Cass Fleming

Staff details

Cass Fleming

Position

Reader

Department

Theatre and Performance

Email

c.fleming (@gold.ac.uk)

Goldsmiths Research Centres/Groups

Cass’s specialisms are actor training, directing, and the work of Michael Chekhov and Suzanne Bing

Cass Fleming is the Founder and Co-Director of The Chekhov Collective Practice Research Centre in the UK. She is a director and has been a teacher of acting, directing, and devised theatre making at Goldsmiths, leading conservatoires, theatres and organisations in the UK and around the world for more than 25 years.

She originally worked as a young actor on screen and stage, before transitioning to directing and teaching. She trained at WAC, Goldsmiths, Royal Central School of Speech and Drama, and wrote a PhD on the actor and director training, and theatre making processes, developed by Michael Chekhov and Suzanne Bing and the synergies between their practices.

Academic qualifications

  • PhD 2013
  • MA 1998
  • BA (Hons.) 1994

Research interests

Cass's research focuses on actor training, and directing, in both contemporary and historical contexts. She was lead researcher, with Tom Cornford, on a long term, multi-institutional practice research project that led to a book: Michael Chekhov Technique in the Twenty-First Century: New Pathways, which she edited with Cornford (Bloomsbury, 2020). This publication was one of the Choice Outstanding Academic Titles of the Year. The Chekhov Collective Practice Research Centre has run over 90 open access practice research events over the past ten years, partnered with a large number of organisations and artists from around the world, and has a website which is an open access Research Resource. She has also published articles and given numerous papers on the work of Michael Chekhov in academic and industry contexts. Further details at https://chekhovcollectiveuk.co.uk/

In addition to her work with Chekhov Technique Cass has also been exploring and researching the work of the French actor, director and actor-trainer Suzanne Bing since 1998 and has shared her research widely since that time as published articles, book sections, papers and knowledge-exchange research events.

Cass also has a long-standing interest in developing non-canonical approaches to, and histories of, actor training and she conceived a special edition of the Theatre, Dance and Performance Training journal entitled ‘Against the Canon’ (11:3) which she co-edited with Mark Evans and Sara Reed (Routledge, 2020).

Publications and research outputs

Article

Book Section

Edited Journal

Conference or Workshop Item

Digital

Edited Book

Film/Video

Performance

Project

Thesis

Professional Experience and Projects

Prior to becoming a teacher and academic, Cass worked as a performer, assistant director, assistant choreographer and subsequently a director with various companies. As a director, she has staged contemporary and classical texts, adaptations, embodied theatre, dance-theatre, devised theatre and screen projects. She also spent time working in live television and was a company member of English National Opera working with the Baylis Programme on Community, Outreach and Education projects.

Cass has worked as an academic consultant and an external examiner at various conservatoires and drama departments, is a peer reviewer of book proposals and manuscripts for Bloomsbury Methuen Drama and Routledge, and articles for the Theatre, Dance and Performance Training journal for whom she was worked as a Guest Editor in 2020.

She is a Senior Associate of Michael Chekhov UK, was previously Scholar in Residence, with Roanna Mitchell, at the Michael Chekhov Association in the USA (MICHA) and was subsequently a Board Director for MICHA.