Tom is a PhD research student within the department of Theatre, Film and Television Studies at Aberystwyth University. His practice as research project is titled 'Performing Location: The Launch Year of National Theatre Wales'. 

Tom is a performer, musician and film-maker and works collaboratively with fellow artist Sam Christie on a variety of projects. More information about this work can be found at http://www.paynechristie.com

In 2009 John McGrath, artistic director of newly formed National Theatre Wales, proposed that NTW's opening year of work would deal explicitly with the notion of 'Location' and 'Located Performance'. In this presentation I will trace the genealogy of these terms from the beginnings of postmodernism through to the present day. I will then further explicate the terms by situating my practice as research project 'The Standing Man' within this expanded field alongside the NTW06 The Persians, NTW's 6th production. The standing man explores location as a relational and participatory geography.

I am a postgraduate Doctoral research student at Aberystwyth University, within the Department of Theatre, Film and Television Studies, researching theatre and performance within the field of audience and reception studies. I am working with NTW to investigate three of their first-year shows. 

Please see my website at http://www.ntw-research.org.uk.

Although over the past decade the field of performance has seen a growing interest in research projects that talk about the audience, there is still a noticeable deficit in academic work which focuses specifically on talking to audiences. There is a real lack of knowledge about what audiences get out of going to the theatre. This paper will explain how the use of audience research techniques developed in the field of cultural studies could gain useful information about who actually attends which kinds of performance; for what reasons; what kinds of experiences they get from attending; and what they take away with them afterwards.

In this paper I will explore some of the issues raised by my research into the new National Theatre Wales, which is bringing audience research perspectives to the study of theatre. This is raising some interesting questions about the perceived role of the audience both to NTW and the practitioners working under its remit; who they each believe they are 'addressing' through the work and how they aim to do so; and how audiences themselves feel they have been addressed.

I’ve worked as a theatre director in New York, London, Manchester, and now Wales. From 1999-2008 I was Artistic Director of Contact Theatre, Manchester where we had a lot of success developing new artists and vibrant young audiences. As a director, I worked with a wide range of artists in Manchester, including poet Lemn Sissay (Storm, Something Dark and Why I Don’t Hate WhitePeople) and hip hop theatre artist Benji Reid (b like water). Some of my favourite directing projects there included a multi-media collaboration with writer Kaite O'Reilly and visual artist Paul Clay (Perfect) and the theatre installation Close Up with Contact Young Actors Company. Earlier on, I trained and worked in New York for several years, including a stint as Associate Director of leading experimental company Mabou Mines. In 2004 I published a book about art in the surveillance age, "Loving Big Brother: Performance, Privacy and Surveillance Space" (Routledge 2004). I was the Co-Founder and Chair of PANDA, the Performing Arts Network and Development Agency, and in 2005 I was lucky enough to be awarded the National Endowment for Science Technology and the Arts (NESTA) Cultural Leadership Award which allowed me to spend time with theatre and arts companies in Europe and South America.

You can keep in touch with John at National Theatre Wales' Community Pages