David Rudkin
James David Rudkin is an English playwright.
Early life
Rudkin was born in London. Coming from a family of strict evangelical Christians, he was educated at King Edward's School, Birmingham and read Mods and Greats at St Catherine's College, Oxford. Beginning to write during national service in the Royal Corps of Signals, Rudkin taught Latin, Greek and music at North Bromsgrove High School in Worcestershire until 1964, while also directing amateur theatre productions.Career
Following the success of his first play Afore Night Come, Rudkin translated works by Aeschylus, Roger Vitrac, the libretto of Schoenberg's Moses and Aaron, and wrote the book to the Western Theatre Ballet's Sun into Darkness and the libretto for Gordon Crosse's comic opera, The Grace of Todd.Rudkin's major works for the stage include Ashes, The Sons of Light, The Triumph of Death and The Saxon Shore. His associations with the RSC also led him to translate the Hippolytus of Euripides for the company in 1978, having translated the author's Hecuba for radio three years previously.
He has written for television, including The Stone Dance, Children Playing, House of Character, Blodwen, Home from Rachel's Marriage, Bypass, Atrocity, the Alan Clarke-directed Penda's Fen, and Artemis 81 ; for radio, including No Accounting for Taste, Gear Change, Cries from Casement as His Bones are Brought to Dublin ; and for cinema, including François Truffaut's Fahrenheit 451.
He has also written a volume in the British Film Institute's "Film Classics" series, a 2005 study of Carl Theodor Dreyer's Vampyr.
Works
Stage plays
Afore Night Come, Royal Shakespeare Company at the Arts Theatre, directed by Clifford Williams Burglars, a short children's play originally written for radio, Oval House Theatre The Filth Hunt, one-act play, InterAction at the Almost Free Theatre Ashes, Stadsteater Hamburg, Open Space Theatre, staged off-Broadway in 1977 and winner of an Obie awardThe Sons of Light, Tyneside Theatre Company ; revised for the RSC at The Other Place Sovereignty Under Elizabeth, one-act play, InterAction at the Almost Free Theatre Hansel and Gretel, RSC, The Other Place The Triumph of Death, Birmingham Rep Space Invaders, one-act play, RSC Youth Festival, Stratford Will's Way, monologue spoken by Shakespeare, RSC Youth Festival, Stratford The Saxon Shore, Almeida Theatre John Piper in the House of Death, after Daniel Defoe's A Journal of the Plague Year, Central School of Speech and Drama Symphonie Pathétique, unperformedTrade, unperformedRed Sun, AJTC touring production The Master and Margarita dramatised from Mikhail Bulgakov for the National Youth Theatre of Great Britain Merlin Unchained, Aberystwyth University, directed by David Ian RabeyTelevision plays
The Stone Dance, ATV, starring Michael Bryant, John Hurt, Michael Hordern and Rachel Thomas, directed by Peter Wood Children Playing, ATV, directed by Peter Wood House of Character, BBC Wednesday Play Blodwen, Home from Rachel's Marriage, BBC Wednesday Play Bypass, BBC, starring Bob Peck Atrocity, BBC Penda's Fen, BBC Play for Today directed by Alan Clarke Churchill's People, BBC, two episodes;- * Pritân
- * The Coming of the CrossA Ghost Story for Christmas, BBC, one episode;
- * The Ash Tree, adaptation of the M. R. James story, Leap in the Dark, BBC, one episode;
- * The Living Grave Artemis 81, BBC, starring Hywel Bennett, Roland Curram, Dan O'Herlihy, Ian Redford, Dinah Stabb, and Sting Across the Water, BBC, starring Liam Neeson White Lady, BBC, directed by the author Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, adaptation for Thames TV