Dr Molly Flynn

Overview

Biography

Molly Flynn is a Lecturer on the BA Theatre & Drama and BA Theatre Studies & English, MA Text and Performance, and MA Dramaturgy programmes.

Her primary research is on twenty-first-century Russian and Ukrainian theatre, with a particular focus on documentary forms and political performance practice. She is the author of Witness onstage: Documentary theatre in twenty-first century Russia (Manchester University Press, 2020). Molly’s work has appeared journals such New Theatre Quarterly, RiDE: The Journal of Applied Theatre and Performance, Problems of Post-Communism, Open Democracy, and Calvert Journal. 

Her current research project analyses the political, ethical, and aesthetic valences of different forms of theatre practice in contemporary Ukraine and is supported in part by the Leverhulme Trust.

Qualifications

• PhD, University of Cambridge, 2016
• MA, Brown University, 2008
• BA, New York University, 2006

ORCID

0000-0003-0569-4454

Research

Research overview

In addition to her monograph, Witness onstage: Documentary theatre in twenty-first-century Russia (Manchester University Press, 2020), Molly has also recently contributed chapters to the collections New Drama in Russian: Performance, Politics, and Protest in Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus (Bloomsbury, 2020) and Contemporary European Playwrights (Routledge 2020).

 In April 2019, Molly co-organised the international symposium Depicting Donbas: Creative and critical responses to the war in Ukraine, a series of events which brought artists and academics into dialogue to explore the role creative practices play in times of conflict. The series included presentations from leading Ukrainian artists and scholars as well as two performances by the Theatre of Displaced People. 

Before arriving at Birkbeck, Molly worked as a post-doctoral researcher on the AHRC funded project For Love or Money? Collaboration between amateur and professional theatre, based in the Department of Drama, Theatre, and Dance at Royal Holloway. Her work on the project explored the impact of the Royal Shakespeare Company’s Open Stages initiative.

In addition to her work as a researcher, Molly is also a performer and maker of documentary theatre. From 2008-11 she lived and worked in Moscow during which time she performed the role of Gerda in the Joseph Beuys Theatre production, Legacy of Silence at Moscow’s Sakharov Centre. Since relocating to the UK, Molly has continued to work with many leading documentary theatre artists from Russia and Ukraine as a dramaturg, performer, and producer.

Supervision and teaching

Teaching

I teach on a range of undergraduate and postgraduate theatre studies modules including the BA Theatre Studies, MA Dramaturgy, and MA Text and Performance.

Publications