Dr Karen Morash
Lead Academic Tutor of Theatre Studies Online
Summary
Karen Morash is the Lead Academic Tutor for the online BA Theatre Studies at Rose Bruford College. She completed a PhD at Goldsmiths (where she also lectured), focusing on the role of the playwright within the collaborative devising process.
Karen has worked as a producer and dramaturg in various capacities, including with Head for Heights (headforheights.org.uk), the theatre company she founded with Sue Dunderdale and Prof. Catherine Boyle. The company produces work in translation, using a unique collaborative process, with a specialism in work from South America. She is also an award-winning writer, whose performance and poetry work has featured on a number of London fringe stages and festivals, including the Southwark Playhouse, Cockpit Theatre and the New Diorama, and within publications including Room, Bare Fiction, Understorey, Literary Mama, the Live Canon Anthology 2018-2019 and others.
Teaching
Research
Teaching Area
Theatre Studies Online
Qualifications
PhD (Goldsmiths, University of London)
MA (RADA/King’s College London)
PGCE (University of Cambridge),
BA (Hons) (University of King’s College)
Memberships
IFTR (International Federation for Theatre Research)
Professional Practice
Writing for performance, dramaturgy, writing poetry and creative non-fiction, directing.
External Duties
Dramaturg and Company Director, Head for Heights Theatre Company
Board of Directors, Zuppa Theatre Company
Publications
‘Online Pedagogy: Strategies for Effective and Creative Practice in Theatre and Performance’ in How to Teach Performance Online at Higher Education, published by Digital Theatre +, 2020.
Conference Papers
‘Devising in an Online Space’, presented at SCUDD conference (online) 2020.
‘Throwing Out the Baby with the Bathwater: The Position of the Playwright within the Discourse on Practice-as-Research’ presented at Creative Practice in the Age of Neo-Liberalism conference, University of Bedfordshire, 2018.
‘The Forgotten History of Playwriting Manuals (1888-1936)’, International Federation for Theatre Research Conference, Belgrade, 2018.
‘Acting Unpleasantly: Why harassment is so common in theatre’ for The Conversation, 2017.
‘The Never-Ending Search for a Suitable Workspace: Becoming an Academic-Artist-Parent’, presented at the BeComing Academic Conference, University of Sussex, 2017.
‘Bryony Lavery: Nerves of Steel and a Forgiving Heart’, in Women, Collective Creation, and Devised Performance, edited by Kathryn Mederos Syssoyeva and Scott Proudfit, Palgrave, 2016.
‘The Silent Playwright: Strategies for Holistic Performance’ presented at the Sociology of Theatre and Performance Research Group’s ‘Silent Voices’ colloquium, Goldsmiths 2016.
‘The Director’s Writer: Bryony Lavery’ presented at Birmingham City University’s ‘Contemporary British Theatre: Towards a New Canon’ international conference, 2010.
Research Interests
Pedagogical practices for playwrights; the work of Caryl Churchill and Bryony Lavery; writing/dramaturgy within devising processes; online pedagogy and performance; late twentieth-century/early twenty-first-century British playwriting.