Nabil Shaban is a Jordanian-British actor and writer. He founded The Graeae—a theatre group which promotes performers with disabilities.
Early years and career
Shaban was born in Amman, Jordan. He was disabled by the brittle bone diseaseosteogenesis imperfecta and was sent to England for medical care, where he grew up in a series of hospitals and residential homes. He studied at the University of Surrey in the late 1970s and contributed to the Students' Union newspaper "Bare Facts". In 1997, Shaban was awarded an Honorary Doctorate by the university for services in the promotion of Disability Arts. One of his most memorable television roles was that of the reptilian alienSil in the BBCscience fiction television series Doctor Who. Shaban played Sil in two serials: Vengeance on Varos and Mindwarp, and created Sil's laugh. He reprised the role in the Big Finish audio dramasMission to Magnus and Antidote to Oblivion, both again written by Philip Martin. He has appeared in several films, including Born of Fire, City of Joy, Derek Jarman's Wittgenstein, Gaias børn, and Children of Men, and has also worked as part of the Crass Collective. In 2011, he played the Roman emperor Constantius II at the National Theatre in Ibsen's Emperor and Galilean. In 2003 he made a TV documentary titled The Strangest Viking, in which Shaban explored the possibility that Viking chieftain Ivar the Boneless may have had osteogenesis imperfecta, the same condition he himself has. Shaban has also published a trilogy of Ivar the Boneless screenplays on Kindle, representing the Viking chieftain as a disabled Danish prince with brittle bones and unable to walk. Shaban was nominated Best Actor in Scottish theatre in 2005, by the Critics' Awards for Theatre in Scotland, for his role as Mack the Knife in Bertolt Brecht's Threepenny Opera, a Theatre Workshop production. Shaban lost out to rival nominee David Tennant, who was about to become the new Doctor Who. Shaban's play The First To Go premièred in May 2008, produced by Edinburgh's Benchtours Theatre Company in association with Sirius Pictures. It opened at the Lyceum Theatre in Edinburgh on 23 May and toured to the Tron Theatre, Glasgow; the Byre Theatre, St Andrews and Lawrence Batley Theatre, Huddersfield.
Credits
Television
TV documentaries
Co-wrote and presented "The Skin Horse", 1984 Channel Four
Co-wrote and presented "The Fifth Gospel", 1990 BBC TV
Presented "Rejects and Super Crips", Channel Four
Presented "Children of Gaia", 1997, Milton Media, Denmark
Writer, producer, director, host "The Alien Who Lived in the Sheds", 1997, BBC TV
Associate producer and presenter "The Strangest Viking", 2003, Channel Four
Researcher, co-writer and presenter "Return of the Star People", 2003, Zentropa, Denmark.
