Will Lewis
- Assistant Professor, Theatre History, Literature, and Criticism // Theatre // Rueff School
- Coordinator of Undergraduate Theatre Studies // Theatre // Rueff School
- Assistant Professor // Cornerstone
Office and Contact
PhD, University of Colorado Boulder
MA, City University of New York/Hunter College
Specialization
Experiential Performance and Digital Cultures
About
Will Lewis is an assistant professor of theatre history, literature, and criticism in the Patti and Rusty Rueff School of Design, Art, and Performance after serving as a visiting assistant professor of directing and performance from 2019-2022.
His research focuses on spectatorship, politics, digital cultures, and experiential performance. He is the author of Experiential Spectatorship: Immersion, Participation, and Play During Times of Deep Mediatization (Routledge 2025) and co-editor with Sean Bartley of Experiential Theatres: Praxis-Based Approaches to Training 21st Century Theatre Artists (Routledge 2023) recipient of the 2024 Edited Works Award from the Association for Theatre in Higher Education. His is the Co-Editor of the Advances in Experiential Media and Performance series for Routledge and served as founding Editor of PARtake: The Journal of Practice as Research from 2016-2024. As a scholar-artist, his work utilizes interactive technologies in performance to better understand the relationships between contemporary audiences and mediatized cultures. Current practice-based research includes developing gamified performance forms to address political polarization and the societal impact of algorithmic technologies.
Will teaches courses focusing on modern and contemporary performance history and theory with an emphasis on the ways technologies and media impact the ways we should approach performance making and analysis for the twenty-first century. He is a proud first-generation college graduate.
Recent Articles and Chapters
Lewis, William W. “(Re)Imagining the Polis: Audience Participation as Postdramatic Discourse.” Theatre Survey 66, no. 1 (2025): 50–73.
Lewis, William W. "Resisting Algorithmic Determination: Becoming the Political Other in Blast Theory’s Operation Black Antler." Journal of Dramatic Theory and Criticism 37, no. 2 (2023): 49-72
Lewis, William W. “Performativity 3.0: Hacking Postdigital Subjectivities,” in Avatars, Activism and Postdigital Performance: Precarious Intermedial Identities, Liam Jarvis and Karen Savage eds. Methuen Drama (2021): 39-64.