About

The mission of Urban Research Theater is to forge new interdisciplinary, international, intersectional solidarities through critical embodied practice. Since 2004 it has served as an umbrella organization for artistic projects created by Ben Spatz and associates.

Urban Research Theater was founded in 2004 in Wroclaw, Poland, as ‘Badawczy Teatr Miejski‘. Since that time it has organized several hundred private and public events in the United States, United Kingdom, Poland, and elsewhere.

Artistic Director

ben-sky  Ben Spatz is a nonbinary researcher and theorist of embodied practice. They are Senior Lecturer in Drama, Theatre and Performance at the University of Huddersfield, UK and author of What a Body Can Do (Routledge 2015), Blue Sky Body (Routledge 2020), and Making a Laboratory (Punctum 2020), as well as editor of the videographic Journal of Embodied Research and co-convener of the international Embodied Research Working Group. Ben has more than two decades of experience as a performer and director of contemporary theatre and has been invited to present at more than thirty institutions in eleven countries.

University Profile | List of publications

Current Associates

Nazlıhan Eda Erçin (Judaica Project Team)

Agnieszka Mendel (Judaica Project Team)

Ilona Krawczyk (PhD Student)

Francesca Placanica (Visiting Research Fellow)

Past Associates

Sióbhán Harrison (Artistic Associate)

Jennifer Parkin, Artistic Associate (2014-2015)

Karoliina Sandström, Guest Artist (2014)

Susan Oetgen and Peter Sciscioli, Guest Artists (2013)

Margot Bassett, Guest Artist (2012-2013)

Massimiliano Balduzzi, Associate Director (2008-2012)

Malgosia Szkandera, Guest Artist (2011)

Michele Farbman, Artistic Associate (2006-2009)

Beata Zalewska and Izabela Mlynarz (2004-2005)

Ania Boratyn and Malgorzata Przedzak (2005)

Bartek Bulanda, Kasia Donner, Daniel Jastrzebski, Marek Konopczak, Monika Kuszewska, Barbara Pawlic, Szymon Struzik, and Izabela Walkowiak (2004)

SITE ARCHIVE

Previous phases of work can be traced back through 15 years of websites:

• Urban Research Theater 2016
• Urban Research Theater 2012
• Urban Research Theater 2009
• Urban Research Theater 2008
• Urban Research Theater 2007
• Urban Research Theater 2006
• junk river productions 2004
• junk river productions 2003

Copyright Notice

All materials on this website © 2004-2017 Ben Spatz / Urban Research Theater plus any additional co-authors.

Many of the materials on this website are available for public use according to the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International license (CC BY-NC 4.0). You are free to share and adapt for noncommercial purposes, provided that you give appropriate credit including the names of all co-authors and a link to this site.

For materials related to the Judaica project, a more detailed Intellectual Property agreement applies.

For other material, especially that which involves guest practitioners and performers as in several theatrical works created prior to 2013, specific permission must be obtained for any usage that exceeds quotation.

Please note that embodied technique is not subject to copyright and may be used freely for any purpose.