Ric Allsopp is co-founder, with Richard Gough and Claire MacDonald, and joint editor of Performance Research, an international journal of contemporary performance published by Routledge, Taylor & Francis. He has also been Reader in Performance Research at Manchester Metropolitan University. He is a co-founder, with Scott deLahunta, of Writing Research Associates, an international partnership organising, promoting and publishing contemporary performance projects. He has been involved in the Performance Writing course at Dartington College of Arts since its inception in 1994 and was Director of Writing from 2001-2004. He is currently coordinator of the Masters in Choreography at HZTZ7 University of the Arts in Berlin and visiting lecturer at ArtEZ in Arnhem, Netherlands.

"The relationship between writing and performance – the uses and applications of various practices of writing for performance under the historical headings of theatre, music, poetry, literature – has traditionally been resolved with a range of conventional forms (not without problems): the theatrical script, the libretto, the lyric. Recently the study of these forms has become separated from the study of their representation. Even contemporary work on the material nature of writing, influenced by deconstructivist philosophy and literary theory, has limited itself to the page. Writing that goes beyond the page has been neglected and marginalised in considering the links between writing and performance. At the end of the 20th Century, however, we are surrounded by examples and working models that connect performance to writing. In short, the conventional (and often un-questioned) relationships between writing and performance prove inadequate as inter-disciplinary and multi-disciplinary artistic practices emerge in response to rapidly changing cultures."

http://www.performance-research.net/