Rate My Professor Russell Fewster

Dr Russell Fewster is a Lecturer in Performing Arts at Adelaide University, within the College of Creative Arts, Design and Humanities, associated with the Elder Conservatorium of Music and School of Performing Arts. He trained at the Ecole Jacques Lecoq in Paris in the early 1980s, earned a Masters by Research in rehearsal decision making from the Centre for Performance Studies at the University of Sydney in 2000, and completed his PhD examining the use of video in performance through the University of Melbourne in 2010. Fewster has directed theatre for nearly 40 years, working with professional actors, students, young people, artists who identify with a disability, and the socially disadvantaged. In the 1990s, he assisted Jacques Lecoq, Monica Pagneux, and Philippe Gaulier, establishing his methodology in play, complicité, and physical-based theatre. He has worked extensively in Japan, adapting and directing The Glass Rabbit by Toshiko Takagi in 1999, and co-producing and directing the world English-language premiere of The Lost Babylon by Takeshi Kawamura in 2006 for the Adelaide Fringe Festival in collaboration with Tokyo-based T-Factory. Other key productions include Perish the Thought by Susan Harris in 2012, his promenade adaptation of Bram Stoker’s Dracula: Nosferatu The Undead in 2014 for the Adelaide Cabaret Fringe, and the Australian premiere of the opera Six Swans in 2015, a collaboration between the University of South Australia and Tutti Arts. He delivered an arts workshop program for the Soldier Recovery Centre in 2019.

Fewster's research specializations include directing for the stage, physical theatre, new media performance, community theatre, opera, Japanese theatre, verbatim/political theatre, and film production. His pedagogy is framed within industry frameworks through professionally simulated environments and partnerships with the State Theatre Company of South Australia and Tutti Arts, with mise-en-scène emphasizing the actor supported by minimalist design and well-integrated video. Widely published, his key journal articles encompass 'A playwright in exile: Mammad Aidani' in Australasian Drama Studies (2023), 'Applied theatre for military personnel in recovery: creativity, agency, and re-imagining the self' with Brad West in Research in Drama Education (2023), 'LIVENESS IN THE DIGITAL AGE: PERFORMANCE CASE STUDIES' with Geordie Brookman and Robin Chew in Australasian Drama Studies (2021), 'Staging David Hicks' in Australasian Drama Studies (2014), and 'Performing Baal' in Studies in Theatre and Performance (2015). Notable book chapters include 'Presence' in Mapping Intermediality in Performance (2025), 'Memories bind us together: staging dementia' in The Routledge Companion to Criticality in Art, Architecture, and Design (2019), and 'Instance: The Lost Babylon (Adelaide Fringe Festival 2006)' in Mapping Intermediality in Performance (2010). He coordinates courses such as State Theatre Master Class and Television Performance, is eligible to supervise Masters and PhD students, and is available for media comment.