Dr Graham White

Graham has been commissioned to dramatise B.S. Johnson's famous experimental novel The Unfortunates for BBC Radio 3.

The novel, published in a box in twenty-seven separate sections intended to be shuffled and read in any order, is an attempt to mirror the randomn patterns of memory, and captures the shifting recollections of a sportswriter through the course of a day spent covering a football match in a city which he has visited before and which is full of associations with his own and his friends' pasts - including the death from cancer of one close associate.

Graham (BA London, MA, PhD Sussex) is Reader in Drama and Creative Practice and is currently Head of Subject for Drama, Theatre and Performance Studies. He has previously held Lectureships at the University of Reading and Kings College, University of London.

He is Director of the University's new Centre for Research in Creative and Professional Writing.

Research and Teaching

Research and teaching interests in writing for stage, screen and radio, post-war British and European drama and culture, (particularly the 60’s/70’s counter-culture), and the politics of cultural provision (especially avant-garde practices, Fascist and Marxist models), performance, law and processes of public reconciliation, Situationist theory and performance.

He is interested in supervising Phd projects working on dramaturgy, playwriting and writing for performance, on documentary drama and performance, especially in relation to conflict resolution, on law and performance and and on drama and theatre history, especially around the moment of the 60's/ 70's Counter-Culture.

He currently supervises PhD students working on the radio drama of Rhys Adrian, on narration in the exhibition space and on relationships between the writer, space and place.

He teaches the following modules for Drama, Theatre and Performance Studies; Approaches to Drama and Theatre, Writing in Performance, Drama of the 60's Counter-culture, Playwriting. He also convenes the Writing on the Screen and Screenwriting modules for the Film Studies and Screen Practice programme.

Recent and forthcoming publications

Forthcoming;

‘The Ians in the Audience: Punk Attitude and the Case of Ian Stuart MacDonald’ in Avant-Garde Performance and Material Exchange: Vectors of the Radical, ed, Mike Sell, Palgrave Macmillan 2010

Recent

'Witnessing Proceedings; The Hague War Crimes Tribunal, Narrative Indeterminacy and the Public Audience', TDR, MIT Press, Feb 2008)

'The Cruyff Turn: Performance in the Cultural Memory of International Soccer', Sport in Society, Routledge, March 2007

‘Quite a Profound Day’: The Public Performance of Memory by Military Witnesses at the Bloody Sunday Tribunal', Theatre Research International, Vol 13, No 2, Cambridge University Press, July 2006.

‘Compelled to Appear : The Manifestation of Physical Space before the Tribunal’ in Mapping Uncertain Territories: Space and Place in Contemporary Theatre and Drama , Contemporary Drama in English 14, Trier, Wissenschftlicher Verlag Trier, June 2006

'Holding the Mirror Up To Hatred: Establishment Accounts of Radical Subversion after 1968, Works and Days,University of Pennsylvania Press, November 2002

‘Digging for Apples; Reappraising the Influence of Situationist Theory on Theatre Practice in the English Counter-Culture’, Theatre Survey, Cambridge University Press, October 2001

'Shakespearian Fascist; A.K. [sic] Chesterton and the Politics of Cultural Despair', in Four Hundred Years of Shakespeare in Europe, ed. Hoenselaar and Pujante, University of Delaware Press, 2003.

Dramatic Writing

He has written for stage, television and radio. Recent work includes a radio drama A Bit Of Explaining To Do broadcast on BBC Radio 4 on Monday 15th June as part of the BBC’s ‘Rapid Response’ initiative of material commissioned to a topical brief (the play deals with the fall out from one man’s unintended use of his wife’s expense account...). He adapted Franz Kafka's novel, America, or The Man Who Disappeared, for BBC Radio (May 2006) along withThe Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman , by Laurence Sterne, (BBC Radio 4, Jan 2005) and The French Lieutenant's Woman by John Fowles (Jan 2006). His play Oswald in Russia, dealing with the moment when Lee Harvey Oswald attempted to defect to the U.S.S.R as a young man, was broadcast as part of the programming marking the 40th anniversary of the death of President John F Kennedy, and The Trial of the Angry Brigade, a reconstuction of the 1972 Old Bailey trial of the British version of the urban guerrilla movements of the period went out on Radio 4 in 2002, with Juliet Stevenson, Kenneth Cranham and Mark Strong in the cast.

Reviews of Graham's work;

The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman, (by Laurence Sterne),

‘Graham White’s adaptation of this gloriously anarchic comedy classic is a triumph. I loved every minute of it’. ‘State-of-the-art radio drama’
Sue Arnold, Observer, 6/2/5, 13/2/5

‘A masterpiece of translation’, ‘wonderful’
Ruth Cowley, Daily Express, 06/02/05

‘Laurence Sterne’s rollicking comic novel...deftly adapted for radio by Graham White’
Stephanie Billen, Observer, 30/1/5

‘Graham White’s sparkling adaptation of Laurence Sterne’s comic novel’
Guardian 3/1/5

‘Great stuff’
Time Out 3/1/5

The Trial of the Angry Brigade,

“A fascinating piece of work” Daily Mail, 9/8/02

“Graham White’s reconstruction of the trial is clear, dramatic, gripping…” Gillian Reynolds, Daily Telegraph, 9/8/02

“Lively, atmospheric and fair-minded…It is striking how many of the ideas bandied about in 1972 at the Old Bailey – internment without trial, terrorism, asylum, police power, homelessness – are still in ferment a generation later”. Paul Donovan, Sunday Times, 4/8/02

“…Graham White’s gripping... account of the anarchist’s 1972 trial”. The Stage, August 20002.

“Painstaking reconstruction” The Sunday Telegraph, 11/8/02


The French Lieutenant’s Woman (by John Fowles), 2006

‘has us ensnared from the opening scene’. ‘Graham White’s adaptation, produced by Peter Kavanagh, spins a mean yarn’
Financial Times 31/12//05

‘It helps to know that the author has given the script his blessing. Graham White’s dramatisation of John Fowles’ masterpiece passed that test...Period in setting, but modern in attitude, it examines the nature of romance and tragedy as it races towards its triple “ending”. ‘
Independent on Sunday, 01/01/06

A ‘major adaptation’ , ‘faithful to Fowles’ complex, ambiguous triple ending’
The Guardian, 31/12/05

‘John Hurt narrates brilliantly, steering the story through its strange, many-layered byways without losing any of the intrigue and mystery;
Daily Mail, 24/12/05

Oswald in Russia,

“Set in Cold War Russia, Graham White’s drama-documentary focuses on a strange episode in the life of Lee Harvey Oswald...The play is drawn from a variety of sources, including Oswald’s letters and diaries, and provides an illuminating insight into his mind and motivation.”
Independent, 21/11/04

“This intriguing drama-documentary ocuses on his years in Russia, and uses his own letters and diaries to provide an insight into his state of mind” (four stars)
The Times 21/11/04

‘An emotive snapshot’
Guardian, 21/11/04

Pick of the day
Guardian/ Daily Mail/ Telegraph/ Times/ Time Out 21/11/04



Other work includes;

Before The Flood – BBC Radio 4, April 2002,

Killer Country, -Sudwestdeutscherundfunk (Germany), November 2001, BBC Radio 4 1997,

The Aerodrome , (adap from Rex Warner), BBC Radio 4, September 2001,

Ice Cream Afternoon , BBC Radio 4, March 2001,

The Boy's own Book of The Dead , BBC Radio 4, December 1999,

Deep In The Heart of Nowhere , BBC Radio 4 1998,

We Can Remember It For You Wholesale (adap from Philip K Dick), BBC Radio 4, 1998,

Bleat, Finborough Theatre 1994, BBC Radio 1998.

He has also written scripts for BBC TV's 'Doctors' and Thames TV's 'The Bill'.

Recent and Forthcoming Conference presentation

'Tarka The Plotter: Henry Williamson and the Performance of Natural Order', paper contributed to Vanguards of the Right seminar, American Society for Theatre Research annual conference, Boston, 2008

'Editing Out: Tristram Shandy and the Limits of Listening', paper given to the Performing Literatures Conference, University of Leeds, June 2007

'Punk Attitude: The Influence of the Avant-garde and the case of Ian Stuart Donaldson', paper given at the Annual Conference of the American Society for Theatre Research, Allegro Hotel, Chicago, November, 2006.

'Compelled to Appear', Paper given at the CDE conference, International University of Bremen, June 2005.

'Memory Redacted: The Bloody Sunday Tribunal and the Performance of Public Memory' Performance Studies International 10, Singapore Management University, June 2004.

'Theatricalised Tradition: Enacting Soccer's International Past', paper for International Federation for Theatre Research World Congress, University of Amsterdam, Netherlands, July, 2002

'Situationist Theory in the Theatre of the Counter-Culture', paper for the American Society for Theatre Research, City University of New York, October 2000.

'A.K. [sic] Chesterton and the Politics of Cultural Despair' Nov 1999 Shakespeare in Europe, Universidad De Murcia, Spain.