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.
Sir Jonathan Pryce is a Welsh actor who is known for his performances on stage and in film and television. He has received numerous awards including two Tony Awards and two Laurence Olivier Awards. In 2021 he was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II for his services to drama. After studying at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, he began his career as a stage actor in the early 1970s. His work in theatre includes an Olivier Award-winning performance in the title role of the Royal Court Theatre's Hamlet in 1980 and as The Engineer in the stage musical Miss Saigon in 1990. On the Broadway stage he earned Tony Awards—the first for Best Featured Actor in a Play for his Broadway debut role in Comedians (1977), the second for Best Actor in a Musical for the Broadway transfer of the musical Miss Saigon (1991).
Rebecca Pidgeon is an American actress who has appeared on stage and in feature films, and a singer, songwriter and recording artist. She is married to American playwright David Mamet.
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", an episode of CBS Schoolbreak Special. 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 based on the 1995 Gregory Maguire novel Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West, based on the characters and setting of the classic 1900 novel, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum and the 1939 Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer film The Wizard of Oz. The musical is told from the perspective of, and focuses on, the witches of the Land of Oz; its plot begins before and continues after Dorothy Gale arrives in Oz from Kansas. Wicked tells the story of two unlikely friends, Elphaba and Galinda, whose relationship struggles through their opposing personalities and viewpoints, same love-interest, reactions to the Wizard's corrupt government, and, ultimately, Elphaba's private fall from grace.
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, in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, London, England. In 1956 it was acquired by and remains the home of the English Stage Company and is known for its contributions to contemporary theatre.
Romance is a play by David Mamet. It premiered Off-Broadway in 2005 and also ran in London.
Lindsay Vere Duncan is a Scottish actress. On stage, she has won two Olivier Awards and a Tony Award. Duncan has starred in several plays by Harold Pinter. Her best known roles on television include: Barbara Douglas in Alan Bleasdale's G.B.H. (1991), Servilia of the Junii in the HBO/BBC/RAI series Rome (2005–2007), Adelaide Brooke in the Doctor Who special "The Waters of Mars" (2009) and Lady Smallwood in the BBC series Sherlock. On film, she portrayed Anthea Lahr in Prick Up Your Ears (1987), voiced the android TC-14 in Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace (1999) and Alice's mother in Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland (2010), and played the acerbic theatre critic Tabitha Dickinson in Birdman or (2014).
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 heist thriller film directed 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.
Michael Bogdanov was a Welsh theatre director known for his work with new plays, modern reinterpretations of Shakespeare, musicals and work for young people.
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.
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).
Richard Anthony Bean is an English playwright.
Ian McDiarmid is a Scottish actor and director of stage and screen, best known for portraying Emperor Palpatine in the Star Wars film series. 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 and a Tony Award for Best Featured Actor in a Play for his stage performances.
The Ian Charleson Awards are theatrical awards that reward the best classical stage performances in Britain by actors under age 30. The awards are named in memory of the renowned British actor Ian Charleson, and are run by the Sunday Times newspaper and the National Theatre. The awards were established in 1990 after Charleson's death, and have been awarded annually since then. Sunday Times theatre critic John Peter (1938–2020) initiated the creation of the awards, particularly in memory of Charleson's extraordinary Hamlet, which he had performed shortly before his death. Recipients receive a cash prize, as do runners-up and third-place winners.
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.