Dr Michael Shane Boyle, BA (Duke), PhD (UC Berkeley), FHEA

Profile

I began working in the Drama Department in 2014, after completing my PhD in Performance Studies at UC Berkeley and my BA in English at Duke University. Before moving to London, I held postdoctoral appointments at Stanford University and Harvard University.

I am a member of the University and College Union and was formerly a head steward of UAW 2865.

Undergraduate Teaching

My teaching pays special attention to the institutional and disciplinary conditions that make performance possible. The seminars I run foreground issues of racialisation and economic exploitation as they relate to theatre and art, with a strong emphasis on applying Marxist and queer of colour critical perspectives. I occasionally teach performance practice, and when I do I focus on postdramatic approaches and experimenting with technology.

Each year I tend to convene modules including:

• DRA120: Interventions
• DRA263: Race and Racism in Performance
• DRA273: Culture, Power and Performance
• DRA7713: Disciplines of Live Art

Postgraduate Teaching

I have taught on:

• DRA7103: Research Design
• DRA7713: Disciplines of Live Art

Research

Research Interests:

• Marxism and Political Economy
• Logistics and Supply Chains
• Ecology
• German Performance History
• Activist Performance
• Postdramatic Theatre

Recent and On-Going Research

I am a London-based academic and writer with interests in political economy, art (specifically theatre), and Marxism. Most recently, I wrote the book The Arts of Logistics: Artistic Production in Supply Chain Capitalism (Stanford 2024), which was shortlisted for the Deutscher Memorial Prize, recognizing “the best and most innovative new writing in or about the Marxist tradition.”

Currently, I am finishing a new book called Theatre and Marxism, forthcoming from Bloomsbury/Methuen Drama in 2027. Together with seven colleagues, I am also writing Commercial Performance: The Political Economy of Show Business, forthcoming fron Northwestern University Press.

I have published widely on topics including postdramatic theatre, live art and activist performance, mostly in Germany, the United Kingdom and the United States, including the co-edited collection Postdramatic Theatre and Form (Methuen Bloomsbury 2019).

In 2024-25, I was a Research Fellow at the Käte Hamburger Research Centre (global dis:connect) at Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, where I started research for a project on raw material and the extractive infrastructures that support the art world. Two articles from this project have been published in TDR: The Drama Review (2025) and ASAP/Journal.

I regularly publish reviews and commentaries, most recently on topics including workplace automation, Surrealism and anti-fascism, and the continued relevance of Bertolt Brecht.  

Publications

Books

• with Matt Cornish and Brandon Woolf, eds, Postdramatic Theatre and Form (Bloomsbury Methuen, 2019).
• The Arts of Logistics (Stanford University Press, 2024).

Selected Essays

• “The Workplace Arms Race,” Protean Magazine (2025). (Italian translation here)
• “A Proletarian Problem Play,” in Berta Lask’s Thomas Müntzer, ed. Sam Dolbear (Rab-Rab Press, 2025).
• “Vanishing Acts: The Raw Materialism of Otobong Nkanga and Seba Calfuqueo,” TDR: The Drama Review 69: Special Issue 3: Performance, Possession, and Automation (2025).
• “Blockages,” in Dis:connectivity and Globalisation Concepts, Terms, Practices, ed. Christopher Balme et al. De Gruyter (2025).
• “Contre-Attaque,” Sidecar (March 2025). (Spanish translation here)
• “Brecht’s Scissors,” Sidecar (July 2024).
• “The Point Was to Change It: In Memory of Hans-Thies Lehmann,” Contemporary Theatre Review 33:3 (2023).
• “In Service to Capital: Theater and Marxist Cultural Theory,” in After Marx: Literature, Theory, and Value in the Twenty-First Century, ed. by Colleen Lye and Chris Nealon. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press (2022).
• “Theatrical Proletarians,” in Understanding Marx, Understanding Modernism, ed. by Mark Steven. London: Bloomsbury (2021).
• “Marxist Keywords for Performance,” Journal of Theatre and Dramatic Studies 36:1 (2021). Written with the Performance and Political Economy Research Collective. 
• “Letter from London #5: Nothing Great about Britain,” Commune Magazine, (October 2019).
• “Letter from London #4: Playing Chicken,” Commune Magazine (September 2019).
• “Letter from London #3: Parliamentary LARPING,” Commune Magazine (September 2019).
• “Letter from London #2: Operation Yellowhammer,” Commune Magazine (September 2019).
• “Letter from London #1: Life in the UK,” Commune Magazine (September 2019).
• “Performance and Value: The Work of Theatre in Karl Marx’s Critique of Political Economy,” Theatre Survey 58:1 (2017).
• “Brecht’s Gale: Innovation and Postdramatic Theatre,” Performance Research 21:3 (2016).
• “Container Aesthetics: The Infrastructural Politics of Shunt’s The Boy Climbed Out of his Face,” Theatre Journal 68:1 (2016).
• “That Winter the Wolf Came, by Juliana Spahr,” The Scofield (2015).
• “Hans-Jürgen Krahl: From Critical to Revolutionary Theory,” Viewpoint Magazine (October 2014). Written with Daniel Spaulding.
• “Soldiers, Cops, Imperialists,” Reclamations (February 2014). Written with Katy Fox-Hodess,.
• “Absent Futures: The Ironic Manifesto in an Age of Austerity,” in Manifesto Now! Instructions for Philosophy, Performance, Politics, ed. by Laura Cull and Will Daddario. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press and Intellect Books (2013).
• “High as Finance,” The New Inquiry (April 2013). Written with Joshua Clover.
• “The University and its Lawful Business,” Counterpunch (March 2012). Written with Mattie Armstrong-Price.
• “Thomas Ostermeier’s Othello,” Shakespeare 8:1 (2012).
• “The Criminalization of Dissent: Protest Violence, Activist Performance, and the Curious Case of the VolxTheaterKarawane at the 2001 G-8 Summit,” TDR/The Drama Review 55:4 (2011). Winner of the TDR Student Essay Contest and the Dunbar Ogden Prize in Theatre History.
• “Berlin Cracks down on Squats: The Eviction of Liebig 14,” Counterpunch (February 2011).
• “Privatize Now, Ask Questions Later!! UCMeP’s Unauthorized Performance of Administrative Authority,” South Atlantic Quarterly 110:2 (2011).
• “Play with Authority! Radical Performance and Performative Irony,” in Theorizing Cultural Activism: Practices, Dilemmas and Potentialities, ed. by Begüm Özden Firat and Aylin Kamil. Amsterdam: Rodopi Press (2011).
• “Aura and the Archive: Confronting the Incendiary Fliers of Kommune 1,” in A Tyranny of Documents, ed. by Stephen Johnson (2011).
• “Was verbindet die Galerie ZERO und die O2 World?” in Katalog der Galerie ZERO Berlin: 2003-2009. Berlin: Gallery Zero (2009).

Translations (from German to English)

• Alex Demirovic, "Why Should We Read Althusser (Again)?" Viewpoint Magazine, online.
• Sabine Breitwieser, “Collecting,” In Terms of Performance, ed. by Shannon Jackson and Paula Marincola, online.
• Sabine Breitwieser, “Choreography,” In Terms of Performance, ed. by Shannon Jackson and Paula Marincola, online.
• Hans-Jürgen Krahl, “Philosophy of History and the Authoritarian State,” translated with Daniel Spaulding, Viewpoint Magazine, online.
• Johannes Agnoli, “Theses on the Transformation of Democracy,” translated with Daniel Spaulding, Viewpoint Magazine, online.

See my Queen Mary Research Publications Profile.

Talks, Keynotes, and Conference Contributions (selected)

• With Performance and Political Economy, “Performance and Political Economy Study Day,” Birkbeck University, London.
• With Matt Cornish, J de Leon, Brandon Woolf, “per/FORM/ance: Interdisciplinary Conversations on Form and Theater Today,” NYU Skirball Center, New York.

• With Amy De’Ath, “Anti-Social Reproduction,” The Common House, London.
• With Aylwyn Walsh, “The Arts of Logistics,” Queen Mary University of London.

• 2013-15. Co-Convenor of the Debating Postdramatic Theatre Working Session, American Society for Theater Reseaarch.

Supervision

I would welcome enquiries from prospective doctoral students, especially those interested in: Marxism and performance, the economics of theatre, postdramatic theatre, live art, German performance history, activist and socially-engaged performance.

I am supervising PhD projects in topics including: postdramatic theatre, German performance history, racialisation and theatre institutions, post-Soviet live art, Marxist theories of law and performance, socially engaged art.

Public Engagement

I am interested and active in supporting groups and struggles committed to anti-racist, anti-fascist and worker-led projects.

Currently I am on the board of People's Palace Projects. I was was formerly the chair of the Board of Trustees for Limehouse Townhall Consortium Trust, which oversees the operations for Limehouse Town Hall.

Performance

My research in theatre is closely informed by my various political commitments, many of which have found outlets in performance itself. In the past I have worked as part of performance groups like the UC Movement for Efficient Privatization and the Clandestine Insurgent Rebel Clown Army. In addition, I have experience as a director, dramaturge, and playwright.