Glenn is Course Director and Senior Lecturer for BA Applied Theatre (Community & Education) at Royal Birmingham Conservatoire, a post he started in September 2022.
He teaches creative practice within actor training, specialising in collaborative theatre-making, co-devising, and the development of new work. As a theatre-maker, director, performer, and educator, his practice focuses on physical and visual approaches to performance. The methodologies generated through this work underpin his ongoing pedagogical research and are applied across diverse professional, educational, and community settings. He regularly serves as a mentor to emerging theatre companies and independent artists across the UK.
In 2010, he founded The Fabularium, an outdoor theatre company based in Coventry, and continues to serve as its Artistic Director. The company creates and tours original productions nationally and internationally, performing at major festivals and venues including Glastonbury Festival, Just So Festival, Stockton International Riverside Festival, Denmark’s Maskefestival, Kew Gardens, and the Bodleian Libraries in Oxford. Glenn has published and presented research on his work with the company in academic journals and at conferences, with a particular focus on training methodologies and graduate enterprise. He has directed all the company’s productions since its inception.
He served as Artistic Director of Spike Theatre in Liverpool for sixteen years, having founded the company in 1993 as he graduated. During this period, Glenn co-devised and directed all the company’s national and international touring productions, while also leading the development of a wide range of innovative projects. These included Theatre in the Parks, an annual large-scale outdoor theatre event that became part of the core programme for Liverpool’s year as European Capital of Culture in 2008, and Hoof! Spontaneous Theatre, a pioneering long-form improvisation project that ran for ten years. Through Hoof!, Glenn performed and taught improvisation across the UK and internationally, including a collaboration in Hollywood with performers from Chicago’s renowned Second City.
- Devising and Collaborative Theatre Making
- Directing
- Improvisation
- Actor-Musicianship
- Outdoor Performance
- Independent Theatre Production
- MA(Res) UK Physical Theatre - Warwick University
- BA Hons Combined (English & Drama) – (LIHE) Liverpool University
Glenn has taught in Higher Education for over thirty years, having worked as a visiting lecturer and module leader for Liverpool Hope University, Liverpool John Moore’s University and Coventry University. He became Course Director, Senior Lecturer and finally Associate Professor for the Theatre & Professional Practice undergraduate degree at Coventry University 2009-2022.
He has taught nationally internationally in areas of practice including:
- Ensemble practices
- Devising and structuring storytelling within co-creation
- Mask work (Neutral, larval, Commedia, full and half character mask)
- Puppetry
- Long Form-improvisation
For the BA Applied Theatre course at RBC, he is module leader for Performance 1 and Performance 2, and third year modules, Community Projects and Applied Theatre Festival.
Noble, G. (2017). The Fabularium: a reflective case study of practice-as-research into outdoor performance training and graduate enterprise delivered at Coventry University 2010‒2017. Theatre, Dance and Performance Training, 8(2), 188–205. https://doi.org/10.1080/19443927.2017.1316307
Noble, G. & Pickles, D. (2015). Long Form Improvisation, Feedback Loops and Cybernetics. Body, Space & Technology. 14. Perspectives. 10.16995/bst.38.
Other areas of his performance-making and research practice include:
- Digital performance installations as live portal connections between distant locations, and Site-Specific Projection projects as digital interventions augmenting international field trips in Berlin, Poznan and Krakow, with artists Adrian Palka and Wolfram Spyra. https://coventrycreates.co.uk/project/world-wide-window/
- Teaching and partnership development contributions to the multi award-winning Immersive Telepresence in Theatre projects developed between the Theatre/Acting course team at Coventry University and University of Tampere, Finland. https://telepresenceintheatre.coventry.domains/uncategorized/caesar-online/
- Arts in Greenspace initiatives as part of Coventry's City of Culture 2021 preparatory work and main programme in collaboration with Starfish Collaborative, which have focused on placemaking and co-creation engagement projects, informing regeneration strategies within low-income neighbourhoods in Coventry.
As Director for The Fabularium (supported by ACE funded project and national touring grants) all following works remain in repertoire:
- The Eternal Wreck
- The Hare & The Moon
- There Be Monsters!
- The Carnival of Animals
- Reynard the Fox
- The Town Band of Bremen
also
- Tales & Trails at Kew Gardens at Winter Commission
- The Playful Peasants at International Mask Festival, Naestved, Denmark, and UNICEF International Children’s Games, Vilnius, Lithuania
