Dr Lucy Tyler is an Associate Professor of Performance Practices at the University of Reading, where she has taught for over 10 years. A performance maker, writer, dramaturg, producer and movement practitioner, her work connects Higher Education with the theatre industry through a sustained engagement with the development of new performance. Informed by Marxist thinking and a commitment to radical cultural practice, her work asks how the structures, labour and economies of theatre production can be understood, challenged and reorganised.
Lucy began her career as a playwright and director, working with theatres and companies including Paines Plough, Hampstead Theatre, Soho Theatre, Origin Theater in New York and The Georgetown Theater Company in Washington D.C. She subsequently worked as a script reader, Literary Associate, and Associate Writer, and has continued to work professionally as a playwright, dramaturg, producer and curator. These experiences of the theatre industry underpin her sustained interest in the institutional and material conditions through which new work is developed.
She is the founder and Principal Investigator of Work in Progress, a decade-long partnership between the University of Reading and South Street Arts Centre, funded by Arts Council England and University awards. Conceived as an intervention into conventional models of theatre R&D, Work in Progress builds alternative infrastructure for artists to experiment, develop and make new performance. Through commissioning, seed-funding, facilitation and dramaturgy, the project creates sustained relationships between established artists, the university and students. Lucy has worked through the project with artists and companies including Action Hero, Jamal Harewood, Greg Wohead, Andy Smith, Milk Presents, RedCape Theatre Company and Sitelines Associates. Her wider work with South Street has included artist development, programming and creating conditions for artists to develop work outside conventional production structures.
Lucy is the author of English Play Development under Neoliberalism, 2000–2022 (Cambridge University Press, 2025), a major study of the institutionalisation of English play development. Drawing on research into the statistically significant producers of new writing supported by Arts Council England, including the Royal Court, National Theatre, Royal Shakespeare Company, Birmingham Rep and West Yorkshire Playhouse, alongside practitioner interviews, the book examines play development as a form of cultural production shaped by institutional, economic and political conditions. It asks how development structures organise artistic labour and subjectivity, and how neoliberal modes of production have transformed the conditions under which new work is made. The book’s analysis directly informs Lucy’s practical commitment to building alternative infrastructures rather than simply observing existing ones.
Her current artistic practice extends this political and infrastructural enquiry into the body. Bringing together performance, writing, movement, somatics and ecosomatics, she explores materiality, ecology, mothering and alternative futures, alongside questions of embodiment, labour, relationality and the environments in which bodies live and work. She has undertaken training in Somatic Movement Education, Body-Mind Centering®, Embody Move, Body Weather and ecosomatic practice, alongside yoga (Hatha and Ashtanga) and breathwork.
At Reading, Lucy teaches across undergraduate and postgraduate programmes. Her pedagogy is similarly concerned with creating alternative conditions for making: connecting students with professional artists, research and industry practice, and treating creative development as a site of experimentation rather than simply preparation for existing professional structures. She previously led the MA in Critical and Creative Writing at the University of Gloucestershire and taught playwriting at undergraduate and postgraduate level. She is a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy and has received awards for outstanding contributions to teaching and learning and student support.
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