{"id":2454,"date":"2019-06-18T08:51:36","date_gmt":"2019-06-18T08:51:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/britishjewishtheatre.org\/?page_id=2454"},"modified":"2024-05-02T10:26:17","modified_gmt":"2024-05-02T10:26:17","slug":"wright-nicholas","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/britishjewishtheatre.org\/?page_id=2454","title":{"rendered":"Wright, Nicholas"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Nicholas Wright is a British playwright who was born in Cape Town, South Africa in 1940. In 1958, he came to London to train as an actor at LAMDA and later worked as a floor assistant for the BBC and as a runner in film. He became casting director at the Royal Court Theatre in 1965, then assistant director and eventually the first director of the Royal Court&#8217;s Theatre Upstairs. Wright was joint artistic director of the Royal Court from 1975 to 1977 and then a member of the Royal Court Theatre&#8217;s Board. He also worked as literary manager and associate director of the National Theatre and is a former member of the National Theatre Board. Additionally to the publication of many of his plays, Wright&#8217;s work includes <em>99 Plays <\/em>(1992), a survey of drama from the ancient world to the present, and <em>Changing Stages: A View of British Theatre in the 20th Century <\/em>(2000), which he co-wrote with Richard Eyre.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Wright&#8217;s many plays at the National Theatre include <em>Mrs. Klein<\/em> (1988), <em>Vincent in Brixton<\/em> (2003), which won the Olivier Award for Best New Play, and<em> <\/em>an adaptation of Philip Pullman&#8217;s <em>His Dark Materials<\/em> (2003). While Wright is not ethnically Jewish, his play <em>Travelling Light<\/em> (2012) is a frequent reference point. The play is a tribute to the Eastern European immigrants who established themselves as influential personalities in Hollywood&#8217;s golden age. It premiered at the National Theatre, directed by <a href=\"https:\/\/britishjewishtheatre.org\/?page_id=539\">Nicholas Hytner<\/a> and starring <a href=\"https:\/\/britishjewishtheatre.org\/?page_id=414\">Antony Sher<\/a>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Wright judged the Yale Drama Series competition for playwright&#8217;s during 2015 and 2016 and, in 2016, was writing an adaptation of Robert Louis Stevenson&#8217;s <em>Strange Case of Doctor Jekyll and Mr. Hyde <\/em>to be performed on stage. In 2017, the English National Opera in London and, in 2018, the Metropolitan Opera in New York produced Wright&#8217;s libretto for <em>Marnie, <\/em>an opera by Nico Muhly, which was based on a book by Winston Graham.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Nicholas Wright is a British playwright who was born in Cape Town, South Africa in 1940. In 1958, he came to London to train as an actor at LAMDA and later worked as a floor assistant for the BBC and as a runner in film. He became casting director at the Royal Court Theatre in [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"parent":567,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-2454","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/britishjewishtheatre.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/2454","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/britishjewishtheatre.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/britishjewishtheatre.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/britishjewishtheatre.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/britishjewishtheatre.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2454"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/britishjewishtheatre.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/2454\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3152,"href":"https:\/\/britishjewishtheatre.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/2454\/revisions\/3152"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/britishjewishtheatre.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/567"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/britishjewishtheatre.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2454"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}