Parent company | Bloomsbury Publishing |
---|---|
Founded | 1985 |
Founder | James Hogan |
Country of origin | United Kingdom |
Headquarters location | Islington, London |
Distribution | Marston Book Services (UK) Theatre Communications Group (United States) Currency Press (Australia) [1] |
Publication types | Books |
Nonfiction topics | Drama and performing arts |
No. of employees | 10 |
Official website | oberonbooks |
Oberon Books is a London-based publisher of drama texts and books on theatre. The company publishes around 100 titles per year, many of them plays by new writers. In addition, the list contains a range of titles on theatre studies, acting, writing and dance.
Oberon Books was founded by James Hogan in 1985. Two of its titles are poet Adrian Mitchell's 1998 stage adaptation of C. S. Lewis's The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe for the Royal Shakespeare Company and One Man, Two Guvnors (Richard Bean's modern version of Carlo Goldoni's Servant of Two Masters ), a West End and Broadway hit for Britain's National Theatre in 2011 starring James Corden. The NT Live recording of the latter was scheduled to be shown on PBS in late 2020.
As of August 2019 [update] the company has 1600 titles in print, most available as both print and e-books. As well as new plays, Oberon also publishes classic works by playwrights such as J. B. Priestley, Sir Arnold Wesker and Henrik Ibsen.
Oberon's mission expanded to include publishing a "culturally and politically diverse" range of plays. Recent examples include Barber Shop Chronicles by Inua Ellams, The HIV Monologues by Patrick Cash and Chewing Gum Dreams by Michaela Coel.
In December 2019, Oberon Books was acquired by Bloomsbury Publishing to join its longstanding play and performance imprints Methuen Drama and Arden Shakespeare.
Oberon also publishes plays from the following theatre companies:
John Logan's Red was the winner of six Tony Awards in 2010, including Best Play and Best Direction (Michael Grandage). Red was also the winner of the 2010 Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Play. The following Oberon plays were also nominated for Olivier Awards in 2010: [2] [3] [4]
A number of Oberon playwrights have been nominated for the 2010 Evening Standard Awards: [5]
Nominees for the 2010 TMA Theatre Awards include: [6]
Oberon's previous award winners include:
In September 2008 two early playscripts by John Osborne, previously thought to be lost, were discovered in the British Library's archives. Both plays predated Look Back in Anger and were published together for the first time by Oberon Books, as Before Anger. [11]
Nell Leyshon is a British writer whose work alternates between prose, stage and radio drama. She was born and grew up in Somerset, and spent half of her childhood in Glastonbury, and the other half in a small farming village on the edge of the Somerset Levels. She had a mixed education, and ended up attending art college for a year before moving to London. A first career culminated in working as a Production Assistant then Producer in TV commercials for directors including Ridley and Tony Scott. She gave it up to spend a year in Spain with her boyfriend Dominic, who remains her partner. She returned pregnant. She attended the University of Southampton as a mature student. Only after the birth of her second son in 1995 she started to write seriously.
The Evening Standard Theatre Awards, established in 1955, are the oldest theatrical awards ceremony in the United Kingdom. They are presented annually for outstanding achievements in London Theatre, and are organised by the Evening Standard newspaper. They are the West End's equivalent to Broadway's Drama Desk Awards.
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.
Simon Montagu McBurney is an English actor, playwright, and theatrical director. He is the founder and artistic director of the Théâtre de Complicité, London. He has had roles in the films The Manchurian Candidate, Friends with Money, The Last King of Scotland, The Golden Compass, The Duchess, Robin Hood, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – Part 1, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, Magic in the Moonlight, The Theory of Everything, and Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation. He played Cecil the choirmaster in BBC's The Vicar of Dibley.
Michael Bartlett is an English playwright and screenwriter for film and TV series. His 2015 psychological thriller TV series, Doctor Foster, starring Suranne Jones, won the New Drama award from National Television Awards. Bartlett also won Best Writer from the Broadcast Press Guild Awards. A BBC TV Film of Bartlett's play King Charles III was broadcast in May 2017 and while critically acclaimed, generated some controversy.
Theatre503, formerly the Latchmere Theatre, is a theatre located at 503 Battersea Park Road in Battersea in the London Borough of Wandsworth, above the Latchmere pub. The venue is known for promoting the work of new writers.
Bijan Sheibani is a British theatre director.
Laura Wade is an English playwright.
A Disappearing Number is a 2007 play co-written and devised by the Théâtre de Complicité company and directed and conceived by English playwright Simon McBurney. It was inspired by the collaboration during the 1910s between the pure mathematicians Srinivasa Ramanujan from India, and the Cambridge University don G.H. Hardy.
Tom & Viv is a play written by English playwright Michael Hastings. The play is based on the real life of T. S. Eliot and his wife Vivienne Haigh-Wood Eliot.
Dominic Cooke is an English director and writer.
Oladipo Agboluaje is a British-Nigerian playwright. He was born in Hackney and educated in Britain and Nigeria, studying theatre arts at the University of Benin. He later wrote a doctoral thesis at the Open University on West and South African drama.
Jeremy Herrin is an English theatre director. He is the artistic director of Headlong Theatre.
Jamie Lloyd is a British director, best known for his work with his eponymous theatre company. He is known for his modern minimalism and expressionist directorial style. He is a proponent of affordable theatre for young and diverse audiences, and has been praised as "redefining West End theatre". The Daily Telegraph critic Dominic Cavendish wrote of Lloyd, "Few directors have Lloyd’s ability to transport us to the upper echelons of theatrical pleasure."
Connections is the Royal National Theatre in London's annual youth theatre festival. It was founded in 1995 and sponsored by Royal Dutch Shell until 2007 when the Bank of America took over the sponsorship. The plays are also published by the National Theatre each year.
Shannon Tarbet is a British actress who has transitioned from an extensive career in theatre to feature film with main roles in Love Is Blind (2019) and Love Sarah (2020), and on television with recurring roles in Genius and in Rellik (2017) and as Amber Peel in Killing Eve (2019).
Anna Fleischle is a theatre designer who has worked in theatre, dance and opera.
Jessica Swale is a British playwright, theatre director and screenwriter. Her first play, Blue Stockings, premiered at Shakespeare's Globe in 2013. It is widely performed by UK amateur companies and is also studied on the Drama GCSE syllabus. In 2016, her play Nell Gwynn won the Olivier Award for Best New Comedy, after it transferred from the Globe to the West End, starring Gemma Arterton as the eponymous heroine. She also wrote and directed the feature film Summerland (2020).
Lisa Goldman is a British theatre director, dramaturg, writer and author. She was Artistic Director and joint Chief Executive of Soho Theatre (2006–10) and The Red Room Theatre Company which she founded (1995-2006). In 2008 Lisa was included in the London Evening Standard’s ‘Influentials’ list as one of the 1000 most influential people in London.
The Phlebotomist is a debut stage play written by Ella Road. It received its premier at the Hampstead Theatre Downstairs in 2018 and transferred to the theatre's Main Stage in 2019. Both productions were directed by Sam Yates and starred Jade Anouka.