Edward Kemp Dramatist

Biography

Edward Kemp was born in Oxford. He trained at the National Youth Theatre. At the age of fifteen, he wrote his first full-length play, The Iron and the Oak, which won the Most Promising Playwright award in the inaugural Texaco/National Youth Theatre writing competition. The play was staged during the first season of the Chichester Festival Theatre Tent. Two other plays, Counterparts and A Proper Place, also won prizes in the Texaco competition, the latter being produced by the National Youth Theatre.

He went on to study English language and literature at New College, Oxford, where he performed in numerous productions. He also directed two of his own plays, as well as The Devils by John Whiting and two Shakespearean comedies, The Comedy of Errors and Twelfth Night. After university, he briefly served as a dramaturg at the National Youth Theatre before becoming assistant director at the Chichester Festival Theatre. There, he assisted Kenneth Ives and Tony Britton on Oscar Wilde’s An Ideal Husband and directed Farquhar’s The Recruiting Officer. He then joined Anthony Quayle’s Compass Theatre Company, working as assistant on The Government Inspector and The Royal Hunt of the Sun, and founded the company’s education and outreach department.

In 1990, he returned to Chichester to collaborate with Peter Wood on The Silver King (starring Alan Howard) and with Sir Peter Hall on Born Again (starring Mandy Patinkin). From 1991 to 1996, he was resident director at the Royal National Theatre. There, he worked with Steven Pimlott (The Miser), Roger Michell (The Coup), Alan Ayckbourn (Mr A’s Amazing Maze Plays), Phyllida Lloyd (Pericles, What the Butler Saw, The Way of the World, for which he also served as dramaturg), Richard Eyre (The Prince’s Play, John Gabriel Borkman), and Nicholas Hytner (The Madness of George III, The Recruiting Officer, Carousel, The Wind in the Willows).

In 1996, he left the National Theatre to join Katie Mitchell’s production of The Mysteries for the Royal Shakespeare Company as dramaturg—a role created for the first time within the company. From this period onwards, he has worked as an independent writer and director. He has directed works including Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus, Anouilh’s Wild Orchids (Leocadia), Heiner Müller’s Mommsen’s Block, Gertrude Stein’s Dr Faustus Lights the Lights, Brecht’s Fear and Misery in the Third Reich, and Euripides’ Iphigenia at Aulis.

In parallel, he has pursued a writing career: five French adaptations for Théâtre Sans Frontières, a stage adaptation of William Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying for the Young Vic, radio adaptations of The Mysteries and W. G. Sebald’s The Emigrants, and numerous opera libretti for the Royal Opera House and ENO Studios. He has also written a screenplay based on Edmund Gosse’s Father and Son.

He collaborates closely with choreographer Cathy Marston, now Artistic Director of Bern Ballet, on many ballet scenarios: Ghosts (ROH2), A Tale of Two Cities (Northern Ballet Theatre), Firebird, Sturmhöhe, Julia und Romeo, Clara, Ein Winternachtstraum (Bern Ballet), and Blood Wedding (Helsinki Ballet). He also wrote the libretto for the opera-ballet Echo and Narcissus, set to music by Stuart MacRae (ROH2). His opera The Yellow Sofa, composed by Julian Phillips, was commissioned and premiered at the Glyndebourne Festival in 2009.

He teaches theatre and creative writing in the UK and the US, at institutions including the Guildhall School, Central School of Drama, Trinity College of Music, the Royal College of Art, and the educational departments of the National Theatre, the Royal Opera House, and Glyndebourne.

In September 2007, he became the first Artistic Director of the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA), officially taking over as Director of the Academy in March 2008. In addition to his leadership role, he teaches in numerous acting and technical courses and directs several productions, including Kleist’s Penthesilea (in his own adaptation), Stephen Sondheim’s Company, and Noël Coward’s The Young Idea.

Currently in

Immerse in the Paris Opera universe

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