Personal profile

Research interests

My research has often focused on post-war and contemporary British theatre. 1956 and All That (Routledge, 1999) is a rereading of the ‘theatrical revolution’ thought to have taken place at the Royal Court around Look Back in Anger.  My short monograph Theatre & Globalization argues for the theatre as a source of cosmopolitan resistance to globalization. The book is part of Theatre &, a new series of books opening up the latest thinking in theatre and performance research.  I have also edited Modern British Playwriting 2000-2009, The Suspect Culture BookContemporary European Theatre Directors, Contemporary European Playwrights and the forthcoming Cambridge Companion to British Theatre since 1945.

My current book project is Naturalist Theatre: A New Cultural History for Routledge, a large-scale interdisciplinary monograph exploring the emergence of Naturalist theatre in the last third of the ninteenth century.

I am also a playwright, and my work has been performed across Britain and in Europe and America, on stage and particularly radio, where my work has won awards and I am widely regarded one of the most innovative writers for the medium. In 2014-17 I was lead writer on Emile Zola: Blood, Sex & Money for BBC Radio 4, an epic 25-hour adaptation of Zola's 20-volume 'Rougon-Macquart' novel sequence. It is the most ambitious adaptation BBC radio have ever produced (and is therefore quite likely the most ambitious radio adaptation in the world). My play You & Me a formally experimental response to the #MeToo movement, was shortlisted for Best Original Drama in the BBC Audio Awards and won Silver at the ARIAs in the Best Original Storytelling category. I am currently working on three new plays addressing the legacies of slavery, the place of nationhood in the imagination, and the interplay of sound and memory.

I designed, with colleagues in English, two new joint degrees in Creative Writing, whose first students graduated in 2007. With other colleagues, I introduced degrees in Philosophy, whose first students graduated in 2010. As Head of the Department of Drama, I introduced the joint degree with Dance, whose first students graduated in 2017.

I've chaired numerous platforms for the National Theatre, Lyric Hammersmith, and Manchester Royal Exchange, have been a contributing editor for New Theatre Quarterly and Associate Editor of Contemporary Theatre Review.

You can find out more at my website: http://www.danrebellato.co.uk and at my Twitter account @danrebellato. Please note: all opinions are mine and do not necessarily reflect those of Royal Holloway or the Department of Drama, Theatre and Dance.

Expertise related to UN Sustainable Development Goals

In 2015, UN member states agreed to 17 global Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to end poverty, protect the planet and ensure prosperity for all. This person’s work contributes towards the following SDG(s):

  • SDG 16 - Peace, Justice and Strong Institutions

Keywords

  • British theatre; globalization; playwriting; philosophy; ethics; modernist theatre; naturalist theatre

Collaborations and top research areas from the last five years

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