Brian Daniels is a producer, director, and playwright who was born and brought up in Leeds. He is the father of theatre director Alexa Christopher-Daniels. After leaving school at sixteen and running his own agency from the age of seventeen, Daniels turned to show business in the 1990s. He started producing theatre in 1995 with a national tour of Love by Graham Reid, starring Gwen Taylor and Michael Cashman. Daniels produced She Knows, You Know: the Life of Hylda Baker with Jean Fergusson on a national tour and West End run, which gained him an Olivier nomination. In 1997, he bought a London fringe theatre, the New End Theatre in Hampstead, and became its artistic director until 2011. There he produced more than 200 new plays, musicals, and cultural events and directed his own plays, A Big Day for the Goldbergs (2010), which tells the story of a suburban Jewish family, and Where’s Your Mama Gone (2011). He adapted Svandovo Divadlo’s The Good and the True (2012), which is based on the story of Holocaust survivors.

Brian Daniels was also artistic director of the Shaw Theatre, the New Players Theatre, and the Grace Theatre. He is currently artistic director of the New End Theatre Beyond. Many of his plays are based on health issues, including Homeward Bound (2016) and Bounce Back Boy (2016). Don’t Leave Me Now (2017) is a play about the impact of early onset dementia. Based on a true story of a family’s dilemma of how to access the best treatment for their elderly parents, Daniels’ play Fighting for Life premiered at the Marie Curie Hospice, Hampstead, in 2018. Other plays include Finishing Touches (2017), ‘All I Wanted was a Doll’ (2018), commissioned by the Leeds Jewish Welfare Board, ‘Hello, My Name Is…’ (2018), and Both Sides Now (2019).

Daniels is a Board member of the Royal Victoria Hall Foundation and of Phoenix Dance Theatre in Leeds.

For more information visit https://dontleavemenow.com/about-brian-daniels/.