Brian Singleton is Samuel Beckett Professor of Drama & Theatre at Trinity College Dublin. He is also Academic Director of The Lir - National Academy of Dramatic Art. He is former President of the International Federation for Theatre Research (2007-2011), and former Editor of Theatre Research International, published by Cambridge University Press (2001-2003). From 2005-2015 he co-edited (with Janelle Reinelt) the 40-volume book series 'Studies in International Performance', published by Palgrave Macmillan for which they won the Association for Theatre in Higher Education (USA) prize for Sustained Achievement in Editing. He also co-edited a 25-volume second series for Palgrave (with Elaine Aston) entitled ‘Contemporary Performance InterActions’. He has published widely on Irish, British and French theatre with a particular focus on orientalism, interculturalism and masculinities in performance. His publications on Irish theatre include ANU Productions: the Monto Cycle (Palgrave, 2016) and his monograph Masculinities and the Contemporary Irish Theatre was revised and updated for its paperback edition (Palgrave Macmillan, 2015). More recently he has published retrospective essays on the contribution and impact of director André Antoine and actress Lily Brayton. Currently in the process of publication is the third of three new essays in different volumes on the changing sounds and images of interculturalism in performance. His current book project is entitled ‘Theatre and Performance in Neoliberal Ireland’.

On 23^rd December 2023, in the underground studio theatre of Ireland’s national theatre, ANU Productions staged the last of their 22 productions marking the ‘decade of centenaries’– the 1913 Lockout of workers seeking to unionize, the 1916 Rising against British Rule, a War of Independence (1919-1921), and a Civil War (1922-1923) that left Ireland partitioned to this day. ANU’s production, Hammam, immersed disoriented spectators into some of the rooms of the Hammam Hotel and Turkish Baths, reconstructed with the aid of the Irish Architectural Archive, to meet the Civil War rebels holed up there, including the women of Cumann na nBan brought to life to depict their heroic struggle against imperialist forces and the post-revolutionary counterparts, but also against the prevailing misogyny of the times. These women maintained the mantra of no surrender, regardless of the losing battle all around them. Their voices are the most salutary in the contemporary moment as Ireland stands more prominently on the cusp of reunification with the changing demographics of Northern Ireland as revealed in the 2022 census.  Their political passion and certainty also stand as a counterpoint to the neo-nationalist protestors, racist agitators, and looters who took to the surrounding streets one month before the production opened, to desecrate the memory of those who lost their lives for their politics one century ago in the tragedy of a partitioned Ireland.