John Roman Baker | |
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 Baker in 2008 | |
| Born | England |
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John Roman Baker is a British writer and theatre director.
John Roman Baker | |
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| Baker in 2008 | |
| Born | England |
| Occupation |
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John Roman Baker is a British writer and theatre director.
In 1975, his first play Limitations launched the first season of the Gay Sweatshop Theatre company. [1] In 1989, his play Crying Celibate Tears was presented at the Sussex Aids Centre [2] ) within the context of the Brighton Festival. A 'festival within a festival', staged at the Sussex Aids Centre, also included work by Philip Core, Peter Burton and Neil Bartlett. Crying Celibate Tears received critical acclaim from the Brighton press, The Guardian and Plays and Players and was the launching pad for Aids Positive Underground Theatre, the company founded by Baker as a positive cultural response.
In June 1992, Michael Arditti, wrote in Plays International that: "...in England too the theatrical response [to AIDS] has been maturing ... and has come of age with John Roman Baker's "Crying Celibate Tears Trilogy" ... The keynotes of Mr Baker's writing are already in evidence; a barbed wit, an utter lack of sentimentality and a refusal to shy away from unpalatable truths ... the one horror which is happily absent being political correctness. ... In short, this is the real world: a humorous, harrowing, heartening world, and one which remains engrossing for the entire six hours of its length. ... Seen as a whole, the Trilogy is an overwhelming experience."
At the 1993 Edinburgh Fringe, Aaron Hicklin wrote for The Independent: "Aids Positive Underground are no sissies. "Easy" is uncomfortable viewing, often disturbing, and ugly to watch, considerably more than a safe-sex message. It is about love and dignity, loss and anger." [3]
Performed plays include: [4] [5]
Adapted work by other writers:
Unperformed plays include:
His work has been produced in many countries. From 1990–1996 the Brighton and Edinburgh Festivals often saw the first performances of his new plays. In 1990, his play The Ice Pick won the "Zap" Award for best theatre at the Brighton Festival jointly with the Satirikon theatre of Moscow. [9] The controversy and opposition towards his work and that of Aids Positive Underground Theatre, garnered support and friendship from other artists, notably Howard Barker, Lindsay Kemp [10] and Derek Jarman [11] .He was the first dramatist to adapt the work of American artist David Wojnarowicz for the stage. Close to the Knives was performed at the 1993 Brighton Festival [12] with the role of David Wojnarowicz played by actor Simon Merrells. In 1994 the success in Edinburgh of In One Take [13] led to performances at Teatri di Vita, [14] Bologna, Italy. Since then, his work has continued to be popular in Italy and has been seen in Florence, Modena, Forlí, L'Aquila, Reggio Emilia, Rome [15] and Milan. [16] [17] His most popular work The Ice Pick has been staged on multiple occasions in the UK and Italy as well as in the US at the Celebration Theatre, Los Angeles in 1993. [18]
He moved to Amsterdam, the Netherlands in 1997, [19] where he continued the work of Aputheatre until 2008. During this period the focus of his work was mainly focused on the personal and social effects of pan-European migration following the collapse of communism.
In 1999 he updated and reworked The Ice Pick for 2 characters under the title Heroes. Heroes was toured by Aputheatre around the Netherlands before being performed in Warsaw as part of the 1st Polish Gay Pride festival. The Prostitution Plays was premiered for Warsaw Gay Pride in 2000 and in 2001 his play Sexually Speaking 1+1 was presented in Kyiv, Ukraine.
Following its Amsterdam premiere, his play Prisoners of Sex was translated into Italian by Antonio Serrano as Prigionieri del Sesso and has been performed in Milan and Rome. [20] [21] [22]
Published works include:
John Roman Baker spent his formative years in London. At the age of 20 he moved to Paris, where for several years he worked at the British Institute. His poetry was encouraged by the then director of the Institute, Francis Scarfe. Later, in 1974 a volume of his poetry Poèmes à Tristan was published in French by Gérard Oberlé, translated by Françoise du Chaxel, and with an introduction by Jeanne Fayard. [31] He has always considered himself foremost a poet, and a vein of poetry continues in his plays and novels.
In 1970 he moved from Paris back to England. His poetic novel The Dark Antagonist was published by the Unicorn Bookshop, Brighton in 1973. [32] In response, the French writer Julien Green wrote "John Roman Baker … a very talented writer, author of a remarkable and moving book: The Dark Antagonist, which I have just read with admiration. I don’t believe I have read anything like it."
John Roman Baker was active in the Gay Liberation Front in Brighton and participated in the organization's pioneering "Gay Day" in 1972 [33] and first Gay Pride March in 1973. [34]
Unwelcome notoriety was achieved when in 1976 he appeared with Tony Whitehead (later to become the first chairperson of the Terence Higgins Trust [35] ) in a Southern Television program [36] about Gay Rights. They were pictured together kissing as one of them met the other off a train at Brighton station. As a result of this, Whitehead was immediately fired by his employer British Home Stores. A national outcry galvanised the gay rights movement, led by CHE (The Campaign for Homosexual Equality) and GLF (Gay Liberation Front).
In 1997 he left England for Amsterdam, where he was given the freedom to create and direct new work at the theatre in the former COC Amsterdam building on Rozenstraat until its closure in 2007.
In 2014 he returned to England and created a series of modern historical gay fiction, The Nick & Greg Books. The books chart the lives of two gay teenagers, Nick and Greg, who meet as teens in Brighton in the late 1950s. The books chart their lives and relationships in Brighton, London and Paris from the 1950s into the 21st Century. The books chronicle not only the massive social changes that occur, but also key literary and cultural influences.
In August 2018 and November 2019 he attended the Salon du Livre Gay (Gay Book Fair) in Paris to present The Nick & Greg Books and launch the fourth book in the series Greg in Paris as well as the limited edition hardcover Le Far West. [37]
In June 2020 a new novel entitled 2020 was published. The book, written immediately before the Covid-19 lockdowns began in France and the United Kingdom, presents two characters, Alex and Paul, seeking to defy the coming crisis.
Simon Phillip Hugh Callow is an English actor. Known as a character actor on stage and screen, he has received numerous accolades including an Olivier Award and Screen Actors Guild Award as well as nominations for two BAFTA Awards. He was made a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) for his services to acting by Queen Elizabeth II in 1999.
My Night with Reg is a play by British playwright Kevin Elyot which was produced in 1994 by the Royal Court Theatre, London, directed by Roger Michell. The production later transferred to the West End.
Nancy Goldin is an American photographer and activist. Her work often explores LGBT subcultures, moments of intimacy, the HIV/AIDS crisis, and the opioid epidemic. Her most notable work is The Ballad of Sexual Dependency (1986). The monograph documents the post-Stonewall, gay subculture and includes Goldin's family and friends. She is a founding member of the advocacy group P.A.I.N.. She lives and works in New York City.
Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes is a 1991 American two-part play by American playwright Tony Kushner. The two parts of the play, Millennium Approaches and Perestroika, may be presented separately. The work won numerous awards, including the Pulitzer Prize for Drama, the Tony Award for Best Play, and the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Play. Part one of the play premiered in 1991, followed by part two in 1992. Its Broadway opening was in 1993.
David Michael Wojnarowicz was an American painter, photographer, writer, filmmaker, performance artist, songwriter/recording artist, and AIDS activist prominent in the East Village art scene. He incorporated personal narratives influenced by his struggle with AIDS as well as his political activism in his art until his death from the disease in 1992.
Nick Kent is a British rock critic and musician, best known for his writing for the NME in the 1970s, and his books The Dark Stuff (1994) and Apathy for the Devil (2010).
Patrice Chéreau was a French opera and theatre director, filmmaker, actor and producer. In France he is best known for his work for the theatre, internationally for his films La Reine Margot and Intimacy, and for his staging of the Jahrhundertring, the centenary Ring cycle at the Bayreuth Festival in 1976. Winner of almost twenty movie awards, including the Cannes Jury Prize and the Golden Berlin Bear, Chéreau served as president of the jury at the 2003 Cannes festival.
Ralph William John Brown is an English actor and writer, known for playing Danny the drug dealer in Withnail and I, the security guard Aaron in Alien 3, DJ Bob Silver in The Boat That Rocked aka Pirate Radio, super-roadie Del Preston in Wayne's World 2, the pilot Ric Olié in Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace, and Henry Clinton in Turn: Washington's Spies. He won the Samuel Beckett Award for his first play Sanctuary written for Joint Stock Theatre Company in 1987, and the Raindance and Sapporo Film Festival awards for his first screenplay for the British film New Year's Day in 2001.
Mark Ravenhill is an English playwright, actor and journalist.
Neil Vivian Bartlett, OBE, is a British director, performer, translator and writer. He was one of the founding members of Gloria, a production company established in 1988 to produce his work along with that of Nicolas Bloomfield, Leah Hausman and Simon Mellor.
Stephen Wyatt, born 4 February 1948 in Beckenham, Kent, is a British writer for theatre, radio and television.
James Almand Haynes was an American-born figure in the British 1950s-60s counterculture, beginning in Edinburgh, Scotland with the opening of The Paperback bookshop in 1959. He was also a co-founder of Edinburgh's Traverse Theatre, The Howff, and a co-producer of the 1962 Edinburgh Writers and 1964 Drama conferences. In London, he co-founded the underground newspaper International Times and the London Drury Lane Arts Lab. In 1969 he relocated to Paris and taught at the University of Paris, and for over 30 years hosted his open door Sunday Dinners, to international gatherings.
Cooking with Elvis is a dark comedy by playwright Lee Hall which was performed in 1999 in Edinburgh.
Aputheatre began life as the Aids Positive Underground Theatre Company. Founded in 1989 at the Sussex Aids Centre in Brighton, England, the objective was to provide a cultural response to HIV and Aids. The company quickly established a reputation for hard-hitting drama very much in the In-yer-face theatre style and a good example of queer theatre. From 1994 onwards, Aputheatre produced work that moved away from being exclusively about HIV-AIDS. Though HIV remained a key subtext in many works, other themes like prostitution, pornography, sexual politics became more important.
Matthew Wilkinson is a British actor, playwright and director.
Adrenaline is the first novel written by James Robert Baker (1946–1997), an American author of sharply satirical, predominantly gay-themed transgressional fiction.
This is a timeline of notable events in the history of the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) community in the United Kingdom. There is evidence that LGBT activity in the United Kingdom existed as far back as the days of Celtic Britain.
The New York City Gay Men's Chorus is a choral organization in New York City that has been presenting an annual concert season for more than four decades.
Silence = Death is a 1990 documentary film directed, written, and produced by Rosa von Praunheim. The film received international resonance.
The Marlborough Pub and Theatre is a historic venue, situated at 4 Princes Street, Brighton. It has been associated, since the 1970s, with the LGBT community. The Marlborough's small theatre presents drama, cabaret and music throughout the year, including during the Brighton Fringe Festival, LGBT History Month and Brighton Pride Arts Festival. The pub reopened in 2021 as 'The Actors'.
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