my students when I tell them they’re not allowed to use AI to write their essays

celebrating a fabulous first day in the archives with a pumpkin cocktail (v on brand after having a pumpkin-pie-filled croissant cube for breakfast)

On the plane to NYC to do some archival research for my 5th book. This one is going to be an intellectual history of the development of audience research, going back to the 1920s. Working title: Influence Men

I just said “6… 7…” to my two boys (11yo & 8yo) and it was like I’d activated a sleeper cell

I can explain

Tonight I’m at Leeds Playhouse to host a fun chat for Leeds Festival of Ideas about all things manners with the lovely @williamhanson.bsky.social, the etiquette coach. I’ve come prepared by wearing plenty of pearls, ready to clutch if needed 😮🥰

thanks Grazia

I had the ✨BEST✨ time this week giving the opening lecture for Prada Mode at London Frieze – feat. a compelling immersive installation by @elmgreenanddragset.bsky.social called ‘The Audience’, plus a series of brilliant talks about all things audiences

invented a game at the gym. I pump weights while watching the backs of people exercising on the cardio machines. the game is called “adult lesbian or teenage boy?”

special interests

getting a fly in your eye while on the bike is funny bc you’ll just be cycling along like 🥲 I have a tiny corpse 🥲drowning 🥲 on my eyeball 🥲 and there’s nothing I can do about it 🥲 apart from blink a lot 🥲 and cry 🥲

bipolar playlist time

In fairness, I’m an actual human with a PhD but neither can I www.cnn.com/2025/08/14/b...

Clean Slate is currently getting rave reviews at the Fringe following our R&D audience research! It’s about weaponised incompetence & casts audiences as the hapless boyfriend – and it is BRILLIANT. I got involved because it’s the sharpest, cleverest use of audience participation I’ve ever seen.

I’m on Research Leave! 🥰🚦

my hairdresser: how is that temperature for you me, scalp scalded, skull on fire, steam rising from my head like the breath of a dragon: fine thanks 🙂

“This is the life, relaxing with my favourite member of the family” – my sunny seven-year-old Sully 🥰

my old pal Truth Sayer is back! hi bbs it’s been ages 🥰

Matt Badwin

I need to use the sleep

Got back from holiday. Look what my student has done to my office 😂💙 #Gredge (it’s a joke based on a hilarious web comic)

Theatre Fandom is on the list of new theatre books for summer reading! newyorktheater.me/2025/05/17/n...

🎭 COMING UP: Join Dr @kirstysedgman.bsky.social for Stories from the Stage: Celebrating Modern Theatre Kirsty will be joined by Gregory Doran, Heidi Vaughan & Polly Davis to discuss why the arts are more important than ever 🗓️ Fri 6 June, 6-9pm 📌 Arts Complex 🎟️ bit.ly/4dhrpaY (free!)

A book chapter #fanformance #liveart #broing out now in #theatre fandom @uiowa press looking forward to reading all the other contributions !

Delighted to be in this new book with brilliant collaborators Sarah Price and Helen Freshwater. Our chapter investigates the idea of distributed fandom through frequent theatre attendance, drawing on our @ukri.org funded Understanding Audiences for the Contemporary Arts project 🎭 🎵

I have a chapter in this I'm very proud of, about bisexual fan communities relationship to Hamilton, and the work that queer fan communities do to see themselves in the room where it happens 💙💜🩷

New at University of Iowa Press ⬇️⬇️⬇️ Theatre Fandom: Engaged Audiences in the Twenty-first Century Editor(s) Kirsty Sedgman, Francesca Coppa & Matt Hills uipress.uiowa.edu/books/theatr...

Hot off the presses - Theatre Fandom, edited by me, @matt-hills.bsky.social & @kirstysedgman.bsky.social and featuring a collection of terrific essays. U Iowa Press 2025! (The two sides of my career have finally connected! \o/ Life makes sense now! :D)

I will forever be grateful to @fcoppa.bsky.social & @matt-hills.bsky.social for stepping in & taking this project on when I was ill. I’m so proud of our contributors for their insightful essays, & endlessly thankful for the grace & kindness I’ve experienced the past 2 years. Theatre Fandom is out ♥️

NEW BOOK! full draft finished! email sent! hurray!!! 🥳🎉

I left my headphones in my office yesterday, so one of my undergrads made them a bed to sleep in

Last chance to submit a proposal to give a conference paper at TaPRA (@tapra.bsky.social) 2025 in Warwick! The deadline is this Monday 10 March. Our WG theme this year is Fun, Playfulness & Pleasure: tapra.org/call-partici...

look at this amazing cross-stitch that one of my first-year students made for me! ✨🌈

every historiographer I have ever met: <incoherent screaming>

puns are our love language @theabigailthorn.bsky.social

Today was LEGO seminar day! Every year I get my 2nd-year undergrads to build a utopian ‘theatre of the future’ – a genuinely *public* space which is radically open & accessible & welcoming for all

it’s Book Proofs Time™, so Freya has dragged me out to a bar and put me on lockdown until I’ve finished proofreading (also managed to lose my glasses, so prescription sunnies are all I’ve got)

godspeed to the person who chose an iced coffee in M&S then made it to the alcohol & thought “nope”

need a gif of Foucault bursting through a wall like the Kool-Aid Man

out for dinner in Leeds thanks to the UK Subtitling Audiences Network

On a serious note - I’ve seen a run of similar shows that, like a cool teacher, wants to be very generous about what an audience can do but - also like a cool teacher - eventually has to clamp down in a way that feels like a betrayal for some. Clarity of the actual offer always essential

The Passengers. Fascinating to watch (if slightly overshadowed by the woman in the audience who I think was On Something who constantly slow-clapped loudly and cheered and refused to leave when asked - DRAMA!)

how is marking going you ask

I’m a walking hedgerow 🌿🌸🌼🌺

It’s leg tattoo time! I’m doing this one in two sessions – two days in Jan & two more days in March Day 1 of 4 – here we gooooo

every Instagram advert from 1st Jan on: It’s time to go ghost mode sis! me: say no more me: <puts on long white nightdress; wafts around moaning loudly; starts throwing stuff at people who annoy me>

Among other things, 2024 was the Year of the Tattoo

undercut is growing back in nicely ✨

Spotted on Insta – if #OnBeingUnreasonable were a video game 🎮📖 www.instagram.com/reel/DBTN9Vt...

Christmas bling for me 🎄