Dr Kara Reilly, Senior Lecturer, Drama

Kara Reilly is a theatre historian and dramaturg. She specialises critical disability studies/ mad studies, theatre & technology, adaptation studies, and gender/ queer theory. 

Her edited collection Contemporary Approaches to Adaptation in Theatre (2018) has seventeen case studies and explores a range of international adaptations in international Anglophone Drama.

Her edited collection, Theatre, Performance and Analogue Technology (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2013) examines a wide range of spectacular pre-digital technologies from sparring mechanical elephants to Proust's theatre phone, from cyborg ballet dancers to Pepper's ghost, from hair raising electrical experiments to automaton monks.

Her book Automata and Mimesis on the Stage of Theatre History (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2011) focuses upon automata or self-moving mechanical puppets and their influence upon theatre history and intellectual history from the Renaissance to the end of the First World War.

She is the co-editor of Palgrave's Adaptation in Theatre and Performance book series.

Monograph

Automata and Mimesis on the Stage of Theatre History (Basingstoke, Palgrave: 2011). ISBN 9780230232020

Edited Collections 

Theatre, Performance and Analogue Technology: Historical Interfaces and Intermedialities (Basingstoke, Palgrave, 2013). ISBN 9781137319661

Contemporary Approaches to Adaptation (London: Palgrave, 2018). ISBN 9781137597823

Book Series 

Co-Editor with Vicky Angelaki of the Book Series Adaptation in Theatre and Performance for Palgrave MacMillan.

Book Chapters/ Articles

The Epic Spectator Meets the War on the Coronavirus: Notes from the Ground from Exeter, England” in COVID Communication: Exploring Pandemic Discourse. Ed. John Pollack London: Springer. (2023)

“Samuel Pepys’s Traumatic Autopsia,” in Routledge Companion to Performance and Science Ed. Adele Senior. London: Routledge. Forthcoming 2024.

“Re-membering the Lyric Theatre: Notes on a Phenomenology of Dyschronia,” The Drama Review. Forthcoming 2022.

"Robots: From Rebellion to Domesticity,” Deep Time of the Theatre, Ed. Nele Wynants (London: Palgrave, 2019).

“Fanny Hill Onstage: TheatreState and April de Angelis’s Feminist Adaptations,” Contemporary Approaches to Adaptation, Ed. Kara Reilly (London: Palgrave, 2018).

“Yukio Mishima’s Hypermasculinity,” Vanguard Performance Beyond Left and Right, Ed. Kimberly Jannarone (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2015).

“Two Venuses: Performing Anatomical Beauty in the Service of Empire” Performance Research, Special Issue on Medicine. Edited by Martin O’Brien and Gianna Bouchard. 19.4. 111-121. 2014. ISSN 1352-8165

“George Pierce Baker: A Century of Teaching Playwriting” Contemporary Theatre Review, Special Issue on the Pedagogy of Playwriting, (23.2) 2013.

“The Tiller Girls: Mass Ornament or Modern Girl?” Theatre, Performance and Analogue Technology, Ed. Kara Reilly (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2013).

“The Rape of Lavinia: The Restoration Actress’s Body in Pain.” Staging Pain in Early Modern England. Ed. James Allard (Ashgate, 2009).

“Puppetry of the Spectacle: Royal de luxe’s Giants” Puppetry International Special Issue on Mega-Puppets. Fall 2007.

“Hélène Cixous’s Second Innocence” Feminism/os. Summer 2006.

“A Collage Reality (Re)Made: The Postmodern Dramaturgy of Charles L. Mee” American Drama. Summer 2005.

Dramaturgy (selected)

Over By Christmas, R& D for Playwright Karl Rogers, 2022

Hedda 2.0, Dramaturgical Advice for Director Shelley Butler, 2017.

The Sleeper Jammy Voo, Research and Development, Director Ygnvild Aspeli, 2014

Pool Game by Liz Tomlin, Riverside Studios (UK tour), Dir Di Sherlock, 2012

Landfill by Liz Tomlin, Point Blank (Sheffield/ Birmingham), Dir Liz Tomlin, 2011

Agamemnon 2.0 by Charles L. Mee. University of Birmingham, Dir Shelley Butler, 2008

Directing (selected)

Clouds 2020 incite from theatre company, Director, 2021.

Playhouse Creatures, University of Birmingham, 2012.

Ghost Sonata, University of Birmingham, production and radio drama, 2009

Biography:

Kara is a Senior Lecturer in Drama.Before coming to Exeter, she worked as a Lecturer at the University of Birmingham in the Department of Drama and Theatre Arts.

Kara holds a PhD from University of Washington in Theatre History and Dramatic Literature, a Master's Degree from New York University's Tisch School of the Arts in Performance Studies, and she has a Bachelor's degree from Kent State University's Honors College (magna cum laude).

She is a professional dramaturg/ director and the artistic director of incite theatre company. She is affiliated with the Center for Monster Studies at the University of California at Santa Cruz. She has worked in Birmingham (Geiger Counter Theatre Company), New York (La Mama), Seattle (Freehold Studio Theatre), and Cleveland (Great Lakes Shakespeare Festival and the Cleveland Playhouse) as a freelance dramaturg.

Research supervision:

I am interested in supervising PhD students working in critical disability studies/ mad studies, adaptation studies, queer theory, and theatre history.