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.
