Josephine Machon is writer and practitioner in contemporary performance and a Fellow of The Higher Education Academy. She joined Middlesex University's Theatre Arts team as Senior Research Fellow in Contemporary Performance in October 2012. Prior to this she was a Lecturer in Theatre at Brunel University, having come from St. Mary's University College where she was responsible for setting up and leading the Physical Theatre Programme - the first undergraduate degree of its kind in the South East of England.
She is the author of Immersive Theatres: Intimacy and Immediacy in Contemporary Performance (Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), which received the prestigious award of Outstanding Academic Title in the CHOICE Awards, 2014 and (Syn)aesthetics – Redefining Visceral Performance (Palgrave Macmillan, 2009, 2011).
Josephine is Joint Editor of the Palgrave Macmillan Series, Palgrave Studies in Performance and Technology, which includes her co-edited collections alongside commissioned titles. She is on the Editorial Board for the International Journal of Performance Arts & Digital Media (IJPADM) and Brunel's Centre for Contemporary and Digital Performance online journal, Body, Space & Technology. Josephine's current practice-based research examines the role of the audience-participant in immersive experiences and involves partnerships with leading immersive practitioners Punchdrunk and Lundahl & Seitl. She is also collaborating on an interdisciplinary research project with Punchdrunk Enrichment examining the impact of its work in educational contexts.
With years of experience in educational contexts, in Higher Education since 1997, Josephine is committed to the creative exchange that occurs within her undergraduate and post-graduate teaching and her research.
General teaching and learning interests encompass:
Specialist teaching interests include:
Josephine has supervised and examined a range of research degree students. She invites potential students, whether considering MPhil, Arts D or PhD, to discuss proposals for study in areas related to her own research interests, including Practice as Research projects.
Current research supervision at Middlesex includes:
Marisa Carnesky - The Incredible Bleeding Woman - The power of cultural representations of menstruation, pregnancy, fertility technologies and menopause on women's bodily perception.
Stephen Fossey: Activating social space and performative practices
Charlotte Nichol: BodyScreen and Performance Practices
Eve Wedderburn: Kung Fu and Performer Training
Immersive Theatres, immediacy, intimacy and impacts: the audience experience
Space and the senses – site-sympathetic work and the environment
(Syn)aesthetics – experiential practice and audience processes
Performance, experience and 'the visceral'; sensual approaches to performance practice and audience appreciation
'Writings of the body': interrogations of embodied practice, the visceral verbal-playtext and technologies within playful performance encounters.
May 2013:Immersive Theatres: Intimacy and Immediacy in Contemporary Performance. Basingstoke & New York: Palgrave Macmillan. http://www.palgrave.com/products/title.aspx?pid=575345
September 2011 (paperback including new preface): (Syn)aesthetics Redefining Visceral Performance. Reprinted, with a new preface. Basingstoke & New York: Palgrave Macmillan ISBN: 978-0-230-33690-2
June 2009:(Syn)aesthetics - Redefining Visceral Performance.Basingstoke & Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, ISBN:978-0-230-22127-7
August 2012: Ed. with Susan Broadhurst. Identity, Performance and Technology: Practices of empowerment, embodiment and technicity. Palgrave Macmillan. ISBN: 9780230298880
December 2009 (Paperback reprint, Oct 2012): Ed. with Susan Broadhurst. Sensualities/Textualities and Technology: Writings ofthe Body in21st Century Performance. Basingstoke & NY: Palgrave Macmillan, ISBN: 978-0-230-22025-6
October 2006 (Paperback reprint, May 2011): Ed. with Susan Broadhurst. Performance and Technology - Practices of Virtual Embodiment and Interactivity. Basingstoke & NY: Palgrave Macmillan, ISBN: 9781403999078
Forthcoming, 2015: .'Blind(fold)ed by Light in Lundahl & Seitl's Symphony in a Missing Room:' (Working title). Theatre in the Dark (working title) Eds. Adam Alston and Martin Welton. London & New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Forthcoming, 2015: 'Audience improvisation in the Immersive Experience', Oxford Handbook of Improvisation in Dance. Eds. Vida Midgelow and Courtney Hopf. Oxford: OUP.
Forthcoming 2015: 'Immersion, Intimacy and The Pleasure of Being: Washing, Feeding, Holding', Framing Immersive Theatre and Performance: The Politics of Participation. Ed. James Frieze. Basingstoke & New York, Palgrave Macmillan.
Forthcoming, 2015: 'Punchdrunk', British Theatre Companies: Volume 3 1995-present. Volume Editor. Elizabeth Tomlin. Series Editors Graham Saunders and John Bull. London: Methuen Drama (Bloomsbury).
November, 2013: '(Syn)aesthetics and Immersive Theatre: embodied beholding in Lundahl & Seitl's Rotating in a Room of Moving Images', in Affective Performance and Cognitive Science: body, brain and being. Editor. Nicola Shaughnessy. London: Methuen Drama (Bloomsbury).
December, 2013:'Immersed in Illusion, Haunted by History: Marisa Carnesky's Ghost Train' in The Ashgate Research Companion to Sociocultural Studies of the Paranormal. Eds. Professor Sally Munt & Olu Jenzen. London: Ashgate.
October, 2013:'Naomi Wallace and the Politics of Desire' , The Innovative Theatre of Naomi Wallace: Embodied Dialogues. Eds. Erica Stevens Abbitt & Scott Cummings. New York: Palgave Macmillan.
August, 2012: 'Embodied Identities in the work of Marisa Carnesky', Identity, Performance and Technology: Practices of empowerment, embodiment and technicity. Eds. Susan Broadhurst and Josephine Machon. Palgrave Macmillan.
December, 2009: '(Syn)aesthetic Writings: Corporeal Textualities and the Rebirth of Text', Sensualities/Textualities and Technology: Writings ofthe Body in21st Century Performance. Eds. Susan Broadhurst and Josephine Machon.
November 2014. Punchdrunk Enrichment Preliminary Report. Report authored by Josephine Machon and Charlotte Thompson. Principal researchers: Josephine Machon, Nicola Stammers, Charlotte Thompson (Theatre Arts, School of Media & Performing Arts, Middlesex University). Commissioned by Pete Higgin, Director of Punchdrunk Enrichment. Available from Punchdrunk on request: http://punchdrunk.com/enrichment
May 2007: 'Space and the Senses: the (syn)aesthetics of Punchdrunk's site-sympathetic work', Body, Space, & Technology. Volume 8. Brunel University Centre for Contemporary and Digital Performance. ISSN: 1470-9120. URL: http://people.brunel.ac.uk/bst/vol08/home.html
October 1999: with Paul Woodward. 'Do you know what we mean? The Documentary Body as the bridge between Arts and Social Sciences', Not all the time . . .but mostly. Nottingham: Nottingham Trent University. ISBN: 0-905488-59-8
March, 2011: 'Review: 'Entangled: Technology and the Transformation of Performance by Chris Salter', Foreword by Peter Sellars' in Contemporary Theatre Review. Print ISSN: 1048-6801. Online ISSN: 1477-2264
May 2009: 'Engaging Audiences – a cognitive approach to spectating in the theatre' by Bruce McConachie, 2008' in Participations – Journal of Audience and Reception Studies. Volume 6, Issue 1. ISSN 1749-8716
2001: Interactive CD-ROM article: 'to Deliver Us from (Syn)aesthetics', Flesh & Text: Far Ahead Publications. ISBN: 1-84233057-8.
June 2013, 'Immersive, Immediate, Intimate: Punchdrunk'. Punchdrunk's The Drowned Man Programme Note, Temple Studios, London Street, Paddington, London. Produced in association with The National Theatre. July 2013 - present.
June 2013. 'Punchdrunk's The Borough: Stand curious in a dream and hear those voices that will not be drowned…' Sixty-sixth Aldeburgh Festival of Music and the Arts 7-23 June 2013. Produced in association with Aldeburgh Music.
November 5 2014:. Keynote paper. Space and Place in Immersive Theatre Central St. Martins, Granary Building, Kings Cross.
July 12 2014: Audio-installation keynote paper.' Blind(fold)ed by Light in Lundahl & Seitl's Symphony in a Missing Room: Thinking Out Loud in the Dark', Theatre in the Dark. One day symposium, University of Surrey, SeedPOD Nodus Centre.
October 9 2013 'A conversation about theatre as conversation' with Gareth White. Royal Central School of Speech & Drama, University of London. Co-hosted by the Theatre Applied: Centre for Research in Performance & Social Practice
18 May 2013: Panel Chair and Plenary Speaker. ON COLLABORATION II – The Politics of Collaboration Symposium, Middlesex University, Hendon.
April 25 2013: Keynote 'On being Immersed'; and Guest speaker: Adrian Howells & Josephine Machon in conversation', Theatre Studies Research Seminar Series, Gilmorehill Centre, University of Glasgow.
March 15 2013: '(Syn)aesthetics and Performance: The (Syn)aesthetics of Lundahl & Seitl's Rotating in a Room of Images' Hosyed by The Resaerch Centre for Cognition, Kinesthetics & Performance, Studio 2, Jarman Building, University of Kent, Canterbury.
November 30 2012: Keynote, 'Immersive Theatres - intimacy and immediacy in contemporary performance', Performance and Immersion Research Symposium, Alec Clegg Studio, University of Leeds.
December 8-9 2011: Plenary paper, 'Immersed in Illusion: Marisa Carnesky's Ghost Train', Staging Illusion: Digital and Cultural Fantasy, International Conference, University of Sussex.
October 2010: Keynote, 'Performance, Communication and the Environment' at the Energy Efficiency and Sustainability in Practice Symposium: Brunel University's Institute for The Environment and Sustainability.
Machon, Josephine (2019) Audience improvisation in the immersive experience: the sensuous world of the body in the work of Lundahl & Seitl. In: Oxford Handbook of Improvisation in Dance. Midgelow, Vida L. , ed. Oxford Handbooks . Oxford University Press. ISBN 9780199396986 (Accepted/In press)
Machon, Josephine , ed. (2018) The Punchdrunk encyclopaedia. Routledge, London. ISBN 9781138556782
Machon, Josephine (2017) The aesthetics of immersion in Punchdrunk's The Drowned Man: A Hollywood Fable. In: Live Cinema: Cultures, Economies, Aesthetics. Atkinson, Sarah and Kennedy, Helen W. , eds. Bloomsbury Academic, London, pp. 219-230. ISBN 9781501324833
Machon, Josephine and Lundahl, Christer and Seitl, Martina (2017) Missing rooms and unknown clouds: darkness and illumination in the work of Lundahl & Seitl. In: Theatre in the Dark: Shadow, Gloom and Blackout in Contemporary Theatre. Alston, Adam and Welton, Martin , eds. Methuen Drama Engage . Bloomsbury Methuen Drama, London, pp. 147-168. ISBN 9781474251181
Machon, Josephine (2016) Watching, attending, sense-making: spectatorship in immersive theatres. Journal of Contemporary Drama in English , 4 (1). pp. 34-48. ISSN 2195-0156
Editorial and External Involvement:
Joint Editor Palgrave Studies in Performance and Technology Series:http://www.palgrave.com/products/SearchResults.aspx?s=PSPT&fid=9267
Editorial Board for the International Journal of Performance Arts and Digital Media: http:// http://www.intellectbooks.co.uk/journals/view-Journal,id=120/view,page=3/
Ediitorial Board for Body, Space & Technology: http:// http://www.brunel.ac.uk/bst
Member of the Trustees for Punchdrunk's Executive Board: http:// http://www.punchdrunk.com
Director of the Board for Marisa Carnesky Productions: http:// http://carneskystarotdrome.com/marisa.html
