William Gaskill
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William Gaskill
William "Bill" Gaskill (24 June 1930 – 4 February 2016) was a British theatre director who was "instrumental in creating a new sense of realism in the theatre". Described as "a champion of new writing", he was also noted for his productions of Bertolt Brecht and Restoration comedy. Born in Shipley, West Yorkshire, Gaskill was educated at Salt High School, Shipley, where he ran an amateur theatre with Tony Richardson. He won a scholarship to attend Hertford College at Oxford University, where he began directing, and he subsequently studied in Paris with Étienne Decroux. He received a nomination for the Tony Award for Best Director in 1959 for his direction of ''Epitaph for George Dillon'' on Broadway. Gaskill worked alongside Laurence Olivier as a founding director of the National Theatre from its time at the Old Vic in 1963. In 1962, he directed Vanessa Redgrave and Eric Porter in ''Cymbeline'' for the Royal Shakespeare Company. He was the artistic director of the Royal Cou ...
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The Guardian
''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'', and changed its name in 1959. Along with its sister papers ''The Observer'' and ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardian'' is part of the Guardian Media Group, owned by the Scott Trust. The trust was created in 1936 to "secure the financial and editorial independence of ''The Guardian'' in perpetuity and to safeguard the journalistic freedom and liberal values of ''The Guardian'' free from commercial or political interference". The trust was converted into a limited company in 2008, with a constitution written so as to maintain for ''The Guardian'' the same protections as were built into the structure of the Scott Trust by its creators. Profits are reinvested in journalism rather than distributed to owners or shareholders. It is considered a newspaper of record in the UK. The editor-in-chief Katharine Viner succeeded Alan Rusbridger in 2015. Since 2018, the paper's main news ...
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Eric Porter
Eric Richard Porter (8 April 192815 May 1995) was an English actor of stage, film and television. Early life Porter was born in Shepherd's Bush, London, to bus conductor Richard John Porter and Phoebe Elizabeth (née Spall). His parents hoped he would become an electrical engineer, so he was educated at the Technical College in Wimbledon, then worked for the Marconi Telegraph and Wireless company as a joint-solderer. He made his stage debut at the Cambridge Arts Theatre in 1945 at the age of 17. Career In 1955, Porter played the title role in Ben Jonson's ''Volpone'' at the Bristol Old Vic. He won the London Evening Standard award in 1959 for his performance in Ibsen's ''Rosmersholm'' at the Royal Court Theatre. In 1960 he joined the Royal Shakespeare Company; that year, he played Ferdinand in John Webster's ''The Duchess of Malfi''. In 1962, he performed as Iachimo in ''Cymbeline''. Other roles included Ulysses, Macbeth, Leontes, Malvolio, Shylock, King Lear and Henry IV, ...
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National Life Stories
National Life Stories is an independent charitable trust and limited company (registered as the ‘National Life Story Collection’) based within the British Library Oral History section, whose key focus and expertise is oral history fieldwork. Since 1987 National Life Stories (NLS) has initiated a series of innovative interviewing projects funded almost entirely from sponsorship, charitable and individual donations. Each NLS project is archived at the British Library and comprises recorded in-depth interviews, plus content summaries and (if funds allow) transcripts to assist users. Alongside the British Library’s oral history collections, which stretch back to the beginning of the twentieth century, NLS recordings form a unique and invaluable record of people’s lives in Britain today. History The proposal for NLS was first developed by Paul Thompson and Asa Briggs in 1985-6. The project for a ‘National Life Story Collection’ had a number of distinct features; it was ...
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Royal Academy Of Dramatic Art
The Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA; ) is a drama school in London, England, that provides vocational conservatoire training for theatre, film, television, and radio. It is based in the Bloomsbury area of Central London, close to the Senate House complex of the University of London and is a founding member of the Federation of Drama Schools. It is one of the oldest drama schools in the United Kingdom, founded in 1904 by Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree. It moved to buildings on Gower Street in 1905. It was granted a Royal Charter in 1920 and a new theatre was built on Malet Street, behind the Gower Street buildings that was opened by Edward, Prince of Wales, in 1921. It received its first government subsidy in 1924. RADA currently has five theatres and a cinema. The school’s Principal Industry Partner is Warner Bros. Entertainment. RADA offers a number of foundation, undergraduate and postgraduate courses. Its higher education awards are validated by King's College London ( ...
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David Aukin
David Aukin (born 12 February 1942) is a theatrical and executive producer as well as a qualified solicitor. He has been nominated many times for British Academy Television Awards and has won twice for producing films about Tony Blair: ''The Government Inspector'' in 2005 and ''Britz'' in 2009. While Head of Film at Channel 4 he received the Michael Balcon Award from BAFTA for the quality of its output. The films he commissioned at Channel 4 gathered numerous Oscar nominations and they won for the '' Madness of King George'', '' Secrets & Lies'' and '' Trainspotting''. ''Secrets & Lies'' also won the Palme d'Or at Cannes Film Festival. Personal life David Aukin was born in Harrow, London, on 12 February 1942, to parents Charles and Regina Aukin. He attended St Paul's School and St Edmund Hall, Oxford. He is married to Nancy Meckler. They have two children, Daniel Aukin and Jethro Aukin. Theatrical career David Aukin served as the literary adviser at the Traverse Theatre (1 ...
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Max Stafford-Clark
Maxwell Robert Guthrie Stewart "Max" Stafford-Clark (born 17 March 1941) is a British theatre director. Life and career Stafford-Clark was born in Cambridge, England. the son of David Stafford-Clark, a physician, and Dorothy Crossley (née Oldfield). He was educated at Felsted School, in Essex, England and Riverdale Country School in New York City, followed by Trinity College, Dublin. His directing career began as Associate Director of the Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh, in 1966. He became artistic director there from 1968 to 1970. He was Director of the Traverse Theatre Workshop Company from 1970 to 1974. Stafford-Clark then co-founded the Joint Stock Theatre Company in 1974. Joint Stock worked with writers using company research to inspire workshops. From these workshops, writers such as David Hare, Howard Brenton and Caryl Churchill would garner material to inspire a writing phase before rehearsals began. This methodology is sometimes referred to as The Joint Stock Method. ...
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Joint Stock Theatre Company
The Joint Stock Theatre Company was founded in London 1974 by David Hare, Max Stafford-Clark Paul Kember and David Aukin. The director William Gaskill was also part of the company. It was primarily a company which presented new plays. Joint Stock created a style of working with writers using company research to inspire workshops. From these workshops writers such as David Hare, Howard Brenton and Caryl Churchill would gather material to inspire a writing phase before rehearsals began. This methodology is sometimes referred to as The Joint Stock Method. Significant productions include Hare's ''Fanshen'', Brenton's ''Epsom Downs'', Stephen Lowe's ''Ragged Trousered Philanthropists'' and Churchill's '' Cloud Nine''. The company ceased to be active in 1989. In 1993 Max Stafford-Clark founded the touring company Out of Joint which shares some working practices with Joint Stock. Productions References *Ritchie, R. (ed.) (1987), ''The Joint Stock Book: Making of a Theatre Coll ...
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Bertolt Brecht
Eugen Berthold Friedrich Brecht (10 February 1898 – 14 August 1956), known professionally as Bertolt Brecht, was a German theatre practitioner, playwright, and poet. Coming of age during the Weimar Republic, he had his first successes as a playwright in Munich and moved to Berlin in 1924, where he wrote ''The Threepenny Opera'' with Kurt Weill and began a life-long collaboration with the composer Hanns Eisler. Immersed in Marxist thought during this period, he wrote didactic ''Lehrstücke'' and became a leading theoretician of epic theatre (which he later preferred to call "dialectical theatre") and the . During the Nazi Germany period, Brecht fled his home country, first to Scandinavia, and during World War II to the United States, where he was surveilled by the FBI. After the war he was subpoenaed by the House Un-American Activities Committee. Returning to East Berlin after the war, he established the theatre company Berliner Ensemble with his wife and long-time collaborator ...
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Arnold Wesker
Sir Arnold Wesker (24 May 1932 – 12 April 2016) was an English dramatist. He was the author of 50 plays, four volumes of short stories, two volumes of essays, much journalism and a book on the subject, a children's book, some poetry, and other assorted writings. His plays have been translated into 20 languages, and performed worldwide. Early life Wesker was born in Stepney, London, in 1932, the son of Leah (née Cecile Leah Perlmutter), a cook, and Joseph Wesker, a tailor's machinist and active communist. Arnold Wesker was delivered by Samuel Sacks, father of neurologist Oliver Sacks. He attended a Jewish Infants School in Whitechapel. His education was then fragmented during World War II. He was briefly evacuated to Ely, Cambridgeshire, before returning to London where he attended Dean Street School during the Blitz. He then returned to live with his parents who had moved to a council flat in Hackney, East London, where he attended Northwold Road School. He then attende ...
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Edward Bond
Edward Bond (born 18 July 1934) is an English playwright, theatre director, poet, theorist and screenwriter. He is the author of some fifty plays, among them '' Saved'' (1965), the production of which was instrumental in the abolition of theatre censorship in the UK. Other well-received works include ''Narrow Road to the Deep North'' (1968), ''Lear'' (1971), ''The Sea'' (1973), ''The Fool'' (1975), ''Restoration'' (1981), and the ''War'' trilogy (1985). Bond is broadly considered among the major living dramatists but he has always been and remains highly controversial because of the violence shown in his plays, the radicalism of his statements about modern theatre and society, and his theories on drama. Early life Edward Bond was born on 18 July 1934 into a lower-working-class family in Holloway, North London. As a child during World War II he was evacuated to the countryside but was present during the bombings on London in 1940 and 1944. This early exposure to the vio ...
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John Arden
John Arden (26 October 1930 – 28 March 2012) was an English playwright who at his death was lauded as "one of the most significant British playwrights of the late 1950s and early 60s". Career Born in Barnsley, son of the manager of a glass factory, he was educated at Sedbergh School in Cumbria, King's College, Cambridge and the Edinburgh College of Art, where he studied architecture. He first gained critical attention for the radio play ''The Life of Man'' in 1956 shortly after finishing his studies. Arden was initially associated with the English Stage Company at the Royal Court Theatre in London. His 1959 play, ''Serjeant Musgrave's Dance'', in which four army deserters arrive in a northern mining town to exact retribution for an act of colonial violence, is considered to be his best. His work was influenced by Bertolt Brecht and Epic Theatre as in ''Left-Handed Liberty'' (1965, on the anniversary of Magna Carta). Other plays include ''Live Like Pigs'', ''The Workhouse Donk ...
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David Hare (dramatist)
Sir David Hare is an English playwright, screenwriter and theatre and film director. Best known for his stage work, Hare has also enjoyed great success with films, receiving two Academy Award nominations for Best Adapted Screenplay for writing ''The Hours'''' ''in 2002, based on the novel written by Michael Cunningham, and ''The Reader'''' ''in 2008, based on the novel of the same name written by Bernhard Schlink. In the West End, he had his greatest success with the plays'' Plenty'' (1978), which he adapted into a 1985 film starring Meryl Streep, ''Racing Demon'' (1990), ''Skylight'' (1997), and ''Amy's View'' (1998). The four plays ran on Broadway in 1982–83, 1996, 1998 and 1999 respectively, earning Hare three Tony Award nominations for Best Play for the first three and two Laurence Olivier Awards for Best New Play. Other notable projects on stage include ''A Map of the World'', ''Pravda'' (starring Anthony Hopkins at the National Theatre in London), ''Murmuring ...
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