Tony McCaffrey

Tony McCaffrey has a BA in English from King’s College, Cambridge and a Ph D in Theatre and Film Studies from the University of Canterbury, New Zealand. He has many years’ experience as an actor, director and playwright in the UK, France, Turkey and the United States. For the last twenty years he has taught as a Lecturer in Creative Industries at the National Academy of Singing and Dramatic Arts, Ara Institute, Christchurch, New Zealand. In 2004 he established Different Light Theatre, an ensemble of performers with intellectual disabilities. He has presented regularly at international conferences - of Performance Studies international and Performance Philosophy - amongst others, and has contributed articles to academic journals on theatre with actors with intellectual disabilities. He is a member of the Performance and Disability Working Group of the International Federation for Theatre Research. Different Light Theatre has presented performances of work devised by the company in New Zealand and have toured to Australia, the United States of America and the United Kingdom. The group continues to be engaged in theatrical research by means of performance. They have collaborated with other performance groups, have presented performances and papers at academic conferences, and contributed to online journals.