Moira Buffini (born 29 May 1965) [1] is an English dramatist, director, and actor.
Buffini was born in Cheshire to Irish parents, and attended St Mary's College at Rhos-on-Sea in Wales as a day girl. She studied English and Drama at Goldsmiths College, London University (1983–86). [2] She subsequently trained as an actor at the Royal Welsh College of Music & Drama in Cardiff. [2]
For Jordan, co-written with Anna Reynolds in 1992, she won a Time Out Award for her performance and Writers' Guild Award for Best Fringe play. [3] Her 1997 play Gabriel was performed at Soho theatre, winning the LWT Plays on Stage award and the Meyer-Whitworth Award. [3] Her 1999 play Silence earned Buffini the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize for best English-language play by a woman. [3] Loveplay followed at the RSC in 2001, then Dinner at the National Theatre in 2003 which transferred to the West End and was nominated for an Olivier Award for Best Comedy. [3]
Buffini wrote Dying For It, a free adaptation of Nikolai Erdman's classic, The Suicide, for the Almeida in 2007. [4] She followed it with Marianne Dreams a dance play with choreographer Will Tuckett, based on Catherine Storr's book. [5] Her play for young people, A Vampire Story was performed as part of NT Connections in 2008. [4] She did a writers’ attachment at the Royal National Theatre Studio in 1996.
Buffini advocates big, imaginative plays rather than naturalistic soap opera dramas, and is a founder member of the Monsterists, a group of playwrights who promote new writing of large scale work in the British theatre. [6] She has been described by David Greig as a metaphysical playwright. All her plays have been published by Faber. [7]
Buffini is also a prolific screenwriter. In 2010 her film adaptation of Posy Simmon's Tamara Drewe was released, directed by Stephen Frears. [8] In 2011 her adaptation of Jane Eyre for BBC Films and Ruby Films was released. The script appeared on the 2008 Brit List, a film-industry-compiled list of the best unproduced screenplays in British film. It received nine votes, putting it in second place. [9] Buffini adapted her play A Vampire Story for the screenplay of Neil Jordan's film Byzantium released in 2013. [10]
She took part in the Bush Theatre's 2011 project Sixty Six Books for which she wrote a poem titled “God is Jealous,” based upon Nahum, a book of the King James Bible. [11]
On the 21 January 2015, it was announced that Manchester International Festival would premier wonder.land , a new musical with music by Damon Albarn, book and lyrics by Moira Buffini and direction from Rufus Norris. wonder.land is inspired by Alice In Wonderland by Lewis Carroll and is a co-production with the National Theatre. [12]
Steven Berkoff is an English actor, author, playwright, theatre practitioner and theatre director.
Rosemary Elizabeth "Posy" Simmonds MBE, FRSL is a British newspaper cartoonist, and writer and illustrator of both children's books and graphic novels. She is best known for her long association with The Guardian, for which she drew the series Gemma Bovery (2000) and Tamara Drewe (2005–06), both later published as books. Her style gently satirises the English middle classes and in particular those of a literary bent. Both Gemma Bovery and Tamara Drew feature a "doomed heroine", much in the style of the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century gothic romantic novel, to which they often allude, but with an ironic, modernist slant.
In-yer-face theatre is a term used to describe a confrontational style and sensibility of drama that emerged in Great Britain in the 1990s. This term was borrowed by British theatre critic Aleks Sierz as the title of his book, In-Yer-Face Theatre: British Drama Today, first published by Faber and Faber in March 2001.
Marianne Dreams is a children's fantasy novel by Catherine Storr. It was illustrated with drawings by Marjorie-Ann Watts and published by Faber and Faber in 1958. The first paperback edition, from Puffin Books in 1964, is catalogued by the Library of Congress as revised.
David Harrower is a Scottish playwright who lives in Glasgow. Harrower has published over 10 original works, as well as numerous translations and adaptations.
Philip Ridley is an English storyteller working in a wide range of artistic media.
The Pitchfork Disney is a 1991 stage play by Philip Ridley. It was his first professional stage work, having also produced work as a visual artist, novelist, filmmaker, and scriptwriter for film and radio. The play premiered at the Bush Theatre in London, UK in 1991 and was directed by Matthew Lloyd, who directed most of Ridley's subsequent early plays.
Lucy Jane Robinson is a British actress working mostly in television.
Ghost from a Perfect Place is a two act play by Philip Ridley. It was Ridley's third stage play and premiered at the Hampstead Theatre, London on 7 April 1994. The part of Travis Flood was played by the veteran, classical actor John Wood, for which he received general acclaim and was nominated for 'Best Actor' at the 1994 Evening Standard Drama Awards. The production was the third collaboration between Ridley and director Matthew Lloyd, who had directed all of Ridley's previous stage plays and would go on to direct Ridley's next play for adults Vincent River in 2000.
Mercury Fur is a play written by Philip Ridley which premiered in 2005. It is Ridley's fifth adult stage play and premiered at the Plymouth Theatre Royal, before moving to the Menier Chocolate Factory in London.
Martin Andrew Crimp is a British playwright.
Clare Margaret Holman is an English actress. She portrayed forensic pathologist Dr. Laura Hobson in the crime drama series Inspector Morse and its spin-off Lewis from 1995 to 2015.
Skin is an 11-minute short film directed by Vincent O'Connell and starring Ewen Bremner and Marcia Rose. Produced by Tapson/Steel Films for British Screen and Channel 4 Films, it was filmed in September 1995. The screenplay was written in the summer of that year by British playwright Sarah Kane.
Fenella Woolgar is an English film, theatre, television and radio actress. She is known for her roles in films including Bright Young Things, Swallows and Amazons and Victoria and Abdul and for TV shows including Doctor Who, as crime novelist Agatha Christie, Inside Number 9, Call the Midwife and The Buccaneers.
Anthony Neilson is a Scottish playwright and director. He is known for his collaborative way of writing and workshopping his plays. Much of his work is characterised by the exploration of sex and violence.
East is a 1975 verse play by Steven Berkoff, dealing with growing up and rites of passage in London's rough East End.
Nick Grosso is a British playwright, born in London in 1968 to Argentine parents of Italian and Russian extraction. His style has been described as that of a "latter-day Oscar Wilde on speed" by Sheridan Morley.
Tamara Drewe is a 2010 British romantic comedy film directed by Stephen Frears. The screenplay was written by Moira Buffini, based on the newspaper comic strip of the same name written by Posy Simmonds. The comic strip which serves as source material was a modern reworking of Thomas Hardy's 1874 novel Far from the Madding Crowd.
Emma Handy is a British actress best known for her West End stage work and her role as DC Paula McIntyre in the ITV1 award-winning drama series Wire in the Blood in which she appeared for five series.
The Fastest Clock in the Universe is a two act play by Philip Ridley. It was Ridley's second stage play and premiered at the Hampstead Theatre, London on 14 May 1992 and featured Jude Law in his first paid theatre role, playing the part of Foxtrot Darling. The production was the second collaboration between Ridley and director Matthew Lloyd, who would go on to direct the original productions for the majority of Ridley's plays until the year 2001.