, its assumed institutional and cultural logics, its ideologies, its funding and impact, its ways of caring/uncaring, and its operation within and challenging of wider capitalist/neoliberal structures. Her theatre analysis is based on her background in radical left-wing, anti-racist/anti-capitalist politics, orthodox Marxist analysis, and class-conscious trade union learnings.
lucy works across different roles in theatre: producing/funding, literary/script development, playwriting, production dramaturgy, facilitation/ outside eye support, rehearsal directing, somatic movement practices, body-based self-enquiry/embodiment for artists and actors and movers – including yoga, reflective and evaluative supportive crit. for all forms of new work. These different roles are always underpinned by a commitment to radical accountability, attuned relationality and the politics of solidarity and friendship.
She is author of English Play Development under Neoliberalism: 2000-2022 (CUP, 2025), based on her PhD on the subject from The Royal Central School of Speech and Drama (2020). lucy has taught Creative Practices (Creative Writing, Performance-Making/Drama) in Higher Education for over 15 years, and has worked in a number of English new work focused theatres and script development services for theatre/film and tv, and as a professional dramaturg in many contexts. At the University of Reading lucy teaches across BA, MA and PHD levels, teaching practical theatre making, theoretical modules in theatre and performance culture and history, and scriptwriting across Theatre, Film and TV programmes.
A passionate advocate of movement for life and creative practices, lucy runs Elements Movement Lab for creative self-enquiry in yoga and somatics for her community. She teaches asana, pranayama and somatics/embodiment in different UK-based studio settings in Reading, Oxford and London, and is a sincere student of Ashtanga Yoga. She is mother to Hart, and has dedicated a strand of r&d scholarship to its intersection with questions of m/othering.
lucy tyler 