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The Hampstead Theatre
Hampstead Theatre is a theatre in South Hampstead in the London Borough of Camden. It specialises in commissioning and producing new writing, supporting and developing the work of new writers. Roxana Silbert has been the artistic director since 2019. History The original theatre (The Hampstead Theatre Club) was created in 1959 in Moreland Hall, a parish church school hall in Holly Bush Vale, Hampstead Village. James Roose-Evans was the founder and first Artistic Director, and the 1959–1960 season included ''The Dumb Waiter'' and ''The Room'' by Harold Pinter, Eugène Ionesco's ''Jacques'' and ''The Sport of My Mad Mother'' by Ann Jellicoe. In 1962 the company moved to a portable cabin in Swiss Cottage where it remained for nearly 40 years, before, in 2003, the new purpose-built Hampstead Theatre opened in Swiss Cottage. The main auditorium seats 373 people. The studio theatre, Hampstead Downstairs, seats up to 100 people and was turned into a laboratory for new writing i ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
London
London is the capital and largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary down to the North Sea, and has been a major settlement for two millennia. The City of London, its ancient core and financial centre, was founded by the Romans as '' Londinium'' and retains its medieval boundaries.See also: Independent city § National capitals The City of Westminster, to the west of the City of London, has for centuries hosted the national government and parliament. Since the 19th century, the name "London" has also referred to the metropolis around this core, historically split between the counties of Middlesex, Essex, Surrey, Kent, and Hertfordshire, which largely comprises Greater London, governed by the Greater London Authority.The Greater London Authority consists of the Mayor of London and the London Assembly. The London Mayor is distinguished fr ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Michael Attenborough
Michael John Attenborough (born 13 February 1950) is an English theatre director. Background Attenborough was born on 13 February 1950 in London, the only son of actress Sheila Sim and actor-director Richard Attenborough. He is the nephew of David Attenborough, and John Attenborough and the brother of Jane Attenborough and Charlotte Attenborough. He is the recipient of two honorary doctorates, one from the University of Leicester, where he is now a Distinguished Honorary Fellow and one from the University of Sussex, where he is Honorary Professor of English and Drama. Attenborough was educated at Westminster School and at the University of Sussex. Theatre career Attenborough was Artistic Director of the Almeida Theatre in London between 2002 and 2013. Previously, he was Associate Director of the Mercury Theatre Colchester 1972 to 74, the Leeds Playhouse (now West Yorkshire Playhouse) 1974 to 1979, the Young Vic 1979 to 1980, then Artistic Director of the Palace Theatre, Watf ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Tom Morton-Smith
Tom Morton-Smith (born 1980) is an English playwright. Biography Morton-Smith studied Drama at the University of East Anglia before training as an actor at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art. In 2006 he was selected to be part of Future Perfect, a writer's group attached to Paines Plough theatre company. In 2007 he joined the company as their playwright-in-residence. His debut stage play, ''Salt Meets Wound'', premiered at Theatre503 in May 2007. His play ''Oppenheimer (play), Oppenheimer'', about the physicist J Robert Oppenheimer and the building of the atomic bomb, was performed by the Royal Shakespeare Company in 2015 in the Swan_Theatre_(Stratford), Swan Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon, until it transferred to London's West End in April 2015. The play was nominated for Best New Play at the 2016 WhatsOnStage Awards. In April 2022 it was announced that he would adapt Studio Ghibli's 1988 animated film ''My Neighbour Totoro'' for the stage. Produced by the Royal Shake ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Abi Morgan
Abigail Louise Morgan (born 1968) is a Welsh playwright and screenwriter known for her works for television, such as ''Sex Traffic'' and '' The Hour'', and the films '' Brick Lane'', '' The Iron Lady'', ''Shame'' and ''Suffragette''. Early life Abigail Louise Morgan was born in Cardiff, Wales, in 1968. She is the daughter of actress Pat England and theatre director Gareth Morgan, who was director of the Gulbenkian Theatre in Newcastle upon Tyne (now the Northern Stage). Her parents divorced when she was a teenager and her childhood was spent moving around the country while her mother acted in repertory theatre; she told ''The Scotsman'' in 2010 that she had attended seven separate schools during her childhood. Her sister is the fundraiser at London's Unicorn Theatre.Maggie BrownAbi Morgan: Cometh the hour, ''The Stage'', 15 July 2011. After initial ambitions to become an actress herself, she decided to become a writer while reading drama and literature at Exeter University.Ni ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mike Leigh
Mike Leigh (born 20 February 1943) is an English film and theatre director, screenwriter and playwright. He studied at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA) and further at the Camberwell School of Art, the Central School of Art and Design and the London School of Film Technique. He began his career as a theatre director and playwright in the mid-1960s, before transitioning to making televised plays and films for BBC Television in the 1970s and '80s. Leigh is known for his lengthy rehearsal and improvisation techniques with actors to build characters and narrative for his films. His purpose is to capture reality and present "emotional, subjective, intuitive, instinctive, vulnerable films." His films and stage plays, according to critic Michael Coveney, "comprise a distinctive, homogenous body of work which stands comparison with anyone's in the British theatre and cinema over the same period." Leigh's most notable works include the black comedy-drama ''Naked'' (1993), for ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hanif Kureishi
Hanif Kureishi (born 5 December 1954) is a British playwright, screenwriter, filmmaker and novelist of South Asian and English descent. In 2008, ''The Times'' included Kureishi in its list of the 50 greatest British writers since 1945. Early life Kureishi was born in Bromley, South London to a Pakistani father, Rafiushan (Shanoo) Kureishi, and an English mother, Audrey Buss.Emily Ballou"Whims of the father" ''The Australia'', 15 November 2008. His father was from a wealthy Madras family, whose members moved to Pakistan after the Partition of British India in 1947. Rafiushan came to the UK in 1950 to study law but due to financial reasons he worked at the Pakistani embassy instead. Here he met his wife-to-be, Buss. He wanted to be a writer but his ambitions were frustrated. The couple were married, the family settled in Bromley where Kureishi was born. In an interview, Kureishi notes:My aternalgrandfather, an army doctor, was a colonel in the Indian army. Big family. Servants. T ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Dennis Kelly
Dennis Kelly is a British scriptwriter for theatre, television and film. His play ''DNA'', first performed in 2007, became a core set-text for GCSE in 2010 and has been studied by approximately 400,000 students each year. He wrote the book for ''Matilda the Musical'', which featured music and lyrics from musician and comedian Tim Minchin. The musical went on to win multiple ‘Best Musical’ awards, with Kelly receiving a Tony Award for Best Book of a Musical. A film adaptation of the musical with screenplay by Kelly will be released in December 2022. For television he is known for co-creating and co-writing the BBC Three sitcom '' Pulling'', the Channel 4 conspiracy thriller ''Utopia'' and the HBO / Sky Atlantic thriller ''The Third Day''. Kelly wrote the screenplay for the 2014 film ''Black Sea'', directed by Kevin Macdonald and starring Jude Law. Personal life Kelly grew up on a council estate in Barnet, North London. A child of an Irish family, he was one of five ch ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Terry Johnson (dramatist)
Terry Johnson (born 20 December 1955) is a British dramatist and director working for stage, television and film. Graduating from the Department of Drama and Theatre Arts at the University of Birmingham, he worked as an actor from 1971 to 1975, and has been active as a playwright since the early 1980s. Johnson's stage work has been produced around the world. He has won nine British Theatre awards including the Olivier Award for Best Comedy 1994 and 1999, Playwright of the Year 1995, Critics' Circle Theatre Awards for Best New Play 1995, two Evening Standard Theatre Awards, the Writers Guild Award for Best Play 1995 and 1996, the Meyer-Whitworth Award 1993 and the John Whiting Award 1991. He has had many West End productions as director and/or writer including: '' One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest'', ''Hitchcock Blonde'', ''Entertaining Mr Sloane'', ''The Graduate'', ''Dead Funny'', '' Hysteria'', ''Elton John's Glasses'' and ''The Memory of Water''. At the Royal Court Theatre ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Rebecca Gilman
Rebecca Gilman (born 1965 in Birmingham, Alabama) is an American playwright. Education She attended Middlebury College, graduated from Birmingham-Southern College, and earned a Master of Fine Arts from the Iowa Playwrights Workshop at the University of Iowa. Career Gilman was the first American playwright to win an ''Evening Standard'' Award. She serves on the advisory board for Chicago Dramatists. She has received the 2008 Harper Lee Award. Her most widely known works are '' Spinning Into Butter'', a play that addresses political correctness and racial identity, and '' Boy Gets Girl'', which was included in ''Time Magazines List of the Best Plays and Musicals of the Decade. A production of her adaptation of ''The Heart is a Lonely Hunter'' was the occasion of a protest by actors who felt only a deaf person should play a deaf person on stage. She currently teaches at Texas Tech University's School of Theatre and Dance as Head of Playwriting. When asked about her influences ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Brian Friel
Brian Patrick Friel (c. 9 January 1929 – 2 October 2015) was an Irish dramatist, short story writer and founder of the Field Day Theatre Company. He had been considered one of the greatest living English-language dramatists. (subscription required). He has been likened to an "Irish Chekhov" and described as "the universally accented voice of Ireland". His plays have been compared favourably to those of contemporaries such as Samuel Beckett, Arthur Miller, Harold Pinter and Tennessee Williams. Recognised for early works such as ''Philadelphia, Here I Come!'' and '' Faith Healer'', Friel had 24 plays published in a career of more than a half-century. He was elected to the honorary position of Saoi of Aosdána. His plays were commonly produced on Broadway in New York City throughout this time, as well as in Ireland and the UK. In 1980 Friel co-founded Field Day Theatre Company and his play ''Translations'' was the company's first production. With Field Day, Friel collaborated ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Michael Frayn
Michael Frayn, FRSL (; born 8 September 1933) is an English playwright and novelist. He is best known as the author of the farce ''Noises Off'' and the dramas ''Copenhagen'' and ''Democracy''. His novels, such as '' Towards the End of the Morning'', '' Headlong'' and ''Spies'', have also been critical and commercial successes, making him one of the handful of writers in the English language to succeed in both drama and prose fiction. He has also written philosophical works, such as ''The Human Touch: Our Part in the Creation of the Universe'' (2006). Early life Frayn was born at Mill Hill (then in Middlesex) to Thomas Allen Frayn, an asbestos salesman from a working-class family of blacksmiths, locksmiths and servants, in which deafness was hereditary, and his wife Violet Alice (née Lawson). Violet was the daughter of a failed palliasse merchant; having studied as a violinist at the Royal Academy of Music, she worked as a shop assistant and occasional clothes model at Harr ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Jeremy Brock
Jeremy Brock MBE (born 1959) is a British writer and director whose works include the screenplays ''Mrs Brown'', ''Driving Lessons'', ''The Last King of Scotland'', '' Charlotte Gray'', and ''The Eagle''. Brock has also written two plays for the Hampstead downstairs theatre. Early life He was born in Malvern, Worcestershire. He had an older brother (born 1952) and sister (born 1954). He studied drama at the University of Bristol, where he met Paul Unwin in 1979. Career His awards include the ''Evening Standard'' award for ''Mrs. Brown''. ''Driving Lessons'' was entered into the 28th Moscow International Film Festival, where it won the Special Jury Prize. In 2007, he received the BAFTA award for best-adapted screenplay for ''The Last King of Scotland'', co-written with Peter Morgan. Casualty He is the co-creator of ''Casualty'' with Paul Unwin. They created ''Casualty'' in reaction to what they saw as a "Thatcherite attack on our National Health Service", and that in 1985, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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