Stephen Henry | |
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| Born | 27 September 1968 |
| Nationality | British & Irish |
| Education | Trinity Catholic High School, Woodford Green London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art Institute of Education, University College London |
| Occupation(s) | Theatre director, Theatre producer, Teacher |
| Spouse | Dr. José Ricardo Gutiérrez Vargas m:2010 d:2017 |
Stephen Henry is a British stage director, a theatre producer, and an educator.
Stephen Henry read Education (QTS) and Drama at St Mary's College, Theatre Directing at DSL and LAMDA, studied International Education at University of Cambridge and Leadership at UCL.
Henry started his career by directing, for his graduate school production, Terrence McNally's Love! Valour! Compassion! which won both The Best Ensemble Award and The Best Actor Award [1] at the 1998 Edinburgh Festival. The acclaimed production transferred to the Tristan Bates Theatre, London and sold out its limited run. He followed this inaugural production with Frank Wedekind's Spring Awakening at the Jermyn Street Theatre, London receiving The Bulldog Prinsep Theatrical Fund Award for New Directors. Henry's interpretation of Spring Awakening later moved to the Tristan Bates Theatre.
He also directed the UK premiere production of To Have and To Hold by Paul Harris, with Cory English, and the European premiere of Terrence McNally's passion play Corpus Christi , at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in 1999, with Stephen Billington and Mel Raido. The production transferred to the Pleasance Theatre, London, produced by Guy Chapman Associates and Sarah Earl Productions, breaking box-office records for the theatre and attracting political demonstrations and a fatwa for its author. [2]
Henry's Oxford Playhouse revival of Another Country , by Julian Mitchell, reopened the Arts Theatre in the West End where he also developed a new transgender themed play by Sam McCartney, Body Language (Being Olivia).
Other projects include the controversial play tackling the subject of pedophilia, ecstasy + GRACE by James Martin Charlton, at the Finborough Theatre, London where he produced Pains of Youth by Ferdinand Bruckner starring Stephen Billington, Stevie Jay in Life, Love and other works in progress and a new play exploring the subject of dementia, The Silent Treatment by Chris Pickles.
He directed rehearsed workshops of Fuddy Meers by David Lindsay-Abaire for the National Theatre Studio and Southwark Playhouse and The Lightning Child by Elizabeth Hopley at The Old Vic.
Henry directed Five Flights by Canadian author Adam Bock, at the Pleasance Theatre with comic Scott Capurro, and developed Matthew Todd's play Blowing Whistles at the Jermyn Street Theatre for Trilby Productions.
His King's Head Theatre production of The Lisbon Traviata, starring David Bamber and Marcus D'Amico, was voted The Best Off-West End Production in 2004, Whatsonstage Awards. He was also the original director of the London production of Visiting Mr. Green by Jeff Baron at the New End Theatre.
For over a decade, he directed numerous graduate showcases, student productions and scene studies including Uncle Vanya , Kiss of the Spider Woman , and My Heart is a Suitcase for Drama Studio London where he taught acting and theatre directing.
Henry worked as a volunteer for the first Pride London Festival in 2004/2005 and host The Pride London Season of Theatre with main productions including the page-to-stage adaptations of Go Fish (film) (Zip Antics Theatre Company) and New Boy (Questors Theatre), a new play Citizenship by Mark Ravenhill, as part of the National Theatre Connections Programme, and L'homosexual by Copi directed by Carole Menduni. The season also included Fiona Staniland as Darlene Meatrick, Nathan Martin in I wish it so! and The International Play Competition presenting rehearsed readings of 12 new LGBTQ+ plays. The festival also included Justin Bond in concert at Soho Theatre and a production of Hedwig and the Angry Inch at Heaven Nightclub with David Bedella.
In March, 2010, in Coyoacán, Mexico City, he became the first European to marry a Mexican national of the same gender.
Also in 2010, he directed Anton Chekhov's The Cherry Orchard and the European premiere of Paula Vogel's AIDS themed play The Long Christmas Ride Home at the LOST Theatre in London.
In 2012, he directed the first production of The Vagina Monologues by Eve Ensler in Mexico.
In recent years, he directed The Irish Curse by Martin Casella at the Edinburgh Festival prior to a transfer to Dublin, Ireland and a new play in London, The Baby Box by Chris Leicester.
He also directed Oscar Wilde's An Ideal Husband and Noël Coward's Blithe Spirit in London.
Henry is Founder/Artistic Director for The Theatre 28 Ensemble and a member of the Directors Guild of Great Britain. He is also an associate member teacher at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art and an International Education leader often working in Latin America, the Middle East and Southeast Asia.
Terrence McNally was an American playwright, librettist, and screenwriter. Described as "the bard of American theater" and "one of the greatest contemporary playwrights the theater world has yet produced," McNally was the recipient of five Tony Awards. He won the Tony Award for Best Play for Love! Valour! Compassion! and Master Class and the Tony Award for Best Book of a Musical for Kiss of the Spider Woman and Ragtime, and received the 2019 Tony Award for Lifetime Achievement. He was inducted into the American Theater Hall of Fame in 1996, and he also received the Dramatists Guild Lifetime Achievement Award in 2011 and the Lucille Lortel Lifetime Achievement Award. In 2018, he was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the highest recognition of artistic merit in the United States. His other accolades included an Emmy Award, two Guggenheim Fellowships, a Rockefeller Grant, four Drama Desk Awards, two Lucille Lortel Awards, two Obie Awards, and three Hull-Warriner Awards.
Sir Peter Reginald Frederick Hall CBE was an English theatre, opera and film director. His obituary in The Times declared him "the most important figure in British theatre for half a century" and on his death, a Royal National Theatre statement declared that Hall's "influence on the artistic life of Britain in the 20th century was unparalleled". In 2018, the Laurence Olivier Awards, recognising achievements in London theatre, changed the award for Best Director to the Sir Peter Hall Award for Best Director.
Stephen Flaherty is an American composer of musical theatre and film. He works most often in collaboration with the lyricist/book writer Lynn Ahrens. They are best known for writing the Broadway musicals Ragtime, which was nominated for thirteen Tony Awards, two Grammy Awards, and won the Tony for Best Original Score; Once on This Island, which won the Tony Award for Best Revival of a Musical, the Olivier Award for London's Best Musical, and was nominated for a Grammy Award and eight Tony Awards; and Seussical, which was nominated for the Grammy Award. Flaherty was also nominated for two Academy Awards and two Golden Globe Awards for his songs and song score for the animated film musical Anastasia.
Corpus Christi is a 1998 American play by Terrence McNally, written in 1997 and first staged in New York in 1998, dramatizing the story of Jesus and the Apostles, depicting Jesus and the Apostles as gay men living in modern-day Texas. McNally arranges the narrative through anachronisms that represent Roman occupation.
Love! Valour! Compassion! is a play by Terrence McNally. The play opened Off-Broadway in 1994 and transferred to Broadway in 1995. It won the Tony Award for Best Play and the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Play.
Matthew Warchus is an English theatre director, filmmaker and dramaturg. He has been the Artistic Director of London's The Old Vic since September 2015.
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The Finborough Theatre is a fifty-seat theatre in the West Brompton area of London under artistic director Neil McPherson. The theatre presents new British writing, as well as UK and world premieres of new plays primarily from the English speaking world including North America, Canada, Ireland, and Scotland including work in the Scots language, alongside rarely seen rediscovered 19th and 20th century plays. The venue also presents new and rediscovered music theatre.
Phil Willmott is a British director, playwright, arts journalist, teacher, and founder of London based theatre production company The Steam Industry.
The Lisbon Traviata is a 1989 American play by Terrence McNally premiered Off-Broadway. It revolves around several opera fans, especially of the opera singer Maria Callas, and their gay relationships.
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Ramin Gray is a theatre director of Iranian (Muslim) and British (Jewish) heritage.
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Richard Williams is an English theatre director, producer and teacher working mainly in the areas of dramatic and lyric presentation. Richard Williams' career has concerned classics, new plays, music theatre and opera productions. In a directing career lasting some 35 years he has directed more than 250 productions.
John Sackville is an English actor, best known for his role as the villainous Robert Frobisher Smythe in the British-American TV series House of Anubis, in which he co-starred with Alexandra Shipp He has worked in theatre, film and television.
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