About
Dr Alexa Taylor serves as Lecturer in Performance Making at Edith Cowan University's Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts (WAAPA), teaching core courses including Site Specific Performance, Performance Making Projects, and Theatre History. With over a decade of professional experience across Perth's independent theatre scene and national/international collaborations (UK, France), she bridges academic rigor with practical artistry.
Her educational background features a Doctor of Philosophy from Murdoch University (2016), establishing the foundation for her interdisciplinary research.
Taylor's research interrogates performance as a catalyst for social transformation, emphasizing socially-engaged art, site-specific installations, and environmental humanities. Her work explores how collaborative performance-making practices generate utopian imaginaries to address climate change, positioning hope and connection as political acts within ecological crises. This manifests through practice-led investigations into creativity's relationship with place and new media dramaturgy.
Publication analysis reveals consistent thematic evolution toward ecological performance frameworks, notably through 2024's 'Green Utopias' examining sustainable arts training and 2019's 'Situated Performative' analyzing political pauses in theatrical temporality—both reflecting her commitment to performance as ecological intervention.
Her creative practice has received significant recognition:
- 2020 Best Independent Production (PAWA) for 'See You Next Tuesday'
- 2019 Best New Work & Design (Blue Room Theatre)
- 2018/2017 Best Independent Production & Members' Choice (PAWA/Blue Room) for 'Laika'
- 2015 ABC Best Performance Award shortlist
Alexa currently supervises PhD candidate research on 'Deep map cruising: locative performance through aural cartography' as Associate Supervisor, actively mentoring emerging scholars in performance geography while expanding her own climate-focused creative research.
Her professional ecosystem extends through active membership in The Blue Room Theatre, Performance Studies international, and the International Federation for Theatre Research, connecting WAAPA to vital creative networks across Australia and Europe.
