British director Julian Amyes first visited Davis in the Fall of 1982 when he taught graduate directing classes and staged Chekhov’s Three Sisters for the University Theatre Season. Since then he has directed a four-part television version of Jane Eyre for the BBC (which recently aired on the Arts and Entertainment Network in the United States), a new drama by Scottish playwright Alma Collen, Winter Sunlight, and the television serial Charters and Caldicott for the BBC.
Guy Slater is an actor, writer and director whose distinguished career spans British theatre, television and radio; his most recent success came as the director of last July’s widely acclaimed BBC-TV production of Only Yesterday with Paul Scofield and Wendy Hiller.
Stuart Burge began his career as an actor with the Old Vic, the Bristol Old Vic, and the Oxford Playhouse. In 1952 he started to direct in repertory companies and the West End. He then went on to direct at the Old Vic, the Chichester Festival, the Dubrovnik Festival, and Stratford, Ontario. In 1968 he became director of the Nottingham Playhouse, and directed at the Edinburgh Festival in 1976 and the National Theatre in 1977; in February 1977, he took over as Artistic Director of the Royal Court Theatre.
In his long and distinguished career, Richard Cottrell has directed in London, Bristol, Edinburgh, Stratford (Ontario), Milwaukee, Hong Kong, Brisbane, Melbourne, and Sydney. He has been director of such noted British companies as the Bristol Old Vic, the Hampstead Theatre Club, and the Cambridge Theatre Company. In 1986, he received Australia’s major theatre honor, a Sydney Critics Award, for his direction of the Nimrod Theatre Company, one of the country’s leading troupes.
John Harrison began his career as an actor, receiving his training at the Birmingham Repertory Theatre under Sir Barry Jackson. He later became a member of the company and appeared in three productions with Paul Scofield directed by Peter Brook. When Sir Barry Jackson was appointed to Stratford, the three young artists went with him, continuing their association. At Stratford, Harrison again appeared with Scofield in several of Brook’s productions. After Stratford, he toured Australia with the Irish Shakespearean actor Anew McMaster, playing a variety of roles.
Pip Simmons has an impressive record in experimental theatre. In England he has worked primarily in the Fringe Theatre (similar to New York’s Off-Broadway and Off-Off Broadway), and he is equally well known for his avant-garde productions throughout Europe.
Frank Hauser began his professional career in 1948 as a drama producer for BBC radio, working with such noted actors as Alec Guinness, Peter Ustinov, Pamela Brown, and John Gielgud. While at the BBC, he also engaged Richard Burton, then an unknown young Welsh actor, to play Henry V.
Jenny Killick first came to the theatrical world’s attention in 1985, when she was named Artistic Director of the celebrated Traverse Theatre Club in Edinburgh. Britain’s youngest artistic director, she was the first woman to hold the position at the Traverse. After her outstanding tenure at the traverse, Killick has directed at such celebrated theatres as the Bristol Old Vic, the Royal National Theatre Studio, the Haymarket Theatre, the Royal National Theatre, and the Oxford Playhouse.
Director John Burgess has been associated with new plays and new writing since he began working at the Open Space Theatre in the early 1970s. Burgess joined the National Theatre in 1980 and, with Peter Gill, founded the National Theatre Studio, the experimental wing of the theatre, in 1984. In his 30-year career in theatre and film, Burgess has been the Literary Manager (New Writing) at the National Theatre, associate director of the National Theatre Studio, Resident Director of the National Theatre, Artistic Director of Drum Arts, and Associate Director of Riverside Studios.
Stephen Unwin, born in 1960, received his education at Cambridge University. Since then he has directed numerous plays and operas, and was the assistant director at the Traverse Theatre in Edinburgh until 1988. Soon after, he started the English Touring Theatre and directed there until 2008, when he received the honorable position of second director at the Rose Theatre. Unwin won the Sam Wanamaker Award in 2003 alongside Barrie Rutter, and that same year was a Visiting Fellow at Cambridge University.
Born in Kingston, Jamaica, Yvonne Brewster traveled to the UK to study speech, drama and mime. In Britain, she founded Talawa, the UK’s largest Black theatre company. She has undertaken a vast variety of directorial work in all media, from the first ever Black production of Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest at the Opera House, Newcastle, to Pantomime, a two-hander by Derek Walcott, in a pub.
Granada Artist-in-Residence Helena Kaut-Howson worked with students on a collaborative theatre piece based on the work of Polish writer Bruno Schulz titled Sanatorium Under the Sign of the Hourglass after one of Schulz’s stories.
