Dr Rebecca Clode

Rebecca is a PhD graduate of the ANU and also holds an MA in Text and Performance Studies from King's College and the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, London. Research interests include Australian drama (history and practice) as well as contemporary European and American drama. Her PhD thesis explores the use of metatheatrical techniques by Australian and British playwrights (Hewett, Nowra, Wertenbaker and Murray) during the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries.

Before commencing work at the ANU in 2007, Rebecca worked as a theatre maker. Plays directed include: Shakespeare's Twelfth Night, Brecht's The Caucasian Chalk Circle, Sophokles' Antigone, Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing, Ionesco's The Lesson (ANU), The Jungle Book (Freerain Frolics), Van Badham's An Organic Response to the Ideological State Apparatus: Australia 1996-2004 (Short & Sweet, Sydney), Jim Cartwright's Two (Edinburgh Fringe Festival), Rohini Sharma's Duckshove in the Cities of the Plain (White Bear Theatre, London), Pierre Marivaux's The Will (Darlo Drama). Assistant Director for: The Seven Year Itch (Freerain), Electronic City (For Lizzie Doyle in the NIDA Director's course), David Mamet's Edmond (B-Sharp, Belvoir), David Rabe's Hurly Burly (Griffin Stablemates), Tim Crouch's My Arm (B-Sharp, Belvoir), Ostrovsky's A Family Affair and Vassily Sigarev's Black Milk (B-Sharp, Belvoir).

Grants

• 2023 Freilich Project, Performing Resistance: A Study of Literary and Theatrical interventions into Australia’s Refugee Crisis, $4970

Book

• 2022 Australian Metatheatre on Page and Stage: an exploration of metatheatrical techniques (Routledge).

Article

• 2023 “Pivoting ‘Resilience’: Australian Women Playwrights, Community and the COVID-19 Crisis,” Australasian Drama Studies 83 Special Issue ‘On Resilience.’

Presentations

• 2023 “‘Moons will tell terrible truths.’ (Information) precarity and resistance in Australia’s refugee crisis – a discussion of Behrouz Boochani’s No Friend But the Mountains.” Conference of SPACLALS (South Pacific and Commonwealth Literature and Language Studies).
• 2021 “What Happens to Women’s Voices During a Pandemic? A Quantitative Study of the Impact of COVID-19 on Women Writers in Australia,” Conference on Women Writers and COVID-19, Institute of Modern Languages, University of London.

Non-traditional research outputs

• 2023 Dramaturg for This Rough Magic, a new play by Helen Machalias at The Street Theatre
• 2021 Dramaturg for People inside Me, new play by Katie Pollock at The Street Theatre
• 2019 Dramaturg for People Might Hear You, new play by Helen Machalias, The Street Theatre

PhD (ANU), MA (King's College, London and Royal Academy of Dramatic Art), BAHons1/BScience (ANU)

Australian Drama (history, practice, playwrights)

Contemporary European and American Drama

Teaching interests:

ENGL2040 The Making of Literature: Topics in Literary Production and Reception

ENGL3036 Victorian Literature

ENGL2020 Texts in Performance