Daniel Oliver
About Daniel Oliver
Dr Daniel Oliver is a dyspraxic performance artist and academic based in London, UK. He has been making up calamitous participatory performance art worlds across the UK and overseas since 2003. Recent performances include Weird Séance, a fun and raucous performance where everyone dies;Chiperalataartparty, which explores dyspraxic time-travel and a post-apocalyptic neurodivergent (dys)utopia; and Dadderrs, a collaboration with his wife, choreographer Frauke Requardt, that focusses on ADHD, dyspraxia, marriage, and parenting. He is currently developing a performance adaptation of the boardgame he made during lockdown, which was based on a bawdy anxiety dream about a running performance art festival where you have to do all the performances yourself. He has recently edited and published a book on his practice called Awkwoods: Daniel Oliver’s Dyspraxic Adventures in Contemporary Participatory Performance, published by the Live Art Development Agency.
His academic research is focussed on contemporary performance and live art, audience participation, neurodiversity, and awkwardness. He currently lectures in the Drama Department at Queen Mary University of London. In 2016 he completed his PhD, entitled The Efficacy of Awkwardness in Contemporary Participatory Performance. Writing from this thesis has been published in Performance Research journal and in Broderick Chow and Alex Mangold’s edited collection Zizek and Performance (Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014). Other publications include a piece on dyspraxia and collaboration, written with Luke Ferris, for Contemporary Theatre Review’s website ‘Interventions’, and a study guide to neurodiversity for the Live Art Development Agency’s study room.