Dr Hannah Simpson is Lecturer in Theatre and Performance at the University of Edinburgh. She works primarily on the representation of the human body on stage and politicised representations of the body, with a special interest in depictions of physical pain and disability, and the work of Samuel Beckett. She is the author of two monographs: Samuel Beckett and the Theatre of the Witness: Pain in Postwar Francophone Drama (Oxford University Press, 2022) and Samuel Beckett and Disability Performance (Palgrave Macmillan, 2022), and is currently working on a new project on the forgotten stage plays of modernist novelists. She previously served as the first Rosemary Pountney Junior Research Fellow at St Anne’s College, University of Oxford.
I work across modern and contemporary theatre and performance, and on the intersections with the medical humanities, particularly in relation to pain, trauma, and disability studies. My first monograph, Samuel Beckett and the Theatre of the Witness: Pain in Post-War Francophone Drama (Oxford University Press, 2022) explored the representation of physical pain in the post-World War II stage plays of Samuel Beckett and his Francophone contemporaries Albert Camus, Eugène Ionesco, Pablo Picasso, and Marguerite Duras. My second monograph, Samuel Beckett and Disability Performance (Palgrave Macmillan, 2022) explored contemporary disability performances of Samuel Beckett’s plays, pairing original interviews with the actors and directors involved in these productions alongside critical analysis underpinned by recent disability and performance theory. I have also published on trauma and trauma theory, theatrical depictions of sexual assault and rape play as therapeutic practice, relaxed performance protocols in the contemporary UK theatre industry, and issues of disability, neurodiversity and feminism in the classroom.
I’m currently working on two new book projects: the first is co-authored with the Scottish disability-led Birds of Paradise theatre company on a book detailing their history and offering guidance to theatre companies interested in developing their own accessibly practice; the second, tentatively entitled The Unexpected Dramatist, examines the forgotten stage plays of modernist novelists including Virginia Woolf, George Orwell, James Joyce, Elizabeth Bowen, E.M. Forster, Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald and William Faulkner.
I have secondary interests in literary and theatrical adaptation, popular culture, war literature, and theatrical representation of climate change.