Headlong (group)
Encyclopedia
Headlong is a British theatre company noted for reworking plays of the past and commissioning new work. It was previously called Anvil Productions and then the Oxford
Oxford
The city of Oxford is the county town of Oxfordshire, England. The city, made prominent by its medieval university, has a population of just under 165,000, with 153,900 living within the district boundary. It lies about 50 miles north-west of London. The rivers Cherwell and Thames run through...

 Stage Company. It has produced plays at theatres in London and across the UK with leading directors including Rupert Goold
Rupert Goold
Rupert Goold is an English theatre director. He is the artistic director of Headlong Theatre and from 2010 he will be an associate director at the Royal Shakespeare Company.- Early years :...

, Dominic Dromgoole
Dominic Dromgoole
Dominic Dromgoole is an English theatre director and writer about the theatre. He is married with three daughters, and lives in London.-Early life:...

 and Sean Holmes
Sean Holmes
Sean Holmes is a British theatre director and, from spring 2009, artistic director of London’s Lyric Hammersmith.-Early career:Sean Holmes took a masters degree at King's College, London and the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in text and performance...

.

History

Headlong dates back to 1974 when Anvil Productions was formed as Oxford Playhouse’s theatre company. Its founders were Gordon McDougall and co-director Nicolas Kent
Nicolas Kent
-Life:Attending Stowe School and studying English at St Catharine's College, Cambridge, he directed his first play - Look Back in Anger by John Osbourne - whilst still at university before becoming a trainee director at the Liverpool Playhouse in 1967...

, who were later joined by Richard Williams. http://www.oxfordplayhouse.com/anniversary/ourhistory.html It later changed its name to the Oxford Stage Company but no longer has any links with the Oxford Playhouse, which was closed from 1987 to 1991.

The Oxford Stage Company moved to London in 2002 but retained its name until 2006. That same year, theatre director Rupert Goold
Rupert Goold
Rupert Goold is an English theatre director. He is the artistic director of Headlong Theatre and from 2010 he will be an associate director at the Royal Shakespeare Company.- Early years :...

 took over from Dominic Dromgoole
Dominic Dromgoole
Dominic Dromgoole is an English theatre director and writer about the theatre. He is married with three daughters, and lives in London.-Early life:...

 as artistic director. Goold explained the need for a name change in The Stage newspaper: “It was a decision informed by confusion about our identity as audiences frequently thought we were either a student company or based at the Oxford Playhouse (our mail was often sent there).”http://www.thestage.co.uk/features/feature.php/15212

Headlong’s board includes leading actors, directors and writers and in 2009 was made up of Samuel Adamson
Samuel Adamson
Samuel Adamson is an Australian playwright and screenwriter who has lived and worked in the UK since 1991. He was born in Adelaide and lives in London.-Career:...

, Donald Fathers, Sarah Hunt, Paterson Joseph
Paterson Joseph
-Career:Born in London. Attended Cardinal Hinsley R.C High School in North West London. Joseph first trained at the Studio '68 of Theatre Arts, London – 1983–85 with Robert Henderson, then at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art . In recent years he has had a high number of roles in...

, Joanna Kennedy (chair), Christopher Luscombe, Caroline Maude, Sarah Preece, Wendy Spon and Colin Tweedy.http://www.headlongtheatre.co.uk/company.php

Productions

Since 2003, its productions around the UK have included:
  • The Cherry Orchard
    The Cherry Orchard
    The Cherry Orchard is Russian playwright Anton Chekhov's last play. It premiered at the Moscow Art Theatre 17 January 1904 in a production directed by Constantin Stanislavski. Chekhov intended this play as a comedy and it does contain some elements of farce; however, Stanislavski insisted on...

    (2003) by Anton Chekhov
    Anton Chekhov
    Anton Pavlovich Chekhov was a Russian physician, dramatist and author who is considered to be among the greatest writers of short stories in history. His career as a dramatist produced four classics and his best short stories are held in high esteem by writers and critics...

    , directed by Dominic Dromgoole
    Dominic Dromgoole
    Dominic Dromgoole is an English theatre director and writer about the theatre. He is married with three daughters, and lives in London.-Early life:...

  • Bread and Butter (2003) by CP Taylor, directed by Mark Rosenblatt
  • Serjeant Musgrave's Dance
    Serjeant Musgrave's Dance
    Serjeant Musgrave's Dance, An Un-historical Parable is a play by English playwright John Arden, written in 1959 and premiered at the Royal Court Theatre on October 22 of that year. In Arden's introductory note to the text, he describes it as "a realistic, but not a naturalistic" play...

    (2003) by John Arden
    John Arden
    John Arden is an award-winning English playwright from Barnsley . His works tend to expose social issues of personal concern. He is a member of the Royal Society of Literature....

    , directed by Sean Holmes
    Sean Holmes
    Sean Holmes is a British theatre director and, from spring 2009, artistic director of London’s Lyric Hammersmith.-Early career:Sean Holmes took a masters degree at King's College, London and the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in text and performance...

  • Americans (2003) by Eric Schlosser, directed by Dominic Dromgoole
    Dominic Dromgoole
    Dominic Dromgoole is an English theatre director and writer about the theatre. He is married with three daughters, and lives in London.-Early life:...

  • The Quare Fellow
    The Quare Fellow
    The Quare Fellow is Brendan Behan's first play, first produced in 1954.The title is taken from a Hiberno-English pronunciation of queer, meaning 'strange' or 'unusual'. In context, the word lacks the denotation of homosexuality which it holds today...

    (2004) by Brendan Behan
    Brendan Behan
    Brendan Francis Behan was an Irish poet, short story writer, novelist, and playwright who wrote in both Irish and English. He was also an Irish republican and a volunteer in the Irish Republican Army.-Early life:...

    , directed by Kathy Burke
    Kathy Burke
    Katherine Lucy Bridget Burke is an English actress, comedienne, playwright and theatre director. She is best known for her portrayals of Perry in the Harry Enfield film Kevin and Perry Go Large, and of Linda La Hughes in the British sitcom Gimme Gimme Gimme...

  • Singer (2004) by Peter Flannery, directed by Sean Holmes
    Sean Holmes
    Sean Holmes is a British theatre director and, from spring 2009, artistic director of London’s Lyric Hammersmith.-Early career:Sean Holmes took a masters degree at King's College, London and the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in text and performance...

  • Candida
    Candida (play)
    Candida, a comedy by playwright George Bernard Shaw, was first published in 1898, as part of his Plays Pleasant. The central characters are clergyman James Morell, his wife Candida and a youthful poet, Eugene Marchbanks, who tries to win Candida's affections. The play questions Victorian notions...

    (2004) by George Bernard Shaw
    George Bernard Shaw
    George Bernard Shaw was an Irish playwright and a co-founder of the London School of Economics. Although his first profitable writing was music and literary criticism, in which capacity he wrote many highly articulate pieces of journalism, his main talent was for drama, and he wrote more than 60...

    , directed by Christopher Luscombe
  • Home (2004), “described” by David Storey
    David Storey
    David Rhames Storey is an English playwright, screenwriter, award-winning novelist and a former professional rugby league player....

    , directed by Sean Holmes
    Sean Holmes
    Sean Holmes is a British theatre director and, from spring 2009, artistic director of London’s Lyric Hammersmith.-Early career:Sean Holmes took a masters degree at King's College, London and the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in text and performance...

  • The Last Waltz (2005), three German plays in rep at the Arcola Theatre
    Arcola Theatre
    Arcola Theatre is a studio theatre in Dalston, in the London Borough of Hackney. The theatre's ambition is to create and present high-quality theatre with a social and political relevance to its multicultural local community as well as a wider audience....

    , London: Professor Bernhardi
    Professor Bernhardi
    Professor Bernhardi is one of the best known plays written by the Viennese dramatist, short story writer and novelist Arthur Schnitzler...

    directed by Mark Rosenblatt, Rose Bernd
    Rose Bernd
    Rose Bernd is a stage drama in five acts by Gerhart Hauptmann. It premiered October 31, 1903 in Berlin.-Dramatic characters:BERND, deaconROSE BERND, older daughterMARTHEL, younger daughterCHRISTOPHER FLAMM, landowner and magistrate...

    directed by Gari Jones, and Musik directed by Deborah Bruce
  • Easter (2005) by August Strindberg
    August Strindberg
    Johan August Strindberg was a Swedish playwright, novelist, poet, essayist and painter. A prolific writer who often drew directly on his personal experience, Strindberg's career spanned four decades, during which time he wrote over 60 plays and more than 30 works of fiction, autobiography,...

    , directed by Dominic Dromgoole
    Dominic Dromgoole
    Dominic Dromgoole is an English theatre director and writer about the theatre. He is married with three daughters, and lives in London.-Early life:...

  • Rookery Nook (2005) by Ben Travers
    Ben Travers
    Ben Travers AFC CBE in London) was a British playwright best remembered for his farces.Born in the London borough of Hendon, Travers was educated at Charterhouse, where today there is a theatre named for him...

    , directed by Dominic Dromgoole
    Dominic Dromgoole
    Dominic Dromgoole is an English theatre director and writer about the theatre. He is married with three daughters, and lives in London.-Early life:...

  • Men Should Weep (2005) by Ena Lamont Stewart, directed by Charlotte Gwinner
  • Cleansed (2005) by Sarah Kane
    Sarah Kane
    Sarah Kane was an English playwright. Her plays deal with themes of redemptive love, sexual desire, pain, torture — both physical and psychological — and death. They are characterised by a poetic intensity, pared-down language, exploration of theatrical form and, in her earlier work, the use of...

    , directed by Sean Holmes
    Sean Holmes
    Sean Holmes is a British theatre director and, from spring 2009, artistic director of London’s Lyric Hammersmith.-Early career:Sean Holmes took a masters degree at King's College, London and the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in text and performance...

  • Paradise Lost
    Paradise Lost
    Paradise Lost is an epic poem in blank verse by the 17th-century English poet John Milton. It was originally published in 1667 in ten books, with a total of over ten thousand individual lines of verse...

    (2006), adapted by Ben Power and Rupert Goold
    Rupert Goold
    Rupert Goold is an English theatre director. He is the artistic director of Headlong Theatre and from 2010 he will be an associate director at the Royal Shakespeare Company.- Early years :...

     and based on John Milton
    John Milton
    John Milton was an English poet, polemicist, a scholarly man of letters, and a civil servant for the Commonwealth of England under Oliver Cromwell...

    , directed by Rupert Goold
    Rupert Goold
    Rupert Goold is an English theatre director. He is the artistic director of Headlong Theatre and from 2010 he will be an associate director at the Royal Shakespeare Company.- Early years :...

  • Restoration (2006) by Edward Bond
    Edward Bond
    Edward Bond is an English playwright, theatre director, poet, theorist and screenwriter. He is the author of some fifty plays, among them Saved , the production of which was instrumental in the abolition of theatre censorship in the UK...

    , directed by Rupert Goold
    Rupert Goold
    Rupert Goold is an English theatre director. He is the artistic director of Headlong Theatre and from 2010 he will be an associate director at the Royal Shakespeare Company.- Early years :...

    .
  • Faustus (2006), Rupert Goold
    Rupert Goold
    Rupert Goold is an English theatre director. He is the artistic director of Headlong Theatre and from 2010 he will be an associate director at the Royal Shakespeare Company.- Early years :...

    ’s reworking of Christopher Marlowe
    Christopher Marlowe
    Christopher Marlowe was an English dramatist, poet and translator of the Elizabethan era. As the foremost Elizabethan tragedian, next to William Shakespeare, he is known for his blank verse, his overreaching protagonists, and his mysterious death.A warrant was issued for Marlowe's arrest on 18 May...

    ’s Dr Faustus to include artists Jake and Dinos Chapman as characters.
  • Angels in America
    Angels in America
    Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes is the 1993 Pulitzer Prize winning play in two parts by American playwright Tony Kushner. It has been made into both a television miniseries and an opera by Peter Eötvös.-Characters:...

    (2007) by Tony Kushner
    Tony Kushner
    Anthony Robert "Tony" Kushner is an American playwright and screenwriter. He received the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1993 for his play, Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes, and co-authored with Eric Roth the screenplay for the 2005 film, Munich.-Life and career:Kushner was born...

    , directed by Daniel Kramer.
  • Rough Crossings (2007), Caryl Churchill
    Caryl Churchill
    Caryl Churchill is an English dramatist known for her use of non-naturalistic techniques and feminist themes, the abuses of power, and sexual politics. She is acknowledged as a major playwright in the English language and a leading female writer...

    ’s adaptation of Simon Schama
    Simon Schama
    Simon Michael Schama, CBE is a British historian and art historian. He is a University Professor of History and Art History at Columbia University. He is best known for writing and hosting the 15-part BBC documentary series A History of Britain...

    ’s non-fiction book.
  • The Last Days of Judas Iscariot (2008) by Stephen Adly Guirgis, directed by Rupert Goold
    Rupert Goold
    Rupert Goold is an English theatre director. He is the artistic director of Headlong Theatre and from 2010 he will be an associate director at the Royal Shakespeare Company.- Early years :...

    .
  • The English Game (2008) by Richard Bean
    Richard Bean
    Richard Bean, born in East Hull in 1956, is an English playwright.-Early years:Bean studied Social Psychology at Loughborough University of Science and Technology and graduated with a 2-1 BSc Hons, and went on to become an occupational psychologist, having previously worked in a bread plant for a...

    , directed by Sean Holmes
    Sean Holmes
    Sean Holmes is a British theatre director and, from spring 2009, artistic director of London’s Lyric Hammersmith.-Early career:Sean Holmes took a masters degree at King's College, London and the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in text and performance...

    .
  • …Sisters (2008), based on Anton Chekhov
    Anton Chekhov
    Anton Pavlovich Chekhov was a Russian physician, dramatist and author who is considered to be among the greatest writers of short stories in history. His career as a dramatist produced four classics and his best short stories are held in high esteem by writers and critics...

    ’s Three Sisters
    Three Sisters (play)
    Three Sisters is a play by Russian author and playwright Anton Chekhov, perhaps partially inspired by the situation of the three Brontë sisters, but most probably by the three Zimmermann sisters in Perm...

    , adapted and directed by Chris Goode
  • Six Characters in Search of an Author
    Six Characters in Search of an Author
    Six Characters in Search of an Author is a play by the Italian writer Luigi Pirandello.The play is a satirical tragicomedy. It was first performed in 1921 at the Teatro Valle in Rome, to a very mixed reception, with shouts from the audience of "Manicomio!" .Subsequently the play enjoyed a much...

    (2008-9) adapted by Ben Power and Rupert Goold
    Rupert Goold
    Rupert Goold is an English theatre director. He is the artistic director of Headlong Theatre and from 2010 he will be an associate director at the Royal Shakespeare Company.- Early years :...

    , directed by Rupert Goold
    Rupert Goold
    Rupert Goold is an English theatre director. He is the artistic director of Headlong Theatre and from 2010 he will be an associate director at the Royal Shakespeare Company.- Early years :...

  • King Lear
    King Lear
    King Lear is a tragedy by William Shakespeare. The title character descends into madness after foolishly disposing of his estate between two of his three daughters based on their flattery, bringing tragic consequences for all. The play is based on the legend of Leir of Britain, a mythological...

    (2008-9), directed by Rupert Goold
    Rupert Goold
    Rupert Goold is an English theatre director. He is the artistic director of Headlong Theatre and from 2010 he will be an associate director at the Royal Shakespeare Company.- Early years :...

  • Edward Gant's Amazing Feats of Loneliness (2009) by Anthony Neilson, directed by Steve Marmion
  • Medea Medea (2009), directed by Dylan Tighe
  • Enron
    ENRON (play)
    ENRON is a 2009 play by the British playwright Lucy Prebble, based on the Enron scandal.-Productions:ENRON premiered at the Chichester Festival Theatre , before London transfers to the Jerwood Downstairs at the Royal Court Theatre from 17 September to 7 November 2009 and then the Noel Coward...

    (2009) by Lucy Prebble, directed by Rupert Goold
    Rupert Goold
    Rupert Goold is an English theatre director. He is the artistic director of Headlong Theatre and from 2010 he will be an associate director at the Royal Shakespeare Company.- Early years :...

  • The Winter's Tale
    The Winter's Tale
    The Winter's Tale is a play by William Shakespeare, originally published in the First Folio of 1623. Although it was grouped among the comedies, some modern editors have relabelled the play as one of Shakespeare's late romances. Some critics, among them W. W...

    (2009), directed by Simon Godwin
    Simon Godwin
    Simon Godwin is a British theatre director based in London where he is currently an Associate Director of the Royal Court Theatre and Bristol Old Vic...

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