Francesca Leighton

Francesca Leighton is a performance maker and lecturer. She uses performance as a tool to raise awareness, inform, educate and sometimes instigate change. Her specialist areas include feminist performance and sexuality in performance. She also has experience of devising performance, working on site-specific projects and making work with and for learning disabled adults.

She trained in physical theatre at the Jacques Lecoq School in Paris and the Phillipe Gaullier School in London, has an MA in Contemporary Theatre Practice from Lancaster University where she wrote her thesis on Theatre in Prisons and a PhD from University of Worcester which researched disability and performance through practice. She is currently a Lecturer on the BA (Hons) Applied Performance (Community and Education) Programme at Birmingham School of Acting.

In Addis Ababa, Francesca formed and led over forty two-hour, drama workshops with a multi-cultural group of over twenty adults culminating in three experimental performances, Encounters l, Encounters ll: Love is Strange and Encounters lll: Carnivale. Francesca also formed and ran the Lion Club for under privileged children. The aim of the club was to teach the basics of English and to use drama to practice life skills. The Lion Club produced an information show for Plant Locally And Nurture Trees, a group involved in reforestation, and took the show into four secondary schools in the Addis Ababa area.

The younger children were subsequently involved in The Jungle Story, and the older children produced The Tree That Holds Up the Sky. For ten years, Francesca organised and facilitated theatre with learning disabled adults, Dreamcatcher. They devised BluYesBlu, Looking at Things Trilogy -1: The Art Gallery, 2: The Theatre, 3: The Woods, This is My Life, Daniel’s Diary, Footprints, Next Door and A Night at the Theatre for public performance. Dreamcatcher performed in various venues in Hereford and Worcester.

With Shooting Stars, 7-10 year olds, Francesca devised two shows, Different Drums and The Aliens Have Landed and with children from St. John Hellins Primary School she devised Boxing Day, about sending boxes to Bosnia and a show about the environment, The Day of the Dolphins. As a founder and member of Spare Bones, Francesca co-devised and performed in A Stab in the Dark for World AIDS Week, Keep Still, Phil for MK AD/HD Support Group and Black & Blues, about domestic violence for Thames Valley police.

She has devised/directed/performed in over a hundred community/amateur public productions and performed in two English language teaching television series. With a company of University of Worcester Drama and Performance staff and graduates, Norah’s Ark, Francesca co-devised and performed in four feminist shows, including Here, Now, There, Then, which also explored postcolonialism, and The Lost Garden, a show about the environment.

In her youth, Francesca worked for ten years as a teacher of English as a foreign language and has worked in Greece, Italy, Thailand, Ethiopia, and France. She has also taught English for Academic Purposes at the University of Worcester. Francesca is a committed teacher and has taught A Level Theatre Studies for three years and BTEC National Diploma in Performing Arts for a year as well as in four higher education institutions.