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Historically, drama was taught in British universities in English departments, as a branch of literature. With the foundation of a dedicated undergraduate drama course at Bristol in 1947, the subject broke free, emerging as a separate discipline, about plays in performance rather than texts in the study. A key figure in that transformation was Peter Thomson, the first professor of drama at Exeter University, who has died aged 88. As he put it: “Drama is a subject that demands deeds as well as words.”

When Peter took up a post as an assistant lecturer in the second drama department, at Manchester University, in 1964, he found that tensions still existed between traditionalist academics and the practical approach of other lecturers, including the theatre-in-the-round advocate Stephen Joseph. Peter insisted that theory and practice were two complementary routes to the same end.

In the spirit of “learning by doing”, he developed what came to be called “practical essays”: rather than sitting down and writing, students would work creatively, preparing and enacting seminal events in theatre history. I experienced this technique as a student of Peter’s at Manchester, playing the dissident dramatist Henry Fielding in a drama-documentary presentation on the introduction in 1737 of British theatre censorship, performed to celebrate its abolition in 1968.

Arriving at Exeter University’s drama department in 1974, Peter found ideas he had developed at Manchester in even fuller flower, with no lectures, seminars or tutorials (unless on student request), but rather a course delivered through five-week-long projects (practical essays writ large), conducted – as Peter found to his initial terror – “in footless tights and sleeveless leotards”.

His inaugural lecture challenged any hierarchy between the academic and the practical. As a scholar who had already co-edited volumes of essays on 18th and 19th-century British theatre (published in 1970 and 1971), and a guide to Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar (1970), he was well qualified to defend Exeter’s innovative model to academic doubters in the university.

And not just within the university, but to the wider world. In 1972, Peter had initiated and co-founded the Standing Conference of University Drama Departments (Scudd, now retitled DramaHE), and, later, both a regular Scudd conference and a scholarly journal (Studies in Theatre and Performance) to defend the discipline. In 1981, when the University Grants Committee, increasingly influenced by Margaret Thatcher’s policies, invited 13 universities, including Exeter, to drop their drama departments, Peter led a successful campaign of resistance. When Bangor succumbed and closed its drama department, Peter arranged the transfer of its staff to departments in other universities. Later in the 80s, Scudd’s reputation and campaigning zeal meant that it was able to defend and incorporate practice as a legitimate research tool in the increasingly important Research Assessment Exercises.

The proof of the pudding lay of course in the product. Knowing of my suspicion of anything requiring devising, Lycra or bare feet, Peter once assured me that he had developed a course for which I would be completely unsuitable. This was true in the sense that his department proved a perfect training ground for Felix Barrett, founder of the immersive theatre company Punchdrunk, and the original lineup of the devising companies Foursight and Forced Entertainment.

But it also nurtured more conventionally inclined graduates, including the writers Abi Morgan (The Iron Lady, Suffragette), Jessica Swale (from Nell Gwynne to Paddington) and the National/Royal Court stalwart David Eldridge (whose Exeter projects included co-writing a Brechtian, pro-wild-wooder version of The Wind in the Willows).

Peter was born in Poole, Dorset, to John, a Methodist minister, and his wife, Lily (nee Hartnell), a teacher. He went to the Methodist boarding school Kingswood, in Bath, and learned Russian during his national service with the RAF (as did the writers Dennis Potter and Michael Frayn and his fellow drama professor Ted Braun of Bristol).

Afterwards he studied at Jesus College, Cambridge, where his PhD on Byron was overtaken by a whirlwind romance with Rita Prince, their marriage in 1963, and the subsequent birth of their first child, Jim.

At Manchester, students in his third and my first year included Pat Trueman and Sue Dunderdale, who would become distinguished directors, as would his fellow lecturer Clare Venables. In 1971, he was lured to Swansea’s English department by the promise of setting up a dedicated drama department: when he was offered an impossibly miserly budget, he left for Exeter and his chair.

Peter’s voluminous writings included works on Shakespeare (Shakespeare’s Theatre in 1983 and Shakespeare’s Professional Career in 1992) and Brecht (including a definitive study in 1997 of Mother Courage and Her Children in performance), as well as the co-authored Everyman Companion to the Theatre (1985) and – for Cambridge University Press – a Companion to Brecht (1993) and a three-volume Introduction to English Theatre 1660-1900 (2006).

Peter claimed that he was “also” a cricketer, who had been offered a trial for Warwickshire in 1956, but had “fallen away since”. In fact, he remained a passionate and successful wicketkeeper, making 584 appearance for the Exeter University staff team, the Erratics. His writing extended to poetry, including a volume of occasionally scatological clerihews. He enjoyed a cigarette, a pint and an evening in the pub, and was unfailingly supportive – academically and pastorally – to a worldwide community of students, including (at a formative but difficult time of my life) me.

Rita, a CND activist, died in 2021. Peter is survived by his children, Jim, Kate, Stephen and Annie, and five grandchildren.

• Peter William Thomson, drama scholar, born 6 February 1938; died 24 May 2026