CREATIVE ARTIST

Zachary Dunbar began his professional career as a concert pianist. He graduated with High Honors at Rollins College (Florida), and subsequently went to Yale university where he completed a Masters Degree in Music Performance. He won the Best Piano Recital of the Year award and following his studies he was a recipient of a Fulbright grant allowing him to continue at the Royal College of Music. He has performed as soloist and chamber musician in the U.S. the U.K., the Netherlands and Sweden. He also held the post of Artist in Residence at Haileybury College. He continues to give recitals , sometimes incorporating theatre history in lecture-recitals. Upcoming lecture-recitals 'Classical paradigms of drama: reflections from the piano (2010) sponsored by the Onassis Programme (Oxford University).

A recent conversion to theatre eventuated in a fusion of music and theatre practices. Underpinning this creative process was a deep fascination with the notion of musicality in devised forms of theatre. This has led to a number of original productions which he has written, composed and directed, including three musicals ('Texas Eddy', 'The Year of the Pig I '(with Chinese Opera), 'The Year of the Pig II') and two plays ('8 Sketches for Solo Actors', 'Out of Character)'. This latest play, a trilogy, won a Fringe First nomination at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, and was subsequently televised on BBC Newsround and performed at London’s Bloomsbury Theatre to a sold-out audience. He has also developed two feature-length film scripts ('Return to Sender' and 'Tom's House'). He has given drama workshops in London and Monaco, and has participated in workshops by Theatre de Complicité, the British National Film and Television School, and the Great Britain Beijing Opera Society. [See 'Productions' page]

Merging academic research with practice, he recently completed a PhD thesis at Royal Holloway (The University of London) on the history of science, music and theatre space alongside the reception of the Greek tragic chorus. He has been a visiting lecturer at University of Sussex,  Middlesex University  and London's Central School of Speech and Drama on the MA Performance Practices Research. He is currently a Lecturer in Music Theatre at Central.

He has presently embarked on a series of modern transpositions exploring in postdramatic theatre aspects of myth, Greek tragedies and contemporary issues. The artistic remit is to journey beyond conventional text-based productions toward the purely sensory aspects of performance. In 2005, he wrote, directed and produced Delphi, Texas (Pleasance, London), an 'Oedipus' in rural Texas based on aspects of religious cult, cattle and chorus. in 2007, A radio play, 'The Ballad of Eddy Tyrone', podcast in Dec. 1 (World AIDS day - Terrence Higgins Trust) featured a Brokeback Mountain-style version of cowboys in 80s Houston based on the Oedipus myth [See PODCAST]. In 2008, a dance theatre piece integrated live electro-acoustic sound and movement, and explored the tragic chorus as a post-tragic phenomenon in 'The Cows Come Home' (Camden People's Theatre, Brighton Fringe Festival Underbelly, Junge Hunde, Denmark). Future transpositions include Euripides' Hippolytus and Sophocles' Antigone - The Antigone Files - a proposed multi-media project exploring the tragic clown which was shortlisted for an Oxford Samuel Beckett Theatre Award.

Most recently his musical, The Year of the PIg, was produced at Central School of Speech and Drama. He was also commissioned by the prestigious boys school, St. Paul's School (London) to create a piece based on Milton's Paradise Lost (Milton was a Pauline) for their 500th anniversary. 'Quaternary' was a soundscape postdramatic piece exploring vocalisation, improvised monologues underpinned by sounds of a melting glacier, and was performed in the Milton Studio (St. Pauls), Central School of Speech and Drama, and the Edinburgh Fringe Festival 2009. 

 Organisations: Young Vic - Genesis Director's Scheme; Mercury Musical Development - Professional Associate Writer. 

QUATERNARY- reviews

‘Theatrical paradise found...undeniably excellent’ (*****British Theatre Guide)

http://www.britishtheatreguide.info/otherresources/fringe/fringe09-08.htm

‘Slick, frightening, fast-paced, revolutionary performance’ (****Three Weeks)

http://edinburgh.threeweeks.co.uk/review/6936

THE COWS COME HOME - reviews 

http://www.londontheatreblog.co.uk - 'This is densely imagined and experienced dance-drama, evocative and tantalising and paradoxically satisfying. The Cows Come Home is an enigmatic experience that resonates in some place deeper and stranger than the intellect, transcending narrative obscurity to achieve a beguiling synthesis of music and image and motion.'

http://www.musicomh.com/theatre/cows_0508.htm  - 'By the time the lightbulb pops and the illusion is destroyed, Zach Dunbar and Jesús Rubio Gamo have served up a multi-layered, deeply compelling but also meditative work of experimental theatre. Nothing prepares you for this spectacle, an amalgam of myth, physicality, compulsive behaviour and ritualism. It demands reflection, not on death – human or bovine – but on the quality of life, or the necessity of suffering'. 

http://magazine.brighton.co.uk (click on Theatre & Comedy/scroll to 'Archives') - 'Like a mass of oil and water, like some kind of wonderful fluid, move the dancers of Zeb Fontaine...They are the living embodiment of what is now seen as ‘fringe’ dance but in reality is the future of such theatre, whether we know it or not'.

SOME REVIEWS of Past Productions:

THE YEAR OF THE PIG II (MUSICAL)

Zachary Dunbar gives us a totally ORIGINAL work- full of gorgeous melodies… All in all, the musical is a wonderful reminder that we STILL have, in this country musical theatre writing talent – which sadly remains largely undiscovered. If I have inspired you to see this production in Edinburgh, then I shall personally feel proud to have brought a remarkable talent to the wider world of musical theatre.’ (Graham Powner, Editor Theatreworld Magazine)‘

A squeak away from fame…. (The Times, Arts Section)

 OUT OF CHARACTER (PLAY)

Three sparkling and beautifully devised plays by Zachary Dunbar are a joy to behold…an exceptionally original and exciting spectacle’ (The Scotsman)

‘Very professional, mature and considered drama…truly remarkable’ (The Stage)

'Exceptional theatre creation…inspiringly the way theatre at its best is made’ (Janet Suzman)

PROFESSIONAL THEATRE TRAINING                                                

London Scriptwriters Tutorials (private tuition/writing for film and for the stage)

British National Film and Television School (awarded a writer’s workshop to develop an original full-length film script)

British Beijing Opera Society (Beijing opera movement, masks, music and song; Ione Meyer)

Complicité (aspects of Lecoq-style physical theatre; Annabel Arden, Antonio Gil Martinez, Toby Jones)

BAC Voic(e)motion (workshops exploring the body and sound; Guy Dartnell)

Royal Holloway, University of London (term-length courses on the Feldenkrais Method, Greek Tragedy and Performance, Noh Theatre) 

London Circus Space (course on Clowning)

Musicality and Physical Theatre, Laboratoriet, Aarhus, Denmark (one-week workshop; Marcello Magni)

European Network of Research and Documentation of Performances of Ancient Greek Drama, Epidaurus Greece 

Fringe theatre production workshop (Young Vic Genesis; Timothy Stubbs of Weaverhughesensemble)

Adapting for the Stage (Young Vic Genesis; Rufus Norris; Tanya Ronder)

PUBLICATIONS

Book (Chapter) ‘Multidisciplinarity: its reception within reception theory’, in Theorising Performance: Greek Drama, Cultural History, and Critical Practice, ed. Edith Hall (Duckworth & Co. Ltd. – forthcoming, 2009).

Book (Chapter) ‘Music Theatre’, in the Cambridge Companion to Theatre History, eds. Wiles and Dymkowski (Cambridge – forthcoming 2011).

Article (Journal) ‘The Historical Reception of the Chorus in Musical Theatre’, in Classical Receptions journal, ed. Lorna Hardwick (Oxford University Press, submission for review, Autumn, 2010).

Review (Book) David Wiles, Mask and Performance in Greek Tragedy (Cambridge University Press, 2007), in Didaskalia: Ancient Theatre Today <http://www.didaskalia.net/issues>

CONFERENCE PAPERS

(2009) ‘Melodic Intentions: speaking text in postdramatic multimedia dance theatre’; Theatre Noise Conference (CSSD, London).

(2008) ‘Did the earth move for you? The cathartic event in tragedy and music’; The Reception of Ancient Greek and Roman Drama (Institute of Classical Studies, London).  

(2007) ‘The Music’s the Thing: Harrison Birtwistle in Peter Hall’s 1981 Production of Aeschylus’ Oresteia’; European Network of Research and Documentation of Performances of Ancient Greek Drama (Epidauros, Greece);     

‘A Brief History of the Singing Tragic Chorus: the word-tone relationship’, Song, Stage & Screen II, International Conference (University of Leeds);               

‘Science and the Modern Tragic Chorus: Aspects of Chaos and Complexity’; British Society of Literature and Science (University of Birmingham).

(2006) ‘All Mouth, No Body: Stravinsky’s Oedipus in the Quantum Era’; 6^th Annual Postgraduate Symposium, Archive of Performances of Greek and Roman Drama,  (APGRD), Royal Holloway (University of London); Conference Coordinator.

(2005) ‘Theatricality and Chorality: Oedipus in Vicenza (1585)’; 5^th Annual Postgraduate Symposium, Modern Performances of Greek and Roman Drama (University of Oxford); ‘Cross-Breed: Cult, Chorus and Cattle’ (Sophocles’ O.T. transposed to the Texas Bible Country); Dionysus Recast: Ancient Drama in the Modern World (University of Oxford).        

(2004) Nothing to Do with Cosmology? Privileging Order and Disorder in the Chorus; 50^th Anniversary of the Institute of Classical Studies, Senate House (University of London).