Hull Born & Based

Wayne Steven Jackson is an award-winning artist, lecturer, workshop facilitator, writer, and collaborator. He began making theatre in 2004 as co-founder of Escape but is now best known for his solo performance work. Through performance and writing, he explores autobiographical experience and the vulnerability of memory as a way to map, challenge, and document social change.

His theatrical work frequently exploits and experiments with technology as a second performer, to represent voices that are, for a number of reasons, not present. This intermedial approach allows him to examine absence, care, and the shifting architectures of family and identity. His practice has been supported by hÅb, and previously greenroom (Manchester), through Method Lab and Works Ahead, and Arts Council England.

Jackson’s 2019 doctoral research investigated the performance of memory in relation to placemaking, focusing on his home city of Hull during its year as UK City of Culture in 2017. This research culminated in the critically acclaimed Now|Then, which combined autobiographical material, digital media, and documentary strategies to explore how cities remember and forget.

He is a published academic and has presented his research on theatre, performance, and memory nationally and internationally, including at the Theatre and Performance Research Association (TaPRA), Queen’s University Belfast, and NCTE’s Assembly for Research in Birmingham, Alabama.

Jackson is currently Senior Lecturer at The Arden School of Theatre in Manchester, having previously served as Head of Theatre and Performance (TaP), where he trains creative performers to make postmodern, innovative, and evocative new work.