Catherine Sloan Profile Photo

Dr Cathy Sloan

Senior Lecturer in Applied and Socially Conscious Theatre
Course Leader, BA Contemporary Theatre and Performance
London College of Music
catherine.sloan@uwl.ac.uk

I am a specialist in applied and socially engaged theatre. My doctoral research (completed at the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama) documents and theorises performance practices engaged with recovery from addiction. This builds upon my previous practice as Artistic Director of Outside Edge Theatre Company, developing my expertise in collaborative theatre making with people affected by particular social issues, including addiction, homelessness, the criminal justice system and mental wellbeing.  

I contributed to the first edited collection on performance practice focused on addiction, entitled Addiction and Performance (Cambridge Scholars 2014), and am currently working on a monograph that examines recovery-engaged contemporary performance practice. My publications address the ethical and political dimension of applied performance, offering a philosophy of performance practice framed as an affective ecology.  

I am also an experienced educator and practitioner trainer, having taught at Guildford School of Acting (University of Surrey), Royal Central School of Speech and Drama and Mountview Academy. Previously, I was Head of Drama at a secondary school in Northern Ireland, where I am from.  

 

  • Qualifications

    • PhD (Royal Central School of Speech and Drama).

    • MA Dist. (Royal Central School of Speech and Drama).

    • MEd (Queens University Belfast).

    • BA (hons) (Queens University Belfast).

    • PGCE (Ulster University).

    • FHEA. 

  • Memberships

    Theatre and Performance Research Association
    International Federation of Theatre Research

Research

  • Research and publications

    Books

    (Forthcoming 2023) Messy Connections: addiction, performance and recovery, Abingdon, Routledge.

    Journal articles

    2021 ‘The ‘pop-up’ recovery arts café: growing resilience through the staging of recovery community’, Research in Drama Education: The Journal of Applied Theatre and Performance, Vol.26, No. 1: 9-23, https://doi.org/10.1080/13569783.2020.1844562.  

    2020 ‘The Antidote: Theorising recovery engaged theatre-making as a process of affective attunement and agonistic activism’, Research in Drama Education: The Journal of Applied Theatre and Performance, Vol.25, No. 3: 390-404, https://doi.org/10.1080/13569783.2020.1844562.  

    2018 ‘Understanding Spaces of Potentiality in Applied Theatre’, Research in Research in Drama Education: The Journal of Applied Theatre and Performance, Vol. 23, No. 4: 582–597, https://doi.org/10.1080/13569783.2020.1844562.  

    2017 'Aestheticizing Addiction to Generate Change: An Exploration of Performance Practice with Biographical Drug-Use Narratives', Performance Research, Vol. 22, No. 6: 68–72. 

    2014 'From ‘Substance Misuse the Musical’ to ‘Double Whammy’: The Affect of Outside Edge Theatre Company' in Reynolds, J. & Zontou, Zoe, Z. (eds.) Addiction and Performance, Newcastle upon Tyne, UK, Cambridge Scholars Publishing: 214–233. 

  • Conferences

    I have presented at a wide range of research conferences and public engagement events. Below is a list of the most recent presentations: 

    Say Nothin’: The reparative potential of testimonial theatre in rupturing the silence that binds traumatic legacies of ‘The Troubles’ in Northern Ireland, at Theatre and Performance Research Association (TaPRA) conference, forthcoming (September 2021).  

    My Amey and ME, Radio 4 documentary, March 2020, https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000g3fh.   

    A Recovery Arts Café: Knowledge Exchange Experiment, Different Stages showcase, Being Human Festival, Museum of Comedy, London, November 2019, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=69RsRfw7kHM&list=PLI2KtZBsd3kFgcjbo1nSqxmAEd29tfHTT&index=6.   

    A Recovery Arts Café at the Collisions Festival of Practice Research, RCSSD, October 2019 – a cabaret-style public engagement event sharing the performance practices and research insights from my research in recovery arts.  

     ‘Life-Living: Practices of Survival and Renewal in Recovery Theatre’, at Theatre and Performance Research Association (TaPRA) conference, Exeter University, September 2019. 

    ‘Life-Living: How the collaborative arts event performs possibilities for a more visible and connected community’, at Recovery Arts Conference, Liverpool John Moores University, Everyman Theatre Liverpool, September 2019.  

    ‘The Antidote: mediating shared experiences of vulnerability and pain to create a ‘recoverist’ performance’ at TaPRA conference, Univeristy of Aberystwyth, September 2018. 

    ‘The Materiality of Recoverist Performance’ at London Theatre Seminar, Birkbeck University, April 2018. 

    ‘‘The ‘pin’ and the ‘spoon’: Affective inter-relation with the objects of addiction in applied theatre-making’ at TaPRA Applied and Social Working Group interim event, Queens University Belfast, March 2018.  

    ‘Revealing the Invisible’ at Intersections ‘Unmentionables in Performance Research’ Conference’, RCSSD, January 2018.  

    ‘The Antidote’, a presentation of a scratch performance exploring the representation of recovery created with research collaborators at Collisions Festival, RCSSD, September 2017. 

    ‘Affective Performance Ecology: The Radical Act of Applied Theatre’, at TaPRA conference, Salford University, September 2017. 

     

  • Research degree supervision

    Cathy welcomes applications for conventional and practice as research PhD projects within the fields of applied and community theatre, socially-engaged or political performance, arts and wellbeing, gender, and identity. 

Courses taught on