Chris Hay

Chris Hay is Professor of Drama at the Flinders Drama Centre, and the Director of the Assemblage Centre for Creative Practice Research in the College of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences. He is the Academic Lead for AusStage, the Australian Live Performance Database, a Flinders-led, multi-partner research project that recently celebrated its 21st birthday. In this capacity, he is also the Flinders lead of the Australian Creative Histories and Futures project, a priority area of the Australian Research Data Commons (ARDC) HASS & Indigenous RDC.

Chris is an Australian theatre and cultural historian, whose work examines funded cultural output for what it can tell us about national anxieties and preoccupations. His book, Contemporary Australian Playwriting: Re-visioning the Nation on the Mainstage co-written with Stephen Carleton, was published by Routledge in 2022. Between 2020 and 2025, Chris held a Discovery Early Career Researcher Award (DECRA) from the Australian Research Council for his project on the origins of live performance subsidy in Australia between 1949 and 1975. 

As a theatre director, Chris is particularly interested in German Modernism. His recent work directing students includes Frank Wedekind’s Spring Awakening in his own translation at the University of New England, and Max Frisch’s The Arsonists at the University of Queensland. He works with the unique identity practice pioneered by Kristine Landon-Smith in a collaboration they began at the National Institute of Dramatic Art (NIDA), and they have co-published in acting manuals including Stages of Reckoning: Antiracist and Decolonial Actor Training.

Outside of the University, Chris is the Co-President of ADSA, the Australasian Association for Theatre, Drama, and Performance Studies, and serves on the Executive Committee of the International Federation for Theatre Research (IFTR). With Jess Carniel, Chris is the co-Editor of the interdisciplinary Journal of Australian Studies. He also is the Editor of the open-access e-journal Performance Paradigm, and an Associate Editor of Theatre, Dance, and Performance Training, where he co-edited a 2021 special issue on Performer Training in Australia.