Helen Grime

Dr Helen Grime is Head of School of Creative Performance and Production. She studied Drama and Theatre studies as an undergraduate at the University of London. Since when she worked in publishing (at Penguin Books), in Literary Management (at the Orange Tree Theatre in Richmond), as a script advisor (to writers Steve Thompson, Simon Messingham and Susanna Jones) and in fringe theatre (for companies Tremor Cordis and Centre Forward). She completed her PhD in 2008 and has been teaching in Higher Education for the last twenty years. Helen has worked on a number of collaborative projects with arts organisations including The Tempest Club and events to celebrate International Women's Day.  She is a board member for Platform 4 and for Play to the Crowd. 

• Theatre historiography, particularly mythologizing and anecdote in theatre history.
• Women, theatre and performance.
• The history of the actress.
• British Theatre in the late nineteenth and twentieth century.
• Shakespeare as cultural icon.
• Suffragette playwrights.
• Female playwrights.
• New writing.
• Twentieth century American playwrights.
• Political theatre.
• Verbatim theatre.
• Theatre Archives.

Supervision of research students

Helen welcomes enquiries about research supervision; her areas of supervision are: 

• Theatre historiography, particularly mythologising and anecdote in theatre history
• Women, theatre and performance
• Late-nineteenth and twentieth-century British theatre
• Shakespeare in performance
• Verbatim theatre and ethics

• Gwen Ffrangcon-Davies (1891-1992).
• The actress 1890-1960.
• Theatre Archives

• Article 'She Breastfeeds in the Boardroom: working mothers onstage' Studies in the Maternal 8(2) p 13
• Monograph Gwen Ffrangcon-Davies: Twentieth-Century Actress. Published in the ‘Dramatic Lives’ series (edited by Professor Katharine Cockin, University of Hull) Routledge July 2013.
• Article 'Gwen Ffrangcon-Davies: Pioneering a “pocket-sized” Lady Macbeth'. Shakespeare (September 2012)
• Article ‘Gwen Ffrangcon-Davies: Ethereal from the Waist Up and All Welsh Pony down below.’ NTQ 2011 (27) pp 203-214
• Dramaturgical Consultant (Research) Nora & I Arts Council Funded devised project (Studio Theatre, University of Winchester 2008)
• Numerous papers given at Theatre conferences since 2003.

member of The Society for Theatre Research