Biography
Brian Woolland worked as a wine merchant and a photographer, a teacher in mainstream education and then in a therapeutic community for maladjusted adolescents before becoming an Advisory Teacher for Drama.
He then took up a post at the University of Reading, where he taught on he taught on a wide range of courses, specialising in educational drama, theatre production, Early Modern theatre, and modern American theatre.
In 2005 he resigned his post as a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Film, Theatre & Television in order to focus on writing and working freelance as an educator and theatre director.
He is widely published as an author of educational and academic books, where his specialism is theatre of the early modern period.
He has enjoyed considerable success as a playwright – with eleven plays commissioned and produced by professional companies, and four published in book form. He has led theatre and creative writing workshops throughout the UK and in Greece, Hungary, Austria, Jordan, Palestine, The Lebanon, and Australia.
His play, A Terrible Madness, premiered at the Helen McPherson Smith Theatre, Ballarat, Australia on 13th October 2011.
His plays, When Nobody Returns and This Flesh is Mine were produced as part of Border Crossings' season of Plays of Love and War and ran in repertory in London for three weeks in October / November 2016.
This Flesh is Mine uses The Iliad as a starting point. It previewed in Ramallah, Palestine on 8th May 2014 before opening in London later that month. The play was co-produced by London based Border Crossings and Ashtar Theatre of Ramallah, Palestine. It was revived in Autumn 2016 and ran in repertory alongside When Nobody Returns.
Brian regularly leads theatre workshops and teaches creative writing, but spends most of his time working as a writer, and theatre director. His work on Ben Jonson and his publications in the field of educational drama have been highly acclaimed.
He has written four novels, Dead in the Water (2010), Tunnel Vision (currently unpublished), The Invisible Exchange (a historical novel set in early seventeenth century London), published in paperback and as an e-book in July 2022. Paradise Burning, the sequel to The Invisible Exchange is published in early November 2024. It is available in paperback and for Kindle.
He is currently working on the final volume in what will become a trilogy of historical novels with Matthew Edgworth as their central character.
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