The Importance of Being Oscar Wilde’s Valet 

Niala is an Honorary Research Fellow at the University of Warwick Theatre and Performance Studies department, where she teaches collaborative and Intercultural theatre making. She has also taught at the University of Cambridge, Oxford Playhouse and internationally. Her play Out of Bounds, which features an interracial relationship between two young women, was awarded the prestigious Nancy Dean Prize in 2021.

Theodore has worked as a scriptwriter and story editor on various internationally screened TV series and feature films; created a decolonized, interactive visitor experience at Province House, Canada’s birthplace; and translated and adapted over 35 plays. His transadaptation of Public Enemy by Olivier Choinière saw a sold-out, extended run at Canadian Stage in Toronto and was published by Playwrights Canada Press. He is a 2-time Betty Mitchell Award winner, a Canadian Screen Award finalist, and a Governor General’s Award finalist.

Michèle Mendelssohn is Professor of English and American Literature and Tutorial Fellow at Mansfield College, Oxford. Her research spans the late 19th century to the present day and addresses questions of aesthetics, race, gender, sexuality and cultural politics in British, American and African American literature. She has written, co-edited and introduced 7 books: Making Oscar Wilde; Late Victorian into Modern, 1880-1920; Writing Under the Influence: Essays on Alan Hollinghurst; Henry James, Oscar Wilde and Aesthetic Culture; Oscar Wilde’s The Happy Prince and Other Tales; Why Friendship Matters; No Place Like Home.

She is currently writing a book about the true story of one of the first woman-led expeditions to the Arctic. She is co-PI on POLAR X, a research collaboration with Université Paris Cité, l’Institut d’études avancées, and Centre national de la recherche scientifique (CNRS). POLAR X centres on women’s narratives of polar encounters, extractivism and exploration from the 19th century to the present. It offers an innovative, multi-disciplinary approach to investigate the relationship between the removal of natural and ethnographically-specific resources through the intersecting lenses of literature, politics, gender and indigeneity.

Mendelssohn’s most recent book, Making Oscar Wilde, was selected as a Book of the Year by the Sunday Times, Times Literary Supplement and The Advocate. It was a semi-finalist for the PEN America Biography Prize, a finalist for the Biographers’ Club Slightly Foxed Prize, and a finalist for the LGBTQ Polari Prize. It is the inspiration behind The Importance of Being Oscar Wilde’s Valet, a play currently in development. Mendelssohn co-curated an exhibition and interactive website showcasing Oxford’s trailblazing Black and queer undergraduates. Making History: Christian Cole, Alain Locke and Oscar Wilde at Oxford tells their stories through archives and personal testimony spanning the 19th to the 21st century. The project was shortlisted for the Vice-Chancellor’s Diversity Award. Watch this short video to see Mendelssohn and co-curator Elizabeth Adams discuss how the exhibition came about.

Other works in progress include essays on artificial intelligence, James Baldwin, Cynthia Ozick, modern Greece and queer travel writing. She warmly welcomes invitations from potential collaborators, researchers, publishers, editors, and curators.