• SOMATIC
  • EXPLORATORY
  • MOVEMENT
  • FELDENKRAIS
  • RESEARCH-LED
  • PLAYFUL

Teresa Brayshaw

Theatre Artist/ Feldenkrais Teacher/ Writer
Lives in Manchester, UK

I facilitate learning environments where participants can explore notions of comfort and comfortability as a starting point and find ways to investigate how breath becomes an ally in the practice of developing awareness through movement. Notions of finding and using one’s voice through acts of remembrance and imagination becomes central to the work as both a literal and philosophical practice. Using task, play and score-based activities and strategies for engaging creatively with the whole self, we uncover new possibilities for extending habitual approaches to our voice and body. Personal and collective creation and reflection enables the group to extend and balance stability with flexibility.

Teresa Brayshaw is a theatre maker, writer, creativity coach and Feldenkrais practitioner. She lectures in contemporary performance at numerous University and Drama Schools in the UK and has worked extensively in the Higher Education and European Theatre School sectors over the last 35 years.

In addition to her ‘pure practice’ as a Feldenkrais teacher, she applies her interests in neuroplasticity and creativity to her teaching, writing and professional theatre work. She works as a director, performer, and collaborator across a number of international, EU funded, interdisciplinary and intergenerational performance projects – most current is Weaving voices as threads of community – https://www.instagram.com/weavingvoices/

Contact

Mail: teresa@teresabrayshaw.com

Websites:
– Web page detailing Teresa’s collaboration with Walli Hoffinger entitled Project 10-11-12.: www.10-11-12.com

– A webpage detailing Teresa’s collaborative live book launch and performance in the Richard Demarco at the Edinburgh Festival: https://www.leedsbeckett.ac.uk/blogs/leeds-school-of-arts/2019/08/the-twenty-first-century-performance-reader/ 

– A webpage detailing Teresa’s Artistic Research with Older people, Ageing and Film Making: https://www.leedsbeckett.ac.uk/research/larc/research-impact/cinage/

Publications and articles:
Teresa was co-editor of Training Grounds in the International Journal of Theatre Dance and Performance Training between 2010 and 2014 and has co-edited two of Routledge’s best-selling Performance Readers:

The 21st Century Performance Reader. Routledge (2020)
& The 20th Century Performance Reader. Third Edition. Routledge (2013)

She is curator of Cultural Conversations at the Sibiu International Festival of Theatre Romania and has published three volumes of interviews

Her debut song and spoken word Album Umbilical Chords from Project 10-11-12 with artist Walli Höfinger will be released at the start of January 2025.

She is collaborating with musicologist and pianist Catherine Laws on a new research project exploring Musical Touch and Vicarious Perception. Their new piece for piano Four Hands played at the Orpheus institute Ghent in June 2024 and is scheduled to tour European festivals in 2025.

Lead researcher for a large-scale research project entitled CINAGE: Creative approaches to the active ageing agenda through Film and Theatre. Links to more of her academic research including chapters, articles, performances and conference papers can be found here:

Forthcoming:
– Co-authored Chapter: Brayshaw,T &  Höfinger.W.(2025) Writing Across Borders in the book Nomadic Performance. Methuen
– Co-authored Chapter: Brayshaw,T & Butterfield,H (2024) Weaving Voices as threads of Community in the book