Dr Alexander Kelly

Alex is Reader in Theatre & Performance and has been with Performing Arts at Leeds Beckett since the start of its first course in 2006. He is theatre maker, performer, storyteller, game maker, writer and mentor, and tours throughout the UK and internationally. He is artistic associate of Lisbon-based international collective Má-Criação. From 1995-2023 he was Co-Artistic Director of the Sheffield-based theatre company Third Angel, with whom he created performances that connected the fields of theatre, live art, film & video, durational performance, conversation and digital media. Recent projects with Third Angel include The Desire Paths, 600 People, The Department of Distractions and The Distraction Agents.

Alex has taught at numerous Universities across the UK, and has also taught for Third Angel at the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation in Lisbon. He regularly mentors other artists and companies with Third Angel and through his role at Leeds Beckett. Recently this has included working with Vandal Factory, Yolanda Mercy, Holly Gallagher, Natalie Wong, Jack Dean, John Wilkinson, Lapelle’s Factory, RashDash, Daniel Bye, Ellie Harrison and Action Hero, making Equations for a Moving Body and A Conversation With My Father with Hannah Nicklin and mentoring Raquel Castro’s Turma de 95 (based on Third Angel’s Class of ’76).

Alex has recently published writing and drawing about Third Angel's work in There’s A Room: Three Performance Texts by Third Angel (Oberon, 2019), The Twenty First Century Performance Reader (Brayshaw, Fenemore & Witts, Eds., Routledge, 2019), Pinchbeck & Westerside’s Staging Loss (Palgrave MacMillan 2018), the Contemporary Theatre Review, Performance Research journal volumes Staging The Wreckage (2019), On Value (2013) and On Foot (2012), as well as co-creating the artists' book The Dust Archive with Annie Lloyd.