Though English by birth, Daniel has spent much of his adult life being educated in Italy, India, Bangladesh, The USA, Scotland and China. He grew up on the Essex seaside which he left to make his fortune at the age of 17 when he joined the Foreign and Commonwealth Office as a (very junior) British diplomat. Having worked in cultural exchange and with the United Nations, he was thereafter posted to Rome, Mumbai, Jeddah and Dhaka, where latterly he was the British Vice-Consul whose transactions were mainly carried out on the golf course. Daniel speaks Italian, average French and German, and very poor Chinese which, he is delighted to report, is rarely tested. He is still waiting to make his fortune.
Daniel has been an academic since 1999, working primarily in the field of Shakespeare on Film. He has a BA in English Literature and Creative Writing from Columbia University, where he was his year’s salutatorian, and got to shake the hand of the boxer Muhammad Ali. He has an MLitt in Shakespeare studies and a Ph.D. in Othello from the University of St Andrews, which were both fully funded by AHRB fellowships, allowing Daniel to develop a number of habits including long beach walks. Daniel joined John Cabot University in 2011 and has since taught a wide range of courses including Shakespeare, Shakespeare and Italy, Creative Writing (Poetry and Travel Writing), Public Speaking, Modern European Theatre, Global Theatres and Acting. Throughout, his pedagogic focus has been on the development of student communication skills, both written and as performed.
Daniel is also a published poet and playwright for which he has somehow won several international prizes, including the Fermoy International Poetry Prize (2014) and the Cuirt Prize (2015). He has also directed award-winning theatre across three continents, including Antigone at The Edinburgh Fringe, and has had his own stage plays performed in New York City, Scotland, and York. Until 2010 Daniel was the Artistic Director of Zuloo Theatre in Shanghai, where his production of David Henry Hwang’s M Butterfly ’was forced to close down by the Chinese secret police a week before his son was born. He happily concedes this was the most stressful time of his life. He has also acted on stage in New York City, Edinburgh and Rome, latterly as Ralph in Bryony Lavery’s Frozen (2014) and Ben in Harold PInter’s The Dumb Waiter (2019); all were likewise stressful, but nothing compared to M. Butterfly (see above).
Daniel is the author of a memoir, Extravagant Stranger (Carcanet, 2017), and of a poetry collection entitled Donkey See, Donkey Do (Eyewear, 2017). A collection of absurdist short stories, The Incontinent of Royy, is forthcoming in 2022 from Broken Sleep Books. His work has also been published widely in print and across the web. Daniel is more than happy to drop everything and chat theatre whenever, wherever.
