State of the discipline

This article introduces the ‘discipline’ of theatre and performance in the United Kingdom, tracing the field through a consideration of how class operates both within existing theory emerging from the discipline and to structure the Higher Education institutions where study takes place. It argues that although a significant body of theatre and performance studies scholarship has recently turned to class, a lack of engagement with existing class scholarship both with and beyond the field limits the scope of analysis. The final part of this article offers an edited transcript of the accompanying podcast Class in UK Theatre and Performance , which can be found on in the supplementary materials tab of this issue. In that podcast theatre and performance scholars Sylvan Baker, Gemma Edwards and Trish Reid discuss their understanding of the ways that class circulates within and is relevant for the theatre and performance discipline.