Lindsay Steven Posner (born 6 June 1959) [1] is a British theatre director, known for his work in London's West End and at the Royal Court Theatre, the Royal Shakespeare Company and the National Theatre, particularly plays by David Mamet.
Lindsay Posner graduated from the acting course at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in 1984. He was associate director of the Royal Court Theatre from 1987 to 1992 where his production of Death and the Maiden won two Laurence Olivier Awards.
He has directed five productions of David Mamet's plays, describing him as "America's greatest living playwright". [2]
Posner was an associate director of the Royal Court Theatre between 1987 and 1992. During this time, he directed a number of new plays. Additionally, from 1989 he was appointed artistic director of Royal Court Theatre Upstairs and deputy director (to Artistic Director Max Stafford-Clark) for the main house. [3]
During the late 2000s and early 2010s, he has had success with revivals of modern British comedies such as Relatively Speaking , Abigail's Party and Noises Off .
Posner has directed two television plays:
David Alan Mamet is an American playwright, filmmaker, and author. He won a Pulitzer Prize and received Tony nominations for his plays Glengarry Glen Ross (1984) and Speed-the-Plow (1988). He first gained critical acclaim for a trio of off-Broadway 1970s plays: The Duck Variations, Sexual Perversity in Chicago, and American Buffalo. His plays Race and The Penitent, respectively, opened on Broadway in 2009 and previewed off-Broadway in 2017.
Lindsay Ann Crouse is an American actress. She made her Broadway debut in the 1972 revival of Much Ado About Nothing and appeared in her first film in 1976 in All the President's Men. For her role in the 1984 film Places in the Heart, she received an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actress. Her other films include Slap Shot (1977), Between the Lines (1977), The Verdict (1982), Prefontaine (1997), and The Insider (1999). She also had a leading role in the 1987 film House of Games, which was directed by her then-husband David Mamet. In 1996, she received a Daytime Emmy Award nomination for "Between Mother and Daughter", a CBS Schoolbreak Special episode. She is also a Grammy Award nominee.
Speed-the-Plow is a 1988 play by David Mamet that is a satirical dissection of the American movie business. As stated in The Producer's Perspective, "this is a theme Mamet would revisit in his later films Wag the Dog (1997) and State and Main (2000)". As quoted in The Producer's Perspective, Jack Kroll of Newsweek described Speed-the-Plow as "another tone poem by our nation's foremost master of the language of moral epilepsy."
Wicked is a musical with music and lyrics by Stephen Schwartz and a book by Winnie Holzman. It is a loose adaptation of the 1995 Gregory Maguire novel Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West, which is in turn based on L. Frank Baum's 1900 novel The Wonderful Wizard of Oz and its 1939 film adaptation.
The Royal Court Theatre, at different times known as the Court Theatre, the New Chelsea Theatre, and the Belgravia Theatre, is a non-commercial West End theatre in Sloane Square, London, England. In 1956 it was acquired by and remains the home of the English Stage Company, which is known for its contributions to contemporary theatre and won the Europe Prize Theatrical Realities in 1999.
The History Boys is a play by British playwright Alan Bennett. The play premiered at the Royal National Theatre in London on 18 May 2004. Its Broadway debut was on 23 April 2006 at the Broadhurst Theatre where 185 performances were staged before it closed on 1 October 2006.
Lindsay Vere Duncan is a Scottish actress. She is the recipient of three BAFTA nominations and one Scottish BAFTA nomination, as well as two Olivier Awards and a Tony Award for her work on stage. She has starred in several plays by Harold Pinter. Duncan's film credits include Prick Up Your Ears (1987), The Reflecting Skin (1990), City Hall (1996), An Ideal Husband, Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace, Mansfield Park, Under the Tuscan Sun, AfterLife, Starter for 10 (2006), Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland (2010), About Time (2013), Birdman (2014), and Blackbird (2019).
Oleanna is a 1992 two-character play by David Mamet, about the power struggle between a university professor and one of his female students, who accuses him of sexual harassment and, by doing so, spoils his chances of being accorded tenure. The play's title, taken from a folk song, refers to a 19th-century escapist vision of utopia. Mamet adapted his play into a 1994 film of the same name.
House of Games is a 1987 American neo-noir film about con-men and confidence scams by David Mamet, his directorial debut. He also wrote the screenplay, based on a story he co-wrote with Jonathan Katz. The film's cast includes Lindsay Crouse, Joe Mantegna, Ricky Jay, and J. T. Walsh.
Faith Healer is a play by Brian Friel about the life of the faith healer Francis Hardy as monologued through the shifting memories of Hardy, his wife, Grace, and stage manager, Teddy. It was first produced in 1979.
Nigel Lindsay is an English actor. He is best known on television for his roles as Sir Robert Peel in the first two seasons of Victoria, Jo Jo Marshall in the Netflix series Safe and as Barry in the BAFTA-winning Chris Morris film Four Lions for which he was nominated for Best British Comedy Performance in Film at the 2011 British Comedy Awards.
Peter Gill is a Welsh theatre director, playwright, and actor. He was born in Cardiff to George John and Margaret Mary Gill, and educated at St Illtyd's College, Cardiff.
Andrew Nyman is an English actor, director, writer and magician.
Rupert Goold is an English director who works primarily in theatre. He is the artistic director of the Almeida Theatre, and was the artistic director of Headlong Theatre Company (2005–2013). Since 2010, Goold has been an associate director at the Royal Shakespeare Company. He was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in the 2017 for services to drama.
Richard Anthony Bean is an English playwright.
Ian McDiarmid is a Scottish actor and director of stage and screen. Making his stage debut in Hamlet in 1972, McDiarmid joined the Royal Shakespeare Company in 1974, and has since starred in a number of Shakespeare's plays. He has received an Olivier Award for Best Actor for Insignificance (1982) and a Tony Award for Best Featured Actor in a Play for Faith Healer (2006).
Man and Boy: Dada is a 2003 opera by Michael Nyman with a libretto by Michael Hastings. It tells the story of a friendship between aging dada artist Kurt Schwitters and a twelve-year-old boy. These two characters and the boy's mother make up the cast of the opera.
Willemijn Verkaik is a Dutch singer and actress. She is best known for her stage roles in Wicked and Elisabeth, and for providing the singing voice for Elsa in both the German and Dutch versions of Disney's Frozen. She was the longest running Elphaba in the musical Wicked, having played the role over 2,000 times, and is the only person to have played the role in three languages. Her first performance as Elphaba was on 31 October 2007, in Stuttgart, Germany, and her final performance was on 22 July 2017 in the West End of London.
Nick Monu is a Nigerian dramatist, actor and director.
Folker Bohnet was a German actor, theatre director and playwright. He played in the 1959 film Die Brücke directed by Bernhard Wicki while still a student in Berlin. Later, he focused on comedy for the stage, as actor, director and author of plays, touring internationally. He was a regular director and actor at the Ohnsorg-Theater in Hamburg.