PhD Supervision Interests

I welcome applications for postgraduate study in any of the following broad areas:

Contemporary European/British/American drama, theatre and performance Theories, histories and contemporarypractices of acting and performing, New writing and new dramaturgies Intermedial practices in theatre Text and Performance Feminist theatre and performance The work of Elfriede Jelinek Theatre translation theory and practice

Current Teaching

Undergraduate:

I am currently Part I Director in Theatre Studies and teach on the following first, second and third year courses:

THEA100 Introduction to Theatre Studies, Convenor

THEA206 Modern European Playwrighting, Convenor

THEA306 Contemporary European Theatre, Convenor

THEA213/313 Applied Theatre Practice (supervisions of practical projects)

THEA320 Special Subject (Dissertation)

Postgraduate:

I have supervised/co-supervised the following PhD projects:

Piotr Woycicki, 'The Politics of Perception in Post-cinematic Performance: Anexploration of the interinvolvement of theatre and film in contemporaryperformance andcinema' (Viva December 2010)

Peter Petralia, 'Reshaping Spatiality: Cognitive perception and the fracturing of theatrical space'(Viva December 2010)

Kerstin Bueschges,'On hair, fishtails and voices: resisting femininity in contemporary performance practice (2007).

I also supervise MA Dissertations on the MA in Contemporary Arts Research and contribute to the Faculty postgraduate module The Ontology of the Image.

Research Interests

My research interests generally concern dramaturgies in historical and contemporary theatre, especially the relationship between text and performance, the employment of new forms of acting and performing and the use of intermediality in live performance. My recent work is about postdramatic theatre in all its forms and its relationship to politics, gender/alterity and memory/trauma.

I have a longstanding research interest in European theatre and have recently been particularly preoccupied with thework of Austrian playwright Elfriede Jelinek andits postdramatic staging by major German directors.

I am also a translator of theatre texts and theatre scholarship. My translation and critical introduction to Hans-Thies Lehmann's seminal Postdramatic Theatre was published in 2006.

Additional Information

Recent Publications

Book Translation

Translation and introduction of Hans-Thies Lehmann's Postdramatic Theatre (London/New York: Routledge, 2006).

Edited Book

Das Analoge sträubt sich gegen das Digitale? Die Materialität des Deutschen Theaters und die Virtuelle Welt (The Analogue resists the Digital? The Materiality of German Theatre and the Virtual World), co-edited with David Barnett, Moray McGowan, Theater der Zeit Recherchen Series No. 37, October 2006.

Articles & Chapters

'Der fremde, faszinierende, paradoxe Ort Theater: Gedanken zu Elfriede Jelineks neueren theatertheoretischen Essays'('The strange, fascinating and paradoxical site of theatre:reflections on Elfriede Jelineksrecent theatre theoretical essays'), Jelinek[Jahr]buch 2011, Praesens Verlag, Vienna, 2011, pp. 85-102.

'Ticker-Theater: von der Krise des Dramas und postdramatischem Echtzeittheater im Umgang mit der globalen Finanzkrise' ('Ticker theatre: of the crisis of drama and postdramatic real-time theatre in the face of the global financial crisis'), Lücken sehen?: Beiträge zu Theater, Literatur und Performance, Festschrift für Hans-Thies Lehmann zum 66. Geburtstag, edited by Martina Gross and Patrick Primavesi, Heidelberg: Universitätsverlag Winter, 2010.

'Text Exposed: Displayed texts as players onstage in contemporary theatre', Studies in Theatre and Performance, 30.1. (January 2010), pp. 101-114.

'The Resistant Text in Postdramatic Theatre: Performing Elfriede Jelinek's Sprachflächen Performance Research, 14.1. (March 2009), pp. 46-56.

'Did you mean posttraumatic theatre? The Vicissitudes of Traumatic Memory in contemporary postdramatic performances', Performance Paradigm, 5.2. Special issue on: After Effects: Performing the Ends of Memory (October 2009), pp. 1-33. Available at: http://www.performanceparadigm.net/wp-content/uploads/2009/10/jurs-munby-posttraumatic-postdramatic-final-copy-with-images.pdf

'Hanswurst and Herr Ich: Subjection and Abjection in the Enlightenment Censorship of the Comic Figure', New Theatre Quarterly, Vol. 23(2), May 2007.

'Postdramatic Acting/Performing', in Performance Research 'Lexicon', Vol 11.3, Jan. 2007.

'"Ich will seicht sein": Elfriede Jelineks Schauspielmodel(l) als Medienstörung' ('"I want to be shallow": Elfriede Jelinek's model of acting as media interference'), in Das Analoge widersetzt sich dem Digitalen? Die Materialität des Deutschen Theaters und die Virtuelle Welt, edited by David Barnett, Moray McGowan and Karen Jürs-Munby, Theater der Zeit Recherchen Series No. 37, October 2006.

'Of Textual Bodies and Actual Bodies: G.E.Lessing's Abjection of Performance', Theatre Research International, Vol. 30, no. 1, 2005

Reviews and shorter publications

'Wie aktuell sind Elfriede Jelineks feministische Theatertexte der 70er und 80er Jahre?' ('How topical are Elfriede Jelinek's feminist theatre texts of the 1970s and 80s?'), transcript of a video conference between Allyson Fiddler, Christa Gürtler, Gitta Honegger, Pia Janke and Karen Jürs-Munby, Karen in Jelinek[Jahr]Buch, Praesens Verlag, Vienna, pp. 177-185. ISBN 978-3-7069-0606-7

Review of Small Acts of Repair: Performance, Ecology and Goat Island, edited by Stephen Bottoms and Matthew Goulish, in Theatre Research International, 34.3 (Aug 2009): 330-31.

Response to Apocryphal Theatre's The Jesus Guy (director Julia Barclay), Total Theatre Magazine, Aug. 2006.

Review of David Barnett, Rainer Werner Fassbinder and the German Theatre, Modern Drama, Volume 49, Number 3, Fall 2006, pp. 406-409

'Taking Stock and Looking Forward: The Past, Present and Future of Postdramatic Theatre', David Barnett in Conversation with Hans-Thies Lehmann and Karen Jürs-Munby, Contemporary Theatre Review, Vol. 16(4), 2006, p. 483-489.

Conference Papers and Public Presentations

(Feb. 2011) 'Productive "Contra-laborations": Elfriede Jelinek and her Relationship to the Theatre', School of English Colloquium, University of Sussex.

(Nov. 2010) 'Mythen weiblicher (Ohn-)Macht und ihre feministische Demontage im Theater: Machträume bei Bobby Baker und Elfriede Jelinek', 'Anderes Theater - Theater des Anderen: Geschlecht und Alterität im postdramatischen Theater', Trier.

(March 2010) 'Spatializing Text: working with Sarah Kane's 4.48 Psychosis', 20/20 Playwriting/Pedagogy, Birmingham

(March 2010) 'Ticker Text', Text and Theatre Symposium, Manchester Metropolitan University.

(Nov 2009) 'Events between script and freedom: improvising with text in contemporary experimental performance', Experimentality Workshop 2, Lancaster Institute for Advanced Studies, Lancaster.

(Sept. 2009) 'The Vexed Question of the Text in Postdramatic Theatre in a Cross-cultural Perspective', 'Dramatic and Postdramatic Theatre: Ten Years after', Faculty of Dramatic Arts Belgrade University and BITEF, Belgrade.

(July 2007) "Why Postdramatic Theatre is not Anti-textual: Performing the Resistance of Elfriede Jelinek's 'Text Surfaces'", presented at "Performing Literatures", Leeds.

(Feb 2007) "'I want to be shallow': Elfriede Jelinek's postdramatic theory of acting", presented at "How to Act", Central School of Speech and Drama, London.

(July 2006) Roundtable on postdramatic acting at Central School of Speech and Drama.

(Feb. 2006) "What's in the Post? - Introduction to Postdramatic Theatre", presented at: Beyond Drama: Postdramatic Theatre Symposium, Huddersfield University.

(Feb. 2006) "Taking Stock and Looking Forward: The Past, Present and Future of Postdramatic Theatre", David Barnett in Conversation with Hans-Thies Lehmann and Karen Jürs-Munby.

(Feb. 2006) "'There's a hole in this Performance': Tracing the Real in Goat Island's When will the September roses bloom? Last night was only a comedy", presented at: - (Feb 2006) Beyond Drama: Postdramatic Theatre Symposium, Huddersfield University. - (Nov 2005) IFTR/FIRT conference on "The Fictional and the Real in Contemporary Theatre", Jagellonian University, Krakow.

(Sept 2005) "'I want to be shallow': Elfriede Jelinek's Theory of Acting and its Relation to her critique of Mass Media", Contemporary German Drama Conference, Dublin.

(April 2005) "'I wish for a situation in which one could discard so-called acting': Kantor's Postdramatic Model of (Non-)-Acting", CPR conference "Towards Tomorrow", Aberystwyth.

(Jan. 2004) "Hanswurst and Herr Ich: Subjection and Abjection in the Enlightenment Censorship of the Comic Figure", invited lecture at a Research Seminar Glamorgan University

(Sept. 2003) "Hanswurst and Herr Ich", Clowns, Fools and Picaroes Conference, Belfast.

(Apr. 2001) "Of Textual Bodies and Actual Bodies: Lessing's Abjection of Performance", Performance Studies International, Mainz.

CURATION/ORGANIZATION

(Forthcoming 2011) International conference on 'Postdramatic Theatre as/or Political Theatre: Representation, Mediatisation and Advanced Capitalism', co-organized with Jerome Carroll and Steve Giles, 21st-23rd Sept 2011 at the IGRS, London.

(Sept 2007) Co-Chair of "The Future of the Text" workshop at "European Dramaturgy in the 21st Century", Frankfurt.

(Feb 2006) Beyond Drama: Postdramatic Theatre Symposium, Huddersfield University

• A Marathon Effort Lifted by Humour

  13/07/2012
  The Times reviewed Sports Play, Jelinek's 1998 play on the theme of sport, war, and contemporary politics, which was given its world première in English at Lancaster University's Nuffield Theatre on ... Read more»

• Sports Play, on Tour

  07/07/2012
  Lancaster University's première of Jelinek's play in English, produced by Just a Must theatre company and in a translation by Penny Black with Karen Juers-Munby is previewed here in the Guardian: "Pl ... Read more»

• Jelinek Conference and World Première of Sports Play in English

  03/07/2012
  "Sports Play, Nobel Prize winning Elfriede Jelinek’s postdramatic exploration of the commodification of the human body in sport begins its UK tour at Live at LICA in Lancaster on the 11th, arriving ... Read more»