Sharon’s research looks directly at the way performances are constructed for audiences in order to transmit cultural and social values. She looks at what everybody sees and examines performances as they occur on stages, in community halls, on the streets, and on screens - that is, taking a wide view of the many ways performances are intertwined with the entertainments we consume in everyday life. In looking directly at the relationship between performance and culture, her research attends to the deeply serious business of how we (whoever we are) know who we are, who we are most with, what (and who) we stand for, and what (and who) we might stand against.
Perhaps best-known for her writing on the performance and politics of professional wrestling, Sharon’s most recent book, Performance in Popular Culture, considers the diverse ways the social is imagined and produced in live and mediated performances, in images and texts, in interactive experiences and in cultural institutions (Routledge 2023).
Other authored books include: Professional Wrestling: Sport and Spectacle (University Press of Mississippi 1998; 2020) and I Have Loved Me a Man: The Life and Times of Mika (Auckland University Press 2018). She is editor of The Intricate Art of Actually Caring . . . and Other New Zealand Plays (Seagull Books 2018) and a co-editor of Professional Wrestling: Politics and Populism (Seagull Books 2020).
Sharon serves on the editorial boards of Theatre Research International, Performance Research, Performance Paradigm, and Theatre Annual, and she is an Executive Committee Member for the MLA's Genre Studies Drama and Performance Forum, and a member of the Advisory Board for the Stanislavsky Research Centre (Leeds/Malta). She is also Essays Editor for Takahē Magazine.
Sharon appears as an expert in the Netflix documentary series Mr. McMahon, directed by Chris Smith (2024), and she is an ongoing contributor to the Wrestling Darkness podcast series.
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