Professor Claire Cochrane

Research Interests

My particular research interests are reflected in my publications: on regional British theatre, Black British and British Asian theatre makers and audiences , and amateur theatre. I have also written on Shakespeare in performance.  My most recent collaborative publication in 2025 is the co-edited Volume One of The Routledge Companion to Twentieth Century British Theatre  1900-1950. Volume Two which covers 1950-2000 will be published in early 2026.  As a member and former convenor of the History and Historiography Working Groups of the International Federation for Theatre Research ( IFTR) and the Theatre and Performance Research Association ( TaPRA) I am regularly engaged in the sharing of projects and discussions about the professional and philosophical practice of theatre history.  In 2015 I and Professor Jo Robinson (now of Newcastle University) published the co-edited Theatre History and Historiography Ethics, Evidence and Truth ( Palgrave Macmillan) and in 2019 the co-edited Methuen Drama Handbook of Theatre History and Historiography which brought together eighteen international  scholars writing about theatre from different national perspectives and  time periods.  I am also series co-editor  with Professor Bruce McConachie ( Pittsburg University) of the  Bloomsbury Cultural Histories of Theatre and Performance.

External Responsibilities

Editor for Theatre Notebook ( journal of the Society for Theatre Research)

Trustee of the Sir Barry Jackson Trust and Chair of the Grants Subcommittee

I have been external examiner for undergraduate courses at Roehampton and Loughborough Universities and Goldsmiths, University of London; postgraduate courses at Exeter and Birmingham Universities. I regularly act as external examiner for PhD and MPhil theses at a range of universities.

Professional Bodies

Member of the Society for Theatre Research ( STR)

Member of the International Federation for Theatre Research ( IFTR)

Member of the Theatre and Performance Research Association ( TaPRA)

Honorary Life Member of DramaHE -- formerly SCUDD the  Standing Conference of University Drama Departments 

Publications

Authored books

Twentieth Century British Theatre Industry, Art and Empire, Cambridge University Press, 2011

The Birmingham Rep: A City’s Theatre 1962-2002, Sir Barry Jackson Trust, 2003,

Shakespeare and the Birmingham Repertory Theatre: 1913-1929, The Society for Theatre Research, 1993

Edited Collections

Claire Cochrane, Lynette Goddard, Catherine Hindson & Trish Reid (eds) The Routledge Companion to Twentieth Century Theatre and Performance Volume One 1900-1950, Routledge 2024

Claire Cochrane & Jo Robinson (eds), The Methuen Drama Handbook of Theatre History and Historiography, Bloomsbury, 2019

Claire Cochrane& Jo Robinson (eds) Theatre History and Historiography Ethics, Evidence and Truth, Palgrave Macmillan, 2016

Book Chapters

‘Challenging Times : Making Theatre During the War’ in Helen Brooks and Michael Hammond (eds) Cambridge Companion to First World War Theatre, Cambridge University Press, 2023, pp. 55-73

‘England’ in David Kornhaber and James N.Lochlin (eds) Tom Stoppard in Context, Cambridge University Press, 2021, pp.26-34

‘Creating Vital Theatre: New Voices in a Time of Transition’ in Gill Plain (ed) British Literature in Transition 1940-1960 Postwar, Cambridge University Press, 2018, pp.313-330

‘Shakespeare and the Re/Vision of Indian Heritage in the Postcolonial British Context’ in Shormishtha Panja and Babli Moitra Saraf ( eds) Performing Shakespeare in India Exploring Indianness, Literatures and Cultures, SAGE, 2016

‘A City’s Toys: Theatre in Birmingham 1914-1918’ in Andrew Maunder (ed) British Theatre and the Great War 1914-1919, Palgrave Macmillan, 2015

‘Producing the Scene: The Evolution of the Director in British Theatre 1900-1950’ in Rebecca D’Monte (ed) British Theatre and Performance 1900-1950 Methuen Drama, 2015

‘Engaging the Audience: A Comparative Analysis of Developmental Strategies at Birmingham Rep and Leicester Haymarket Theatre since the 1990s’ in G.Ley and S.Dadswell (eds), Critical Essays on British South Asian Theatre, University of Exeter Press, 2012

‘Opening Up the Garden: A Comparison of Strategies for Developing Intercultural Access to Theatre in Birmingham and Nottingham’ in The Glory of the Garden: English Regional Theatre and the Arts Council 1984-2009, Cambridge Scholars Publishing, eds. Kate Dorney and Ros Merkin, 2010

‘“A Local Habitation and a Name”: Developments in Black and Asian Theatre in Birmingham since the 1970s’ in Alternatives Within the Mainstream: British Black and Asian Theatres, Cambridge Scholars Press, ed. Dimple Godiwala, 2006

‘Sans valeur, sans histoire. Le theatre amateur et l’historien-critique d’art’, trans. Marie-Madeleine Mervant-Roux, Anne Cuisset, Melissa von Drie in le theatre des amateurs un theatre de société(s), Actes du colloque international des 24,25 et 26 Septembre 2004, Le Triangle, Rennes, Théâtres en Bretagne, 2005, pp. 143-149

Journal Articles

‘The Archive, the Historian and the Relationships of Change’, Pamlętnik Teatrainy, 71 (2) 2022 pp.35-54

‘The Haunted Theatre: Birmingham Rep, Shakespeare and European Exchanges’, Cahiers Élisabéthains 96. (1) 2018, pp. 75-88

Birmingham Rep, Youth and Community and the Products and Possibilities of Precarity’, Research in Drama Education: Journal of Applied Theatre and Performance 22(1), 2017, pp. 36-49

“Place-Performance Relationships within the English Urban Context: Coventry and the Belgrade Theatre”, Studies in Theatre and Performance, Vol 33, no.3 2013, pp.303-20

‘“The Contaminated Audience” : Researching Amateur Theatre in Wales before 1939’, New Theatre Quarterly, XIX, Part 2, ( NTQ 74) May 2003, pp.169-176

‘“The Pervasiveness of the Commonplace”: The Historian and Amateur Theatre’, in Theatre Research International, Vol 26, no 3, 2001, pp. 233-242

‘“It stands for more than theatre”: Claire Cochrane talks to Paul Sutton about the work of C&T’, Studies in Theatre and Performance, Vol 20, no 3, 2000, pp.188-195

‘‘‘Playing the Community”: Reflections on Forced Upon Us and The Wedding Community Play Project’, Irish Theatre Magazine, Vol 2, no.5, Spring 2000, pp.33-39

‘Theatre and Urban Space: The Case of Birmingham Rep’, New Theatre Quarterly, XVI, Part 2 (NTQ 62), May 2000, pp.137-147