The Guardian 2 January 2024

Oliver Emanuel, who has died aged 43 from brain cancer, was a playwright, teacher and radio dramatist who put his name to some of the most imaginative productions of the last two decades.

If his career was too short, it was still productive and varied. Among his 30-odd plays was the entirely wordless Dragon (2013), in which he told the story of a 12-year-old boy who has not spoken since the death of his mother. Co-produced by the Glasgow company Vox Motus, the National Theatre of Scotland (NTS) and the Tianjin People’s Art Theatre, China, it fielded a dazzling sequence of Chinese dragons as a metaphor for the child’s inner turmoil. [READ MORE]

By Mark Fisher

MARK FISHER is a freelance theatre critic and feature writer based in Edinburgh and has written about theatre in Scotland since the late-1980s. He is a theatre critic for The Guardian, a former editor of The List magazine and a frequent contributor to the Scotsman and other publications. He is the co-editor of the play anthology Made in Scotland (1995), and the author of The Edinburgh Fringe Survival Guide (2012) and How to Write About Theatre (2015) – all Bloomsbury Methuen Drama. He is also the editor of The XTC Bumper Book of Fun for Boys and Girls and What Do You Call That Noise? An XTC Discovery Book (both Mark Fisher Ltd).