Matthew Hahn

Theatre Director
Theatre for Development Facilitator

Current Work

The Festival of Fleeting Words

The Festival of Fleeting Words [formerly The New Writing/New Normal International Theatre Festival] is a quarterly digital new writing festival.

In each 24 hour festival, artists will create new plays that will be written, rehearsed & performed to a live audience via a digital platform.

Tupumue / Let Us Breathe film for the SEAMHH Breath Symposium

Working with two Kenyan filmmakers, I recently directed a short film, Tupumue / Let Us Breathe film which is a rumination on breath and moments of dealing with breathing, inhaling and exhaling in the informal settlement of Mukuru, outside of Nairobi in Kenya [2020].

The Robben Island Shakespeare

During the Apartheid years in South Africa, a copy of The Complete Works of William Shakespeare was smuggled around the prison on Robben Island.

My first play, The Robben Island Shakespeare, is based on this book and primary interviews I conducted in 2008 & 2010.

Tupumue

TUPUMUE, or let’s breathe in Swahili, is a partnership between LSTM and the Kenya Medical Research Institute and is jointly funded by the National Research Foundation of Kenya and the Medical Research Council of the UK.

I serve as a theatre for development specialist in this project.

Ethical Leadership Workshops based on The Robben Island Shakespeare

Through the words of William Shakespeare & former South African political prisoners, the aim of the workshop is to inspire participants to create a pathway to ethical leadership.

The Rivonia Trial Tribunal Play

I am in the early developmental stages of a first draft of a tribunal play based on the Rivonia Trial court transcripts. Referred to as "the trial that changed South Africa,”in Oct 1963, opponents of Apartheid including Nelson Mandela, Govan Mbeki & Walter Sisulu went on trial for sabotage.

The Peacock Theatre Festival of Civil Liberties

The Peacock Theatre Festival of Civil Liberties is a repository of theatrical responses to the ongoing discussions around civil liberties and authoritarianism under the developing lockdown as part of wider solidarity against any such authoritarian creep in the UK and abroad.

imPEACHable

A tribunal play based on the private and public transcripts of the impeachment trial of the President of the United States. The play examines the central tenet of the trials, that is, whether there was a ‘Quid Pro Quo’ offer in a telephone conversation with the US President and the Ukrainian President in July 2019.