Acting Law | Law Acting: A Conversation with Dr Felix Nobis and Professor Gary Watt

Abstract

Dr Felix Nobis is a senior lecturer with the Centre for Theatre and Performance at Monash University. He has worked as a professional actor for many years. He previously played an assistant to the Crown Prosecutor in the Australian television series, Janus, which was set in Melbourne, Victoria and based on the true story of a criminal family allegedly responsible for police shootings. He also played an advisor to a medical defence firm in the Australian television series MDA. He is a writer and professional storyteller. He has toured his one-person adaptation of Beowulf (2004) and one-person show Once Upon a Barstool (2006) internationally and has written on these experiences. His most recent work Boy Out of the Country (2016) is written in an Australian verse style and has just completed a tour of regional Victoria.

Professor Gary Watt is an academic in the School of Law at the University of Warwick where his teaching includes advocacy and mooting. He also regularly leads rhetoric workshops at the Royal Shakespeare Company. He is the author of Dress, Law and Naked Truth (2013) and, most recently, Shakespeare’s Acts of Will: Law, Testament and Properties of Performance (2016), which explores rhetoric in law and theatre. He also co-wrote A Strange Eventful History, which he performed with Australian choral ensemble, The Song Company, to mark the 400^th anniversary of Shakespeare’s death.