Emeritus Professor Joanne Tompkins
Professor of Theatre Studies & Emeritus Professor
School of Communication and Arts
+61 7 336 54935
Researcher biography
Professor Joanne Tompkins is currently seconded to the Australian Research Council as Executive Director of the Humanities and Creative Arts panel, for a period of three years (until 2019).
Her research interests include spatial theories and virtual reality; post-colonial, intercultural, and multicultural drama, literature, and theory; performance theories; and feminist performance.
Her current research includes 3D visualisation and modelling of theatre spaces; the spatial theory of heterotopia; space in Australian and Canadian theatre; database of Australian performance; multicultural theories and drama, and intercultural performance.
She is the author of articles on: Spatial theory and virtual reality; post-colonial, multicultural, and intercultural drama and theory; Australian drama and literature and Canadian drama;
She is author of: Theatre's Heterotopias: Space and the Analysis of Performance. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014; and Unsettling Space: Contestations in Contemporary Australian Theatre. Basingstoke: Palgrave/Macmillan, 2006.
She is co-author of: A Global Doll's House: Ibsen and Distant Visions. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016 (with Julie Holledge, Frode Helland and Jonathan Bollen); Women's Intercultural Performance, Routledge, 2000 (with Julie Holledge); and Post-colonial Drama: Theory, Practice, Politics, Routledge, 1996 (with Helen Gilbert).
She is editor of: Theatre Journal, "Space and the Geographics of Theatre," a special issue of Modern Drama, 2004; "Theatre and the Canadian Imaginary," a special issue of Australasian Drama Studies, 1996.
She is co-editor of: Performing Site-Specific Theatre: Politics, Place, Practice, Palgrave Macmillan, 2012 (with Anna Birch); Site-Specificity and Mobility, a Special Issue of Contemporary Theatre Review 2012 (with Anna Birch); Performance and Design, a special issue of Australasian Drama Studies (with Andrew Filmer and Miranda Heckenberg) 2012;Modern Drama: Defining the Field, University of Toronto Press, 2003 (with Ric Knowles and WB Worthen); Modern Drama 1999-2005; Performing Women / Performing Feminisms: Interviews with International Women Playwrights (with Julie Holledge).
Publications
Books
Holledge, Julie, Bollen, Jonathan, Helland, Frode and Tompkins, Joanne (2016). A global doll's house: Ibsen and distant visions. London: Palgrave Macmillan. doi: 10.1057/978-1-137-43899-7
Tompkins, Joanne (2014). Theatre's heterotopias: performance and the cultural politics of space. Sydney, NSW, Australia: Palgrave Macmillan. doi: 10.1057/9781137362124
Tompkins, Joanne E. (2006). Unsettling Space: Contestations in Contemporary Australian Theatre. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. doi: 10.1057/9780230286245
Holledge, J. and Tompkins, J. E. (2000). Women's Intercultural Performance. London: Routledge.
Book Chapters
Tompkins, Joanne (2017). Teaching spatial theory and theatre ‘site-specifically’. International Performance Research Pedagogies: Towards an Unconditional Discipline?. (pp. 163-174) edited by Sruti Bala, Milija Gluhovic, Hanna Korsberg and Kati Röttger. Cham, Switzerland: Springer International Publishing. doi: 10.1007/978-3-319-53943-0_12
Tompkins, Joanne (2014). Making the invisible visible: virtual stage props and Christopher Marlowe's Dr Faustus. Performing objects and theatrical things. (pp. 161-172) edited by Marlis Schweitzer and Joanne Zerdy. Basingstoke, Hampshire, United Kingdom: Palgrave Macmillan. doi: 10.1057/9781137402455
Tompkins, Joanne (2013). Noëlle Janaczewska’s twenty-first-century theatre: explorations of Australian cultural constructs and theatrical form. Catching Australian theatre in the 2000s. (pp. 207-220) edited by Richard Fotheringham and James Smith. Amsterdam, Netherlands: Rodopi.
Delbridge, Matthew and Tompkins, Joanne (2012). Reproduction, mediation, and experience : virtual reality, motion capture and early modern theatre. SPACE–EVENT–AGENCY–EXPERIENCE: open access epublication of the DREX Project Centre for Practice as Research in Theatre. (pp. 56-65) Tampere, Finland: University of Tampere.
Tompkins, Joanne (2012). The 'Place' and practice of site-specific theatre and performance. Performing site-specific theatre: politics, place, practice. (pp. 1-17) edited by Anna Birch and Joanne Tompkins. Houndmills, Basingstoke, United Kingdom: Palgrave Macmillan. doi: 10.1057/9781137283498
Tompkins, Joanne (2010). Balancing the 'Local' and the 'Global' in theatre for the international stage: The stage adaptation of David Malouf's Johnno. The local meets the global in performance. (pp. 81-98) edited by Pirkko Koski and Melissa Sihra. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.
Tompkins, Joanne (2010). Spatiality and contaminated land: Staging Maralinga. Halfway house the poetics of Australian spaces. (pp. 310-319) edited by Jennifer Rutherford and Barbara Holloway. Crawley, W.A., Australia: UWA.
Harvey, Neal, Grehan, Helena and Tompkins, Joanne (2009). AusStage: From database of performing arts to a performing database of the arts. Resourceful reading: The new empiricism, eResearch and Australian literary culture. (pp. 325-333) edited by Katherine Bode and Robert Dixon. Sydney, Australia: Sydney University Press.
Tompkins, Joanne (2009). Staging the imagined city in Australian theatre. Performance and the city. (pp. 187-203) edited by D. J. Hopkins, Shelley Orr and Kim Solga. UK: Palgrave Macmillan.
Tompkins, Joanne (2008). Landscapes and Soundscapes in Noelle Janaczewska's Theatre. Songket; This territory/two plays by Noëlle Janaczewska. (pp. ix-xiv) edited by Noelle Janaczewska. Strawberry Hills, Sydney, N.S.W: Currency Press.
Tompkins, Joanne (2007). Performing history's unsettlement. Critical theory and performance. (pp. 71-84) edited by J. Reinelt and J. Roach. Ann Arbor, Michigan, U.S.A.: The University of Michigan Press.
Tompkins, Joanne (2006). The Shape of a Life: Constructing the ‘Self’ and ‘Other’ in Joan MacLeod’s The Shape of a Girl and Guillermo Verdecchia and Marcus Youssef’s A Line in the Sand. Theatre and autobiography: Writing and Performing Lives in Theory and Practice. (pp. 124-136) edited by Sherrill Grace and Jerry Wasserman. Penticton, British Columbia: Talonbooks.
Tompkins, Joanne (2006). Gendering space: The desert and the psyche in contemporary Australian theatre. Feminist Futures? Theatre, Performance, Theory. (pp. 190-208) edited by Elaine Aston and Geraldine Harris. New York, N.Y, United States: Palgrave Macmillan.
Harvey, N. A. and Tompkins, J. E. (2006). Virtual reality and negotiating problems of real theater space. Mapping Uncertain Territories: Space and Place in Contemporary Theater and Drama. (pp. 169-178) edited by T. Rommel and M. Schreiber. Germany: Wissenschaftlicher Verlag Trier.
Tompkins, J. E. (2006). Counter-monumentalising and Janis Balodis's The Ghost Trilogy. Unstable Ground: Performance and the Politics of Place. (pp. 81-93) edited by McAuley, Gay. Berlin: P.I.E. Peter Lang.
Tompkins, Joanne (2005). Conflicting fields of vision: Performing self and other in two intercultural Shakespeare productions. A companion to Shakespeare and performance. (pp. 610-624) edited by Barbara Hodgdon and W. B. Worthen. Oxford: Blackwell. doi: 10.1002/9780470996706.ch33
Tompkins, Joanne (2003). Yellow Fever, Yellow Claw, Yellow Peril: Performing the Fantasy of the. Performing National Identities: International Perspectives on Contemporary Canadian Theatre. (pp. 289-302) edited by Grace, Sherrill and Glaap, Albert-Reiner. Vancouver, Canada: Talonbooks.
Tompkins, J. E. (2001). "Fatherlands and Mother-tongues": Family Histories and Futures in Recent Australian and Canadian Multicultural Theatre. Siting the Other. (pp. 347-362) edited by M. Maufort and F. Bellarsi. Brussels: P.I.E.-Peter Lang.
Journal Articles
Bollen, Jonathan, Holledge, Julie and Tompkins, Joanne (2021). Putting virtual theatre models to work: ‘virtual praxis’ for performance research in theatre history. Theatre and Performance Design, 7 (1-2), 6-23. doi: 10.1080/23322551.2021.1925469
Tompkins, Joanne (2020). Roger Clegg, principal investigator, and Eric Tatham, developer. Reconstructing the Rose: 3D Computer Modelling Philip Henslowe’s Playhouse. Other. Renaissance and Reformation, 43 (1), 177-180.
Tompkins, Joanne and Kastanis, Lazaros (2017). Staging supernatural creatures in a computer-based visualisation of London’s sixteenth-century Rose Theatre. International Journal of Performance Arts and Digital Media, 13 (1), 1-17. doi: 10.1080/14794713.2017.1280306
Tompkins, Joanne (2015). Editorial comment: possible worlds. Theatre Journal, 67 (2), ix-xi. doi: 10.1353/tj.2015.0036
Delgado, Maria M. and Tompkins, Joanne (2015). Editing matters: an editorial. Contemporary Theatre Review, 25 (1), 11-16. doi: 10.1080/10486801.2015.1007759
Tompkins, Joanne (2013). National Performance: Representing Quebec from Expo 67 to Celine Dion. By Erin Hurley.. Theatre Survey, 54 (1), 141-143. doi: 10.1017/S0040557412000452
Tompkins, Joanne (2013). Ros Merkin, ed. "Liverpool Playhouse: A Theatre and Its City". Modern Drama, 56 (3), 416-417. doi: 10.1353/mdr.2013.0034
Tompkins, Joanne (2013). Performing ghosts in Australia: Ibsen and an example of Australian cultural translation. Ibsen Studies, 13 (1), 2-27. doi: 10.1080/15021866.2013.792663
Tompkins, Joanne (2012). Theatre's heterotopia and the site-specific production of Suitcase. TDR, 56 (2), 101-112. doi: 10.1162/DRAM_a_00169
Tompkins, Joanne (2011). Site-specific theatre and political engagement across space and time: The psychogeographic mapping of British Petroleum in Platform's And While London Burns. Theatre Journal, 63 (2), 225-243. doi: 10.1353/tj.2011.0048
Harvey, Neal, Grehan, Helena and Tompkins, Joanne (2010). 'Be thou familiar, but by no means vulgar': Australian theatre blogging practice. Contemporary Theatre Review, 20 (1), 109-119. doi: 10.1080/10486800903225626
Tomkins, Joanne (2010). The politics of locating Othello in Finland. Nordic Theatre Studies, 22, 20-29.
Tompkins, Joanne E. (2009). Staging International Feminisms. Edited by Elaine Aston and Sue-Ellen Case. Contemporary Theatre Review, 19 (1 Special Issue: The Broadway Musical: New Approaches), 118-119. doi: 10.1080/10486800802556444
Tompkins, Joanne (2009). The politics of location in Othello, Djanet Sears's Harlem Duet, and Ong Keng Sen's Desdemona. Contemporary Theatre Review, 19 (3), 269-278. doi: 10.1080/10486800902985881
Tompkins, Joanne (2009). Review: Impact of the Modern: Vernacular Modernities in Australia 1870s-1960s edited by Robert Dixon and Veronica Kelly. Contemporary Theatre Review, 19 (3), 372-374. doi: 10.1080/10486800903000151
Tompkins, Joanne (2009). Urban entanglements in three African Canadian plays: Lorena Gale's Angelique, George Boyd's Consecrated Ground, and Andrew Moodie's Riot. Theatre Research in Canada, 30 (1-2), 17-36.
Tompkins, Joanne (2008). Adapting Australian novels for the stage: La Boite Theatre's versions of Last Drinks, Perfect Skin, and Johnno. Australian Literary Studies, 23 (3), 305-317.
Tompkins, Joanne (2007). Review: Staging social welfare. Canadian Literature: A Quarterly of Criticism and Review (193), 112-115.
Tompkins, J. E. (2006). Remember the nation: Lorena Gale's Je me souviens. Canadian Theatre Review, 125, 56-61.
Harvey, N. and Tompkins, J. (2005). Theoretical methodologies and the advent of virtual analytical tools in theatre. Contemporary Theatre Review, 15 (4), 455-469. doi: 10.1080/10486800500280479
Tompkins, J. E. (2004). Review: The semiotics of theatre and drama, second edition by Keir Elam. Australasian Drama Studies, 44, 146-148.
Tompkins, J. E. (2004). Directing and producing theatre with the help of virtual reality. Scenography International (7), 1-5.
Tompkins, Joanne (2003). Canadian Theatre and Memorializing: Memorializing and counter-memorializing in The Death of General Wolfe, Angélique and Sled. Canadian Theatre Review (115), 5-11.
Tompkins, J. (2003). Space and the geographies of theatre: Introduction. Modern Drama, 46 (4), 537-541. doi: 10.3138/md.46.4.537
Tompkins, Joanne E. (2002). Review of the Haunted Stage: The Theatre as Memory Machine. Etudes Théatrales/Essays in Theatre, 20 (2), 157-158.
Tompkins, J (2001). 'Homescapes' and identity reformations in Australian multicultural drama. Theatre Research International, 26 (1), 47-59. doi: 10.1017/S0307883301000050
Tompkins, J. E. (2001). Modern: Drama (defining the field), Part II. Modern Drama, 44 (1), 1-2.
Tompkins, J. E. (2001). Teaching Canadian Plays in Australia. Canadian Theatre Review, 105 (Winter), 27-28.
Tompkins, J. E. (2000). The Drama of South Africa, by Loren Kruger. Australasian Drama Studies, 37 (October), 124-126.
Tompkins, J. E. (1999). Review of Humphrey Bower, Adaptor, Natural Life. Australasian Drama Studies, 35 (October), 186-189.
Conference Papers
Tompkins, Joanne (2011). The use of virtual reality models in capturing the spatiality of early modern venues. 9th World Shakespeare Congress 2011, Prague, Czech Republic, 17-22 July, 2011.
Tompkins, Joanne and Erskine, Shona (2009). BoF: AusStage and the Aus-e-Stage Project: Collaborative eResearch in the performing arts. eResearch Australasia 2009, Sydney, Australia, 9 - 13 November, 2009. Brisbane, Queensland, Australia: The University of Queensland.
Tompkins, Joanne and Delbridge, Matt (2009). Using virtual reality modelling in cultural management, archiving and research. EVA 2009 London Conference, London, UK, 6-8 July 2009. Swindon, UK: British Informatics Society.
Tompkins, Joanne (2009). Virtual recreations of historical theatres: How VR meets theatre history. eResearch Australasia 2009, Sydney, Australia, 9 - 13 November 2009. Brisbane, Queensland, Australia: The University of Queensland.
Reference Entry
Tompkins, J. E. (2002). James Reaney.