Margaret Coldiron, Tutor in World Performance and Movement
Margaret Coldiron is from Butte, Montana
Margaret Coldiron is a theatre director, performer, teacher and a specialist in Asian performance and masks. After taking a degree in English and Comparative Literature at William Smith College, she trained as an actress at the Drama Centre, London and performed with various companies in the US and UK including San Francisco Repertory, Actors' Ark and the National Shakespeare Company. She has taught and directed for a number of professional actor-training programmes including the American Conservatory Theatre, University of Missouri-Kansas City, East 15, Mountview, Arts Ed., Central School of Speech and Drama and the Drama Centre, London (where she was Vice- Principal from 1989-93.) She has an MA in Text and Performance Studies from King's College and RADA and a PhD in Drama from Royal Holloway.
She has studied Topeng masked dance drama and mask carving in Bali and has worked with Japanese Noh masters Matsui Akira (Kita school), Umewaka Naohiko (Kanze school) and Michishige Udaka (Kongoh school). She has also undertaken extensive fieldwork on masked performance in India, Sri Lanka and Thailand. From 2006-2009 she was part of the AHRC research project on The Body and the Mask in Ancient Theatre Space working with master performers and reconstructed ancient Greco-Roman masks in virtual ancient spaces (www.kvl.cch.kcl.ac.uk/masks/index.html ).
Since 1997 she has been Associate Director of Thiasos, a theatre company specialising in intercultural productions of ancient Greek plays, which has toured in the UK, US and Cyprus (www.thiasos.co.uk).
Publications include: Trance and Transformation of the Masked Actor in Japanese Noh and Balinese Dance Drama (Edwin Mellen Press, 2004), Who's Who in Contemporary World Theatre (Routledge, 2000), the Encyclopedia of Asian Theatre (Greenwood Press, 2007) and various articles and reviews in Asian Theatre Journal, Indonesia and the Malay World, New Theatre Quarterly, Women and Performance, Puppet Notebook, Seleh Notes and the online journals Consciousness, Literature and the Arts and Didaskalia.
Dr. Coldiron plays with LIla Cita Balinese Gamelan Ensemble and performs with Lila Bhawa Dance Troupe; she is a member of the Directors Guild of Great Britain and a Fellow of the Royal Asiatic Society.
