David Wiles

I am a historian of the theatre, which means that I am someone who wants to understand the present, because it is the past that has made us who we are. Teaching and creative practice has always informed my research. I now live in Oxford where I am pursuing community theatre ventures, and participate in academic life as a member of Wolfson College.

My main historical areas of interest have always been the theatres of Greece and Elizabethan England, and more recently the European Enlightenment. Important themes in my work have been performance space, masked acting, festival, and the function of theatre in society. I have resisted limiting myself to a single period in order to take a broader view of how theatre has evolved. My last two books on 'citizenship' and on 'rhetorical' stage acting' have led me to my present project: an examination of the foundations of democracy. Democracy cannot function without oratory (in whatever mediatized form), and oratory is necessarily grounded in theatricality.