Simon Corble is an English
playwright,
director
Director may refer to:
Literature
* ''Director'' (magazine), a British magazine
* ''The Director'' (novel), a 1971 novel by Henry Denker
* ''The Director'' (play), a 2000 play by Nancy Hasty
Music
* Director (band), an Irish rock band
* ''D ...
and performer. He is the great nephew of
Archibald Corble, the British fencer. He grew up in rural Oxfordshire, the son of a country vicar.
The family moved north in 1974, and at the age of sixteen he played
Hamlet
''The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark'', often shortened to ''Hamlet'' (), is a tragedy written by William Shakespeare sometime between 1599 and 1601. It is Shakespeare's longest play, with 29,551 words. Set in Denmark, the play depicts ...
at Lymm Grammar School, Cheshire and "never looked back". After training as an actor at Manchester Polytechnic (now
Manchester Metropolitan University
Manchester Metropolitan University is located in the centre of Manchester, England. The university has over 40,000 students and over 4,000 members of staff. It is home to four faculties (Arts and Humanities, Business and Law, Health and Educat ...
) he went on to create his own dramatic works. He has explored the potential of
site-specific theatre
Site-specific theatre is a theatrical production that is performed at a unique, specially adapted location other than a standard theatre. This unique site may have been built without any intention of serving theatrical purposes (for example, a hot ...
in both his own works and those of others. On his website he writes that his strengths lie in "comedy, site-specific and promenade theatre, audio work, directing Shakespeare, and in creating unique theatrical experiences".
Writing
According to Tony Craze and Katie Brannigan, Corble writes "in obeyance of the unities of time and space – applying realistic and parallel scales between worlds of performance and real environment (short promenades for short distances traveled in a fictional world, careful allotment of time at each stationary point). Temporal and spatial settings for his work were seen to be of paramount importance. For The Woodlanders, this writer's research included a close study of the North of England countryside, focusing on a site with the largest, most remote wooded area, accessible only by a mile and a half trek."
Midsommer Actors' Company
Corble was the founder and artistic director of the Midsommer Actors' Company (1990–1999) which created open-air site-specific theatre with an emphasis on the actor's performance. It moved indoors in 1997 to stage ''
The 39 Steps'', a play Corble co-wrote with Nobby Dimon which, proved to have a long life in theatres all over the world, with runs in London's
West End and in
Broadway
Broadway may refer to:
Theatre
* Broadway Theatre (disambiguation)
* Broadway theatre, theatrical productions in professional theatres near Broadway, Manhattan, New York City, U.S.
** Broadway (Manhattan), the street
**Broadway Theatre (53rd Stree ...
. The adaptation, written for a cast of four actors and funded by a £1,000 Yorkshire Arts Grant, premiered in 1995 before an audience of 90 people at the
Georgian Theatre Royal in
Richmond, North Yorkshire
Richmond is a market town and civil parish in North Yorkshire, England, and the administrative centre of the district of Richmondshire. Historically in the North Riding of Yorkshire, it is from the county town of Northallerton and situated on ...
, before embarking on a tour of village halls across the north of England.
Found Theatre
He created Found Theatre in 2005, with the aim of telling powerful stories through simple means.
Playscripts
*''The Woodlanders'', 1991
*''Sir Gawain and the Green Knight'', 1992 (a dramatisation of
the 14th-century Arthurian romance); it was originally written for The Midsommer Actors' Company in 1992 and played in eight outdoor venues.; Corble later substantially revised the play, which was produced indoors by Cardboard Menagerie at the
O'Reilly Theatre
The O'Reilly Theatre is a flexible studio theatre on Blackhall Road, central north Oxford, England. It is located within Keble College, one of the University of Oxford colleges. The theatre was completed in 2002.
Seating capacity of the spac ...
, Oxford in February 2014.
*''The Wonderland Adventures of Alice''
*''The Fisherman and his Soul'', 1995-2007
*''
The 39 Steps'', 1996
*''
Dracula'', 1998
*''
The Hound of the Baskervilles
''The Hound of the Baskervilles'' is the third of the four crime novels by British writer Arthur Conan Doyle featuring the detective Sherlock Holmes. Originally serialised in ''The Strand Magazine'' from August 1901 to April 1902, it is se ...
''
*''The Signalman'', 2008
*''Operation Mincemeat'', 2008 (based on the successful British deception plan of
the same name in the Second World War)
*''Sward! – The Story of a Meadow'', 2010
Blaize website description
Notes
External links
Found Theatre website
Simon Corble's website
{{DEFAULTSORT:Corble, Simon
English dramatists and playwrights
English male stage actors
English theatre directors
Living people
Year of birth missing (living people)
Alumni of Manchester Metropolitan University
English male dramatists and playwrights