Dr Alexander Kelly, Reader

Dr Alexander Kelly

Reader

Alex is Reader in Theatre & Performance and has been with Performing Arts at Leeds Beckett since the start of its first course in 2006. He is theatre maker, performer, storyteller, game maker, writer and mentor, and tours throughout the UK and internationally. He is artistic associate of Lisbon-based international collective Má-Criação. From 1995-2023 he was Co-Artistic Director of the Sheffield-based theatre company Third Angel, with whom he created performances that connected the fields of theatre, live art, film & video, durational performance, conversation and digital media. Recent projects with Third Angel include The Desire Paths, 600 People, The Department of Distractions and The Distraction Agents.

Alex has taught at numerous Universities across the UK, and has also taught at the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation in Lisbon. He regularly mentors other artists and companies, supporting the devising and creation of their own projects, notably in the territories of documentary and reportage theatre and autobiographical performance. This has included working with gobscure, Irna Qureshi, Vandal Factory, Yolanda Mercy, Michael Pinchbeck, Holly Gallagher, Natalie Wong, Jack Dean, John Wilkinson, Lapelle’s Factory, RashDash, Daniel Bye, Ellie Harrison and Action Hero. He made three projects with Hannah Nicklin, including Equations for a Moving Body and A Conversation With My Father, and mentored Raquel Castro’s award winning Turma de '95 (based on Third Angel’s Class of ’76).

Alex has recently published writing and drawing about Third Angel's work in The Department of Distractions (Oberon, 2020), There’s A Room: Three Performance Texts by Third Angel (Oberon, 2019), The Twenty First Century Performance Reader (Teresa Brayshaw, Anna Fenemore & Noel Witts, Eds., Routledge, 2019), Michael Pinchbeck & Andrew Westerside’s Staging Loss (Palgrave MacMillan 2018), the Contemporary Theatre Review, and Performance Research journal volumes Undercover (2022), Staging The Wreckage (2019), On Value (2013) and On Foot (2012), as well as co-creating the artists' book The Dust Archive with Annie Lloyd.

Current Teaching

BA Performing Arts:

  • Lift Off
  • Making Work in Festival Contexts
  • Project Lab
  • Writing & Directing
  • Performance Texts

BA Theatre & Performance:

  • Lift Off
  • Project Lab
  • Theatre Practices

MA Performance:

  • Artist's Project Major
  • Artist Mentor

Research Interests

Alex's PhD is in autobiographical theatre, and the ethics and implications of telling other people's stories. Much of his own performance work and mentoring explores this territory, and he has supported the creation of numerous autobiographical performances by other artists.

Alex is particularly interested in the territory between theatre, games and participatory performance, and the mechanisms through which we invite audiences to take part, and contribute with creativity and agency. His story-gathering & map-drawing performance The Desire Paths was presented in Sheffield, Newcastle/Gateshead, Slough, Plymouth, Bedford and York between 2006-2022.

Alex has extensive experience of interdisciplinary performance, having made performances in collaboration with astrophysicists, cartographers, psychologists, amongst others.

Dr Alexander Kelly, Reader

Ask Me About

  1. Playable Theatre
  2. Autobiographical Theatre
  3. Documentary Theatre
  4. Interdisciplinary Performance
  5. Art & Science collaboration
  6. Futurology
  7. Devising
  8. Art
  9. Games
  10. Performing Arts
  11. Theatre

Selected Outputs

  • Angel T (2020) The Department of Distractions. Oberon Books.

  • Angel T; Voadora M (2019) There's a Room Three Performance Texts by Third Angel. Oberon Modern Plays.

  • Kelly A (2019) Testing The Hypothesis. In: Brayshaw T; Witts N; Fenemore A ed. The 21st Century Performance Reader. London: Routledge,

  • Kelly A; Walton R (2018) Text Templates. In: Woods N; Crossley T ed. Making Postdramatic Theatre: A Handbook Of Devising Exercises. Digital Theatre +, pp. 49-58.

  • Kelly A (2018) Cheers Grandad! Third Angel's Cape Wrath and The Lad Lit Project as Acts of Remembrance. In: Westerside A; Pinchbeck M ed. Staging Loss: Performance as Commemoration. Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 129-144.

  • Kelly A (2019) 24' 51" Living A Lunar Day. In: TaPRA 2019, 4 September 2019 - 6 September 2019, University of Exeter.

  • Kelly A (2019) Mechanisms For Remembering. In: MEMORY STUDIES ASSOCIATION Third Annual Conference, 25 June 2019 - 28 June 2019, Complutense University Madrid.

  • Kelly A (2018) Performing Science: How does it make you feel? (Invited paper). In: TaPRA Performance and Science Working Group Interim Event, 20 April 2018, Jodrell Bank.

  • Kelly A (2016) Telling Other People's Stories. In: TaPRA Interim Event: Training to give evidence: Performer training for verbatim, documentary, biographical and autobiographical performance practices, 11 May 2016, Northumbria University.

    http://theatredanceperformancetraining.org/2016/05/a-digest-of-the-tapra-pt-interim-event-training-to-give-evidence/

  • Kelly A. (2018) The Department of Distractions. 2 February 2018 - 28 March 2020. UK Tour: Northern Stage, Newcastle.

    http://thirdangel.co.uk/shows-projects/the-department-of-distractions

  • Kelly A; Lees G; Angel T. (2016) The Desire Paths. 1 October 2016. Sheffield (2016), Newcastle (2018), Slough (2019), Bedford (2021), York (2021).: Sheffield Year of Making 2016, Fun Palaces, Making Ways, Arts Council England, The Great Exhibition of the North, Northern Stage, Forest Fringe, The Place Theatre Bedford, York Theatre Royal..

    https://thirdangel.co.uk/shows-projects/the-desire-paths

  • Kelly A. (2015) 600 People. 1 November 2015 - 31 December 2018. UK & International Tour 2015/16: Newcastle, Goole, Falmouth, Ipswich, Greenbelt Festival, Edinburgh Fringe Festival, Festival of the Mind (Sheffield), Off The Shelf Sheffield, Warrington. Plus Porto, Portugal and Beirut, Lebanon.: Originally commissioned for Northern Elements, a development programme funded by Arts Council England and managed by ARC, Stockton Arts Centre. 2015 version supported by Northern Stage and funded by Arts Council England..

    http://thirdangel.co.uk/shows-projects/600-people