Dr Mike Brookes

It is with deep sadness that we learnt of the death of Emeritus Senior Research Fellow Dr Mike Brookes on Friday 8 May. 

​Mike was an award-winning artist, director, and designer, as well as a friend, colleague, and mentor. Mike was known for his quiet thoughtfulness and good humour, and his ability to gently reframe a problem or ask just the right question. He is also remembered by colleagues and former students in the Department of Theatre, Film and Television Studies for the critical rigour with which he explored the form, function and placement of performance and live art. 

Mike studied painting at the Cardiff School of Art and Design, graduating with a BA (Hons) in 1987. From here he developed an artistic practice that spanned a range of media, creating influential intermedial and context-specific performances and live art actions.  

In 1997 Mike co-founded the performance collective Pearson/Brookes with theatre-maker and academic Professor Mike Pearson. Over 20 years they co-created pioneering works of located, intermedial and multi-site performances including more recent large-scale productions for National Theatre Wales of The Persians (2010), Coriolan/us (2012) for the Royal Shakespeare Company and National Theatre Wales, and ILIAD (2015). 

From 2005 Mike collaborated with artist and performer Rosa Casado, developing an extensive range of context specific actions and gallery works which were commissioned and presented internationally. These include the interventional radio work Grey Line (2016), the durational action and five-episode performance work The sky was clearer in those days (2019), and the gallery work Divine matter (2021). 

Mike’s other public performance work took place through a long-standing collaboration with Quarantine Theatre Company, with the designer and director Stewart Laing and his company Untitled Projects, and with National Theatre Wales, where Mike was an associate artist between 2017 and 2020. 

With Simon Banham and Richard Downing, Mike established Scenographic Studies in the Department of Theatre, Film and Television Studies in 2001, the first course of its kind in the UK to focus on the practice of scenography. Mike was appointed as a Creative Research Fellow in 2007 where his expertise and his body of performance and live art works helped establish the reputation of the Department as a leader in practice-based research. Mike's research leadership was influential for many in the Department through his role as Creative Research Mentor where he helped colleagues to develop, articulate and document their practice-based research. Mike’s influence as a teacher and mentor was also valued by undergraduate students on the Department’s Scenography schemes and postgraduate students on its MA Practicing Performance and Theatre Practice schemes.  

In 2015 Mike was awarded a PhD (by Published Works) for his work in intermedial and located performance, with the thesis ‘On a clear day you can see for ever: mediation as form and dramaturgy in located performance’. In 2023 Mike was promoted to Senior Research Fellow. 

Mike has been much missed since he retired due to ill health in 2025 and our thoughts are with Mike’s partner Rosa, and all his family, at this sad time.