Dr Eleanor Rycroft
BA(Sus.), MA(Sus.), DPhil(Sus.)
Expertise
I am an early modernist, interested in practice, performance, politics and gender. I am fascinated by representations of the body in early modern history and drama, as well as in the performance of classical texts today.
Current positions
Senior Lecturer
Department of Theatre
Contact
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Biography
I began my career as a director, dramturg, literary and education associate in the theatre, working in fringe venues across London (e.g. Southwark Playhouse, Theatre 503, The Finborough, The White Bear, Ovalhouse Theatre), drama schools (Mountview, ALRA, BADA), training with major companies (Young Vic, National Studio) and working with smaller ones (Red Shift Theatre, The Steam Industry), before embarking on an academic career. This experience continues to inform my research and teaching, most concretely through my practice-based scholarship. I have worked on major collaborative projects that staged theatre in the historic sites of Hampton Court, Stirling Castle, Linlithgow Palace, and Lancaster Castle, including the AHRC-funded 'Staging the Henrician Court' and 'Staging and Representing the Scottish Renaissance Court'. These projects developed my interest in the spaces of drama and politics, the production of class, gender and race in performance, and the intersection of performance and history.
My other major interest concerns the historical performance of gender, culminating in my first monograph, Facial Hair and the Performance of Early Modern Masculinity (Routledge, 2019). I have written about hair and beards in a number of publications, and am now focussing my interest in early modern embodiment through research into walking, particularly how ideas about early modern walking inform its staging in drama, and how the theatre (re)produces early modern assumptions about who walks, how, and why.
Research interests
I am a theatre historian of early English and Scottish drama, whose research often involves practical explorations of early modern plays. I was a pioneer in the field of early modern PaR, working on major collaborative projects that staged theatre in the historic sites of Hampton Court, Stirling Castle, Linlithgow Palace, and Lancaster Castle, including the AHRC-funded 'Staging the Henrician Court' and 'Staging and Representing the Scottish Renaissance Court'.
I have a special interest in gender and its relationship to ideologies of manhood during the period. My monograph - Facial Hair and the Performance of Early Modern Masculinity (Studies in Performance and Early Modern Drama, Routledge, 2019) - concerns the role of beards in the construction of masculinities on the sixteenth- and seventeenth-century stage.
My current research project investigates the staging of walking in early modern theatre. This study has led to several contemporary-facing projects, including the Brigstow-funded 'Walking and Re-Creation' and 'Nightwalker', as well as the AHRC and ESRC Impact Acceleration projects, 'Women, Walking and Performance' and 'Walking with Toddlers'. As part of this research, which traces a long history of women's walking, we produced the award-winning soundscape, 'Night-Walk'.
My work has appeared in leading peer-reviewed journals such as Medieval English Theatre, Early Theatre, Shakespeare, Shakespeare Survey, London Journal, Journal of the Northern Renaissance and Shakespeare Bulletin, and has been published by Oxford University Press, Bloomsbury, Palgrave, Wiley-Blackwell, and Ashgate. I have written on material cultures and spatial practices of the early modern stage, hair and beards in travel literature, theatre at the court of Henry VIII, early Tudor and Stewart drama, practice-based research as a research methodology, women walking in Shakespeare, and the historical performance of witchcraft.
Projects and supervisions
Research projects
Nightwalker
Principal Investigator
Description
Nightwalker - a Brigstow Ideas Exchange project - brings together three perspectives; historical, environmental and performative to consider the feminine contemporary nightwalker. Typically our perception of a woman walking at…Managing organisational unit
Department of TheatreDates
01/03/2024 to 31/07/2024
Does Motherhood Need Mitigating? A Collective Examination of Parenting and Academic Practice
Principal Investigator
Role
Collaborator
Managing organisational unit
Department of History (Historical Studies)Dates
01/01/2023 to 31/07/2023
Walking and Re-Creation
Principal Investigator
Description
During the early modern period, to go for a walk was a recreational activity, but it was also to literally re-create oneself. Heating the body up enabled the evacuation of…Managing organisational unit
Department of TheatreDates
10/01/2022 to 30/09/2022
Walking and Re-Creation
Principal Investigator
Description
An 'Ideas Exchange' between public health experts, a theatre historian and a comedian, this project takes a long historical and interdisciplinary view of the cultural and physical benefits of walking,…Managing organisational unit
Department of TheatreDates
05/03/2021 to 31/07/2021
Coven
Role
Collaborator
Description
COVEN will be an accessible reinvention of two early modern witch plays: THELATE LANCASHIRE WITCHES and THE WITCH OF EDMONTON. I am offering academic and dramaturgical support to the creative…Managing organisational unit
Department of TheatreDates
01/02/2021 to 01/09/2021
Thesis supervisions
Publications
Selected publications
02/07/2019Facial Hair and the Performance of Early Modern Masculinity
Facial Hair and the Performance of Early Modern Masculinity
‘Whither Will you Walke, My Lord?'
London Journal
Hair in the BBC's The Hollow Crown
Shakespeare
Recent publications
01/01/2024Women walking in Shakespeare
Shakespeare/Play
Shakespeare productions outside London
Shakespeare Survey
Introduction: Shakespeare in Action
Shakespeare
The Bristol Comedy History Walk
Writing Beards
Teaching
I taught at the universities of Sussex, Reading, Oxford Brookes, and Lancaster before joining Bristol in 2013. I have extensive teaching experience across Theatre and English Literature Departments and also in community theatre groups, teaching in the fields of drama, literature, poetry, and critical theory. The following is a list of my Higher Education teaching over the last 15 years.
University of Bristol 2013-2021
Performance Contexts (Designer, Convenor)
Early Modern Theatre Practice (Designer, Convenor)
Performance Forms and Analysis (Convenor)
Independent Study Performance Project, Placement and Extended Essay/Dissertation (Convenor)
Interpreting Plays (Convenor)
Performance Histories (Convenor)
Criticism and the Arts
Contemporary British Theatre
Introduction to Performance Studies
Approaches to Shakespeare (English Dept)
Literature 2 (English Dept)
MA: Performing the Body (Convenor)
MA: Performance: Place/Space (Convenor)
MA: Research Methods and Questions: Archives
University of Lancaster, 2010-2011
Shakespeare
Renaissance to Restoration Literature, 1588-1660
Dissertation
Oxford Brookes University 2009-2011
Renaissance Poetry: Genre and Gender (Designer, Convenor)
Critical Issues
MA: Key Concepts and Theories for English Studies
Renaissance Literature
Skills and Strategies for English Studies
University of Reading, 2010-2011
Renaissance Texts and Cultures
University of Sussex, 2006-2008
Early Modern Drama and Contemporary Theatre (Designer)
Reading Dramatic Texts
Approaches to Drama