David Lan

David Lan CBE is a South African-born British playwright, theatre producer and director and a social anthropologist.

He was awarded a BSc first class (1976) and a PhD (1984) in Social Anthropology from LSE, with his thesis Making history: spirit mediums and the guerilla war in the Dande area of Zimbabwe.

At the Young Vic, he led the campaign to rebuild the theatre (architects Haworth Tompkins) which reopened to acclaim in October 2006.

In addition to his many plays, libretti, and films, he published an anthropological study after two years of field research in the Zambezi Valley in the extreme north of Zimbabwe.

He and Tracey Seaward are co-directors of The Walk Productions which produced ‘The Walk’, Gaziantep to Manchester, July to November 2021 in association with Good Chance and Handspring as well as subsequent journeys to The Hague, Poland, Ukraine, Amsterdam, across the U.K. and a 3 week visit to New York City by Amal, the 12ft puppet of a 10 year old Syrian refugee girl.

The re-design and rebuild of the Young Vic, for which he wrote the brief and which took place under his leadership, was named RIBA London Building of the Year 2007 and was short-listed for the Stirling Prize as well as winning many other awards.

[6][7] Also in 2018 he received the Laurence Olivier Special Award in recognition of his 'outstanding contribution in leading the Young Vic since 2000, his work within the local community around the theatre, and his commitment to internationalism and diversity.

The citation read ‘David is a polymath parallel who has built connections between the world of the social sciences, inter-continental understandings and the humanities and performing arts.

When he moved to London in the 1970s, he took a degree in Social Anthropology, followed by a PhD which would be published in 1985 as Guns and Rain: Guerrillas and Spirit Mediums in Zimbabwe, an original study of the role of rural, religious practitioners in the struggle to bring an end to the Rhodesian racist regime.

David has connected scholarship, and geographical and cultural differences with complete disregard for conventional boundaries: educating through performance and taking every opportunity to help younger and less well-placed artists at each stage of a career that is currently at its height.