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Neil Bartlett (playwright)

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Neil Vivian Bartlett
OBE
Born1958 (age 65–66)
Occupation(s)Director, performer, translator, writer
Notable workThe Dispute, Pericles
Awards
  • Perrier Award (1985)
  • Time Out Dance Umbrella Award
  • Writers Guild Award
  • Time Out Theatre Award
  • Special Jury Prize at the Cork Film Festival
  • OBE (2000)
  • Olivier Award nomination
Websitewww.neil-bartlett.com

Neil Vivian Bartlett, OBE (born 1958) is a British director, performer, translator and writer. He was one of the founding members of Gloria, a production company established in 1988 to produce his work along with that of Nicolas Bloomfield, Leah Hausman and Simon Mellor.[1]

His work has garnered several awards, including the 1985 Perrier Award (as director for Complicite, for More Bigger Snacks Now), the Time Out Dance Umbrella Award (for A Vision of Love Revealed in Sleep), a Writers Guild Award (for Sarrasine), a Time Out Theatre Award (for A Judgement in Stone), and the Special Jury Prize at the Cork Film Festival (for Now That It's Morning).[1] His production of The Dispute won a Time Out Award for Best Production in the West End and the 1999 TMA Best Touring Production award.[2] He was appointed an OBE in 2000 for his services to the arts.[3][4] His 2004 production of Shakespeare's Pericles was nominated for an Olivier Award for Outstanding Theatrical Achievement in 2004.[5]

Career

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Bartlett's first book, Who Was That Man, showed how the gay history of London in the 1890s affected Bartlett's life as a gay man in London in the 1980s. His fourth novel, The Disappearance Boy, was published in London by Bloomsbury Circus in January 2014; his most recent novel Address Book was published in London by Inkandescent in November 2021.

Bartlett's early performance work with Gloria included A Vision of Love Revealed in Sleep, Sarrasine and Night after Night. He also served as artistic director at the Lyric Theatre Hammersmith from 1994 until 2004.[6] At the Lyric he directed productions of classic British plays, foreign classics which he translated or adapted, and a series of notable Christmas shows. The following are some of the plays he directed and translated:

Many of Bartlett's translations of classic plays have been performed throughout the world.

Since leaving the Lyric he has created work for leading cultural producers including the National Theatre in London, the Abbey in Dublin, the Bristol Old Vic, the Manchester Royal Exchange, the Edinburgh International Festival, the Manchester International Festival, the Brighton Festival, the Aldeburgh Festival, the Holland Festival, the Wellcome Foundation and Tate Britain.

He also took part in the Bush Theatre's 2011 project Sixty Six Books, where he wrote a piece based upon a chapter of the King James Bible[7]

In 2022, he adapted Virginia Woolf's novel Orlando for a West End production that was directed by Michael Grandage and starred Emma Corrin.

In 2016 Bartlett read aloud the complete text of Oscar Wilde's De Profundis (1897) in the old chapel of HM Prison Reading, where Wilde had been incarcerated from 1895 to 1897.[8]

Work

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Fiction

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  • Who Was That Man: A Present for Mr. Oscar Wilde (1988)
  • Ready to Catch Him Should He Fall (1992)
  • "Caesar's Gallic Wars" (1996) (short story)
  • Mr. Clive and Mr. Page (1996)
  • Skin Lane (2007)
  • 'When the Time Comes; or, the Case of the Man Who Didn't Know' (2008) (short story)
  • The Disappearance Boy (2014)
  • Address Book 2021

Theatre and radio

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Television

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  • That's What Friends Are For (1988) television, for After Image/Channel Four
  • Where Is Love? (1988) television, for ICA/BBC2
  • Pedagogue (1988) with Stuart Marshall
  • That's How Strong My Love Is (1989) television, for Channel Four
  • Now That It's Morning (1992) television, for Channel Four/British Screen

References

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  1. ^ Jump up to: a b From the programme to the 1993 Traverse Theatre production of Night After Night.
  2. ^ See The National Theatre's Programme for Autumn 2000 Archived 19 September 2010 at the Wayback Machine. Retrieved 13 April 2010.
  3. ^ Biography for Neil Bartlett at IMDb
  4. ^ BBC News - The Queen's Birthday Honours List. Retrieved 13 April 2010.
  5. ^ "Nominations for the 2004 Laurence Olivier Awards". 8 June 2016.
  6. ^ "Bartlett Stands Down as Lyric Hammersmith Chief". Archived from the original on 10 October 2012. Retrieved 13 April 2010.
  7. ^ "Bush Theatre". Archived from the original on 4 July 2011. Retrieved 19 June 2012.
  8. ^ "Oscar Wilde's De Profundis read by Neil Bartlett". 11 September 2016 – via YouTube.
  9. ^ "Neil Bartlett: 'My weapons are passion, honesty and glamour'". The Stage. Retrieved 20 December 2022.

Sources

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