Professor Brian Lobel

Biography

Brian Lobel is a performer, teacher and curator, who is interested in creating work about bodies and how they are watched, policed, poked, prodded and loved by others. Brian has created work internationally in a range of contexts, from Harvard Medical School, to Sydney Opera House, to the National Theatre (London) and Lagos Theatre Festival, blending provocative humour with insightful reflection. For over 20 years, Brian has worked regularly with people living with and beyond cancer and other serious illnesses. Brian is currently undertaking a British Academy Mid-Career Fellowship exploring the role of performance and ritual in experiences of serious illness.

Research interests and PhD supervision

Social change, health, ritual, and performance studies.

Selected projects 

• 24 Italian Songs & Arias with Gweneth-Ann Rand, supported by UMS, 2021
• Sex with Cancer, with Joon Lynn Goh, supported by Arts Council England, 2020 – 2021
• BINGE, supported by La Jolla Playhouse, Cork Midsummer Festival, and Cambridge Junction, 2019 – 2020, also at Fierce Festival, HOME Manchester, and Take Me Somewhere
• Fun with Cancer Patients, Kanazawa, 2017 – 2019
• A Pacifist’s Guide to the War on Cancer, 2016

External duties 

External Examiner, BA Drama, De Montfort University, 2017–2021

Publications

Theatre & Cancer, Red Globe Press, 2019

Sex with Cancer will be published by Jessica Kingsley Publishing (Hachette) in 2027

Qualifications

• PhD: “‘Playing the Cancer Card: Illness, Performance and Spectatorship”, Queen Mary University of London, 2012
• Certificate in Learning and Teaching, Queen Mary University of London, 2011
• MA in Performance, Queen Mary University of London, 2007
• BA Theatre, Social Identity and Political Science, University of Michigan, 2003