ARTISTIC DIRECTOR

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.

Recently, theatre and music have taken centre stage in his career. 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, four star ratings at all the local reviews, was subsequently televised on BBC Newsround and performed at London’s Bloomsbury Theatre to a sold-out audience which included special guests Elaine Page and Janet Suzman. 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. His monograph is being prepared for publication, and he is contributing chapters to forthcoming publications on reception theory (Please see 'Research' page). 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 the Central School of Speech and Drama.

As Artistic Director of theatre company Zeb Fontaine, 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. Forthcoming broadcast on London Resonance FM 104.4 [See PODCAST]. In 2008, a piece of fringe dance theatre integrating live electro-acoustic sound and movement, and chorus evokes once more the world of infection, cattle and religion 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 dance theatre project which has been shortlisted for an Oxford Samuel Beckett Theatre Award. He is also developing projects toward multimedia-style musical theatre productions. He is interested in the musicality when expressed in theatrical terms: the relationship of the synaesthetic (sound) and kinaesthetic (movement), and the new kinds of aesthetic modes that occur when text, sound and movement are juxtaposed unconventionally.

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

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)

Theatre de 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 (scholar; two-week seminar course)

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

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