Nicholas Wright (playwright)

Nicholas Verney Wright is a British dramatist.

Biography

Nicholas Wright was born in Cape Town, attended Rondebosch Boys' School and from the age of six was a child actor on radio and on the stage. He came to London in 1958 to train as an actor at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art and subsequently worked as a floor-assistant in BBC Television and as a runner in film, notably John Schlesinger's Far From the Madding Crowd. He started work at the Royal Court Theatre in 1965 as Casting Director and became, first, an assistant director there and then the first Director of the Royal Court's Theatre Upstairs, where for several years he presented an innovatory programme of new writing. From 1975 to 1977 he was joint artistic director of the Royal Court and he was subsequently a member of the Royal Court Theatre's Board. He is former literary manager and associate director of the Royal National Theatre, and a former member of the National Theatre Board. In 2015 and 2016 he was the judge of the Yale Drama Series competition for playwrights. His publications include 99 Plays, a survey of drama from Aeschylus to the present day, and Changing Stages, co-written with Richard Eyre.

Theatre work

1978 Treetops
1979 The Gorky Brigade
1980 One Fine Day
1983 The Crimes of Vautrin
1983 The Custom of the Country
1984 The Desert Air
1988 Mrs. Klein )
1993 More Tales of the City
1996 John Gabriel Borkman
1998 Naked
2000 Cressida
2001 Lulu
2003 Vincent in Brixton
2003 Three Sisters
2003 His Dark Materials, adapted from the trilogy by Philip Pullman
2003 The Little Prince
2006 Man on the Moon
2006 Thérèse Raquin
2007 The Reporter
2008 He's Talking
2008 The Big Bonanza, Poison and The Boy with an African Heart for The No.1 Ladies' Detective Agency
2011 Rattigan's Nijinsky
2011 The Last of the Duchess adapted from the book by Caroline Blackwood.
2012 Travelling Light
2013 A Human Being Died That Night, adapted from the book by Pumla Gobodo-Madikizela
2014 Regeneration, adapted from the novel by Pat Barker
2017 "The Slaves of Solitude", adapted from the novel by Patrick Hamilton. Hampstead Theatre.

His libretto for Marnie, an opera by Nico Muhly, based on the novel by Winston Graham, was produced by the English National Opera, London in 2017 and by the Metropolitan Opera, New York in 2018.
He is currently writing a stage version of Robert Louis Stevenson's Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde for Gale King Productions and writing an original play about the last 24 hours in the life of Benazir Bhutto.