Gareth is a writer, dramaturg, translator, and director originally from the UK.
Gareth is a writer, dramaturg, translator, and director originally from the UK. They are interested in a collaborative multi-media approach to live performance, embracing how this interdisciplinary approach can enrich queer representation within opera and music-theatre. For them, opera is a radical space in which different cultures, identities, time periods, technologies, and realities can all enter into dialogue with one another - and emerge transformed.
Gareth graduated from Trinity Hall, the University of Cambridge with a BA Hons in English Literature, and an MPhil in Screen Media and Cultures, where they researched the relationship between opera and cinema. Following on from this, they also completed an MA in Opera Making and Writing at Guildhall School of Music and Drama (subsequently undertaking an Artist Fellowship) and an MFA in Dramatic Writing at Tisch School of the Arts, New York University (where they were awarded a Dr Kenny Encouragement Fund Scholarship, and NYU’s Venable Herndon Award for Excellence in Screenwriting). In 2022, they were awarded a Scholarship by the Daiwa Anglo-Japanese Foundation to study Japanese at Waseda University, and to develop their work while living in Japan. Gareth was also recently part of the inaugural Up Next: Future Film Curators’ Lab with cross-disciplinary film, performance and moving image festival Queer East.
Gareth’s work has previously been supported by a Foreign Affairs Theatre Translator Mentorship, as well as by residencies and workshops with Snape Maltings in Aldeburgh, the British Centre for Literary Translation, Shakespeare’s Globe, LOD muziektheater in Ghent, Belgium, Theaterakademie August Everding with the Young Opera (JOiN) of the Staatsoper Stuttgart, Germany, Académie du Festival d’Aix in Aix-en-Provence, France (all facilitated by the European Network of Opera Academies), Theater Nohgaku in Tokyo, Japan, and the Banff Centre for Creativity and the Arts in Canada.
Recent highlights include: Theo in Between with Jordan Li-Smith (as bookwriter and co-lyricist, British Youth Music Theatre), Who is Molly Leigh? with Francesca Le Lohé (B Arts in Stoke-on-Trent, also co-director), You Should (Should!) Be Dancing! with Pedro Lima (REMIX Ensemble and Casa da Música in Porto, Portugal), money & yes with Alex Tay (GBSR Duo and Exaudi at Wigmore Hall), Beauty and the Beast (as translator from Japanese to English, with Foreign Affairs’ Theatre Translator Mentorship, extracts showcased at Jermyn Street Theatre and at Udderbelly), Sumidagawa / A Tale of the Sumida River (as co-writer and dramaturg, with the Aldeburgh Festival and Noh Reimagined Festival) and From Tulip, to Orchid (With Love) with Michael Taplin (Birmingham Opera Company).
Gareth’s work with Pedro Lima has won both the Play Award for Best Classical Music Album in 2025, and the 2025 ISCM Young Composer Prize. Their work with Bob Allan was nominated at the Scottish New Music Awards in 2019 for the ISM Collaboration Prize, their short play The Siblings Who Made a Game of Death was longlisted for the Bill Cashmore Award 2025, and most recently, their musical Theo in Between with Jordan Li-Smith was nominated for Best New Production of a Musical at BroadwayWorld UK / West End Awards 2025.
Gareth also regularly works in education, hoping to improve access to opera, new music, and new writing across all media. They have previously guest lectured at Tokyo University, worked as a Teaching Assistant on aesthetic history at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts, a Supervisor and Seminar Leader at Guildhall School of Music and Drama (for both the Performance and Creative Enterprise BA, and the Opera Making and Writing MA), and as a Directing Mentor (for both Aldeburgh Young Musicians and a collaborative project between Hampstead Garden Opera and The Latymer School).
Upcoming projects include crypt_with Yuri Umemoto for the Munich Biennale, The Relatives: Videoconference of a Crimean Family 1912-2025 with Sergej Newski and Birmingham Contemporary Music Group, After You with Matthew Lee Knowles, Upstream with Minami Nagai at the Hochschule für Musik und Theater München, TAY with Marco Galvani for London Youth Opera, and a Japanese tour of semi-staged recital Songs of Reginald Blythe.