April Albert is a theatre-maker, performer, educator, and practice-led researcher whose work investigates how audiences and performers co-create meaning in live performance across different cultural contexts. Currently undertaking a PhD at Queensland University of Technology, her research examines audience reception, cultural context, and performer perception through comparative studies of performances in Germany and Australia. Drawing on methodologies including practice-led research, autoethnography, audience studies, and dramaturgical analysis, her research explores how cultural memory, national identity, and historical experience shape audience engagement with contemporary performance. As both a researcher and a practitioner, Albert's work sits at the intersection of theatre studies, audience research, performance studies, and cultural policy. Her creative projects—including HILDEGARD/KNEF, Beast in the Room, and KAPITALISM IS YOUR FRIEND!—function as sites of artistic inquiry through which questions of memory, participation, co-creation, and transnational performance are explored. Alongside her artistic practice, she lectures in Arts Management, Cultural Policy, Creative Research Methods, and Performance at RMIT University and the Australian Institute of Music.
Current Research:
PhD Research (Queensland University of Technology) Performing Across Borders: Audience Reception, Cultural Context and the Performer Perspective in Germany and Australia. This project investigates how audiences and performers co-create meaning during live performance. Through a comparative analysis of performances presented in Germany and Australia, the research explores how cultural context shapes audience reception and how performers' perceptions contribute to understanding audience reception. The study combines practice-led research, autoethnography, audience surveys, interviews, dramaturgical analysis, and reflective practice to address a significant gap in audience studies: the largely absent perspective of the performer.
Selected Conference Presentations "Care, Co-Creation and Witnessing in Beast in the Room" International Federation for Theatre Research (IFTR), Melbourne 2026
"Performing the Political Past Transnationally: The Reception of HILDEGARD/KNEF in Australia" International Federation for Theatre Research, Stockholm 2016
"A German National Treasure: The Meteoric Rise of Thomas Ostermeier and Sarah Kane" Royal Central School of Speech and Drama / Barbican Theatre, London 2007
"The Reception of Sarah Kane's Plays in Germany" Contemporary Theatre Conference, Royal Central School of Speech and Drama, London 2007
