55113333@ad.mmu.ac.uk

55113333@ad.mmu.ac.uk

Michael Pinchbeck is a Nottingham-based writer and theatre-maker. He co-founded Metro-Boulot-Dodo in 1997 after studying Theatre and Creative Writing at Lancaster University. He was commissioned by Nottingham Playhouse to write The White Album (2006), The Ashes (2011) and Bolero (2014), premiering at Nottingham Playhouse before touring Bosnia & Herzegovina and Kosovo supported by the British Council. His work has been selected four times for the British Council’s Edinburgh Showcase. In 2018, he was commissioned by New Perspectives to adapt Berger and Mohr's 1967 book, A Fortunate Man, which toured to Edinburgh, Singapore and Cologne. He has completed two sequels, A Seventh Man, supported by Arts Council England and British Council, which toured to Cologne, and Another Way of Telling, commissioned by Harrogate Theatre and supported by Manchester School of Art. He is currently making a new piece with Kevin Egan, Matchstalks Remastered, supported by Word of Warning. He has recently received commissions for immersive audio installations from HOME (Manchester), Lakeside Arts Centre (Nottingham), Nottingham Confucius Institute and S.H.E.D (Derby). Michael has an MA in Performance & Live Art from Nottingham Trent University and a PhD from Loughborough University exploring the role of the dramaturg in contemporary performance. He has written articles for Contemporary Theatre Review, Dance Theatre Journal, Studies in Theatre and Performance and Performance Research. His work features in DIY: Do It Yourself, Performing Ruins (Palgrave) and The Twenty First Century Performance Reader (Routledge). He has co-convened three academic conferences - Staging Loss: Performance as Commemoration (University of Lincoln), Where From Here: 21 Years of Third Angel (Leeds Beckett University) and Performing Scores, Scoring Performance (Manchester Met). He has co-edited Staging Loss: Performance as Commemoration (Palgrave Macmillan) with Andrew Westerside, Acts of Dramaturgy: The Shakespeare Trilogy (Intellect) and The Ravel Trilogy: Following the Score (Intellect) with Ollie Smith. He is currently working on a new book for the Intellect playtext series, Ways of Staging: The Berger & Mohr Trilogy, with Frances Babbage. He is Professor of Theatre and the Professorial Research Lead for the Art & Performance Research Hub.
  • Joined: February 27, 2024
  • Articles: 40

Documenting our practice

We have been working with Nottingham-based filmmaker, Ben Wigley, at Art Docs to create some unique documentaries of our work in studios and on stages and make visible our practice-as-research. You can see videos here by members of the group…

Future Flares Festival

The Future Flares Festival 2024 brought to Manchester a globe-trotting reflection on destruction and meaning, an international fusion of workshop and performance, the guided tour of a book, some staged performance art, a large-scale exploration of performance and image-making, and…

greenroom archive

In August PhD candidate, Peader Kirk, was funded by the Department of Art & Performance at Manchester Metropolitan University to visit the Theatre archive in Bristol. Peader’s PhD focuses on greenroom performance venue in Manchester and its legacy. Since 2011, the Bristol theatre archive has held the…

Where I Belong

Michael Pinchbeck was involved in a Nottingham City of Literature and New Perspectives event at Lakeside Art Centre, Nottingham, in June 2024. Where I Belong is an exciting 12-part podcast series is a collection of short poems and stories from twelve…

Talking Trees / 树说/述说 

Michael Pinchbeck visited Ningbo, China, for research and development for Talking Trees / 树说/述说 to create an audio walk across the University of Nottingham’s Ningbo campus. The project combines notions of language, landscape and soundscapes and it is currently installed at…

Theatre in lockdown

During lockdown, Performance Research Group co-leads, Josh Edelman and Michael Pinchbeck, were invited to write a piece for Manchester Met about the impact of the Covid-19 on the theatre industry. As theatre venues across the UK have closed their doors…