Alan Read

Alan Read (born 21 September 1956) is a writer and professor of theatre at King's College London. He is recognised as a theatre theorist and cultural activist, with scholarly interests in ethics and the everyday, performed communities, event architecture, and the subjectivities of capitalism.

Read's work serves as a critique of modernist theatrical orthodoxy, critically contesting Peter Brook's idealism of the "empty space"—a tabula rasa awaiting its theatre, where professionals may enter and exit at will. Contrary to this notion, Read argues that theatre has been superseded in that populated place by the quotidian performances of everyday life, which persist for both good and ill.

He presented this critique on the stage of the National Theatre in London in 1994, engaging in a public dialogue with Brook's space designer, Jean-Guy Lecat. Read's scepticism regarding the colonial fantasy of theatre's "empty space" aligns with other critics, most notably Rustom Bharucha in ''Theatre & The World'' (1993). Provided by Wikipedia