Contemporary Storytelling Performance

This book focuses on a rising generation of female storytellers, analysing their innovation in interdisciplinary collaboration, and their creation of new multimedia platforms for story-led performance.

It draws on an unprecedented series of in-depth interviews with artists including Jo Blake, Xanthe Gresham-Knight, Mara Menzies, Clare Murphy, Debs Newbold, Rachel Rose Reid, Sarah Liisa Wilkinson, and Vanessa Woolf, while Sally Pomme Clayton’s reflections on her extraordinary four-decade career provide long-term context for these cutting-edge conversations. Blending ethnographic research and performance analysis, this book documents the working lives of professional storytelling artists. It also sheds light on the practices, values, aspirations, and achievements of a generation actively redefining storytelling as a contemporary performance practice, taking on topics from ecology and maternity to griefwork and neuroscience, while working collaboratively with diverse creative partners to generate new, inclusive presences for a traditionally-inspired artform.

This book will be of great interest to students, scholars, and practitioners in drama, theatre, performance, creative writing, education, and media.

Stephe Harrop is Associate Professor of Drama at Liverpool Hope University. She is also a contemporary storyteller, creating and touring work across the UK and beyond.