After his arrival in Australia in 1957 Dennis Davison began writing, producing and performing plays, contributing greatly to the world of theatre. He produced and directed previously neglected works such as Shakespeare's Two Gentlemen of Verona, Christopher Fry's The Lady's Not For Burning, Edward Geoghegan's The Currency Lass, and Marcus Clarke's Reverses. Davison also commissioned the Monash Australiana Series, a valuable series of editions of nineteenth-century plays and was founding editor of Margin, the publication of the Monash Australiana Research Group.
Fluent in several languages, Davison translated some French, German, and Russian plays including those written by Ivan Turgenev and Henri Becque. He also translated the play En Australie : Vaudeville en 1 Acte by Comptesse Lionel de Chabrillan. A translation by Davison of Barron Field's poetry Spanish Sketches was published in Margin no.25, 1991 pp.[21-37].
Davison retired as a Senior Lecturer at Melbourne's Monash University Melbourne in 1988. A few days before he died in 1994 he produced and took part in one of his own plays, Overnight Loan Only.
