Paola Botham

Senior Lecturer in Drama

Email:: paola.botham@bcu.ac.uk

Dr Paola Botham (née Sotomayor) is a theatre academic who specialises in modern and contemporary drama. She was born in Chile, where she studied Journalism and Aesthetics at Universidad Católica, ranked among the top higher education institutions in Latin America. After moving to the UK, she completed an MA in British Theatre Studies and a PhD in Drama and Performance. She is a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy with extensive teaching experience.

Paola’s research focuses on political theatre practices in Britain and internationally (particularly in the Southern Cone). Her publications include chapters on the feminist dystopian play for Twenty-First Century Anxieties (2022), on the contemporary history play for Twenty-First Century Drama (2016) and on tribunal theatre for Political Performances (2009), as well as numerous articles. As a former convenor of the Political Performances working group at the International Federation for Theatre Research (IFTR), she co-edited the volume World Political Theatre and Performance: Theories, Histories, Practices (2020). In 2023 she became co-convenor of IFTR’s Interdisciplinary Performative Pedagogies working group.

Areas of Expertise

Qualifications

Memberships

Teaching

Research

Postgraduate Supervision

Publications

Books

World Political Theatre and Performance: Theories, Histories, Practices, co-edited with Mireia Aragay and José Ramón Prado-Pérez. Leiden: Brill Rodopi, 2020.

Trabajar por la Palabra (with M. Isabel Infante and M. Eugenia Letelier), 3 vols. Santiago de Chile: Mineduc, 1999.

Book chapters

'Towards a Genealogy of the British Feminist Dystopian Play’. Twenty-First Century Anxieties: Dys/Utopian Spaces and Contexts in Contemporary British Theatre. Eds. Merle Tönnies and Eckart Voigts. Berlin / Boston: De Gruyter, 2022. 57-72.

‘Contemporary (Debates on) Political Theatre: An Introduction’. World Political Theatre and Performance: Theories, Histories, Practices. Eds. Mireia Aragay, Paola Botham and José Ramón Prado-Pérez. Leiden: Brill Rodopi, 2020. 117-129.

‘The Twenty-First Century History Play’. Twenty-First Century Drama: What Happens Now. Eds. Siân Adiseshiah and Louise LePage. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016. 85-115.

Caryl Churchill. Modern British Playwriting: The 1970s. Ed. Chris Megson. London: Methuen, 2012. 99-122.

Witnesses in the Public Sphere: Bloody Sunday and the Redefinition of Political Theatre". Political Performances: Theory and Practice. Eds. Susan C. Haedicke, Deirdre Heddon, Avraham Oz, and E.J. Westlake. Amsterdam: Rodopi Press, 2009. 35-53.

Journal articles

‘“Look at the Ground and Imagine its Past”: David Greig’s History Plays’, Contemporary Theatre Review 26.1 (2016): 49-59.

‘Contemporary Testimonial Theatre in Chile: Ethical and Aesthetic Dilemmas’, Nuestra América 10 (2016): 193-204.

'Howard Brenton and the Improbable Revival of the Brechtian History Play'. JCDE: Journal of Contemporary Drama in English 2.1 (2014): 170-184.

'Far Away: Caryl Churchill's Socialist-Feminist Dystopia'. Revista Chilena de Literatura 83 (2013): 161-175.

'Spider Girls in Santiago and Glasgow'. Contemporary Theatre Review 22.4 (2012): 526-535.

'From Deconstruction to Reconstruction: A Habermasian Framework for Contemporary Political Theatre'. Contemporary Theatre Review 18.3 (2008): 307-317.

'Beyond the Anger and the Barking: Modernity and Identity in 1950’s Chilean and English Theatre'. Cátedra de Artes 1 (2005): 59-79.

'Contra la Ausencia: Análisis del Cuento “Génesis”, de Ana María del Río'. Cuadernos de Estética 1, 'Género en el Relato Femenino Chileno Contemporáneo' (1996): 73-88.

Book reviews

Review of Restaging Feminisms, by Elaine Aston (Palgrave Macmillan, 2020). JCDE 10.1 (2022): 247-251.

Review of Latina/o Canadian Theatre and Performance, ed. by Natalie Alvarez (Playwrights Canada Press, 2013). JCDE 6.2 (2018): 378-81.

Review of The Theatre of Timberlake Wertenbaker, by Sophie Bush (Bloomsbury, 2013). Theatre Notebook 70.2 (2016): 148-49.

Review of The Theatre of David Greig, by Clare Wallace (Bloomsbury, 2013). Theatre Notebook 69.1 (2015): 64-65.

Review of Theatre and Humanism in a World of Violence, edited by Ian Herbert and Kalina Stefanova. Theatre Notebook 64.2 (2010): 119-20.