After beginning my academic career as a Shakespearean, I moved into the field of Greek theatre, which I regard as a living form. In its political engagement and concern with ultimate realities, its physicality as much as its language, Greek drama seems to me uniquely powerful in its ability to engage with the present. When asked my occupation, I describe myself as a ‘theatre historian’; but I always need to add that history has no purpose unless it helps us understand the world of today.

My early work on the Elizabethan clown led me to an interest in the principle of the mask. I published a study of Greek ‘New Comedy’ masks in 1991, and of tragic masks in 2007, using both ancient evidence and the insights of modern performers to understand a convention which defies the common sense of secular naturalistic theatre.

Performance space has always been a fascination, and my Tragedy in Athens (1997) was a study of space in ancient theatre. In A Short History of Western Performance Space I surveyed the western popular and artistic tradition in order to see how actor-audience configurations create meaning, questioning the idea that there is any one essential entity called ‘theatre’. My Shakespeare’s Almanac and associated work on carnival have placed theatre within historicized notions of time, and I hope in the future to develop a historical study of how time shapes performance.

I have always been interested in the way theatre interfaces with society, and my current project is an investigation of how theatre relates to citizenship. The concept of the citizen was shaped in Greece and Rome, and later generations have repeatedly referenced tensions between rights and obligations, between individual and collective identity back to that era. The main focus of my project, however, is the French Enlightenment. My book will address basic questions about how theatre shapes identities, not through ideas generated by playwrights, but through the social practice of theatregoing.