David Jones (director)

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David Hugh Jones, a British stage and television director, was born in Poole, Dorset, on 19 February 1934, son of John David Jones and his wife Gwendolen Agnes Langworthy (Ricketts).

He was educated at Taunton School and Christ's College, Cambridge. He is married to British actress Sheila Allen (b. 1932).

Contents

[edit] Career

Formerly a television director, David Jones first worked for BBC producer Huw Wheldon directing programmes in the Monitor arts television series, from 1958 to 1964. His first London stage production was a triple-bill of T. S. Eliot’s Sweeney Agonistes, W. B. Yeats’s Purgatory and Samuel Beckett’s Krapp's Last Tape at the Mermaid Theatre in 1961.

He directed his first production for the Royal Shakespeare Company at the Arts Theatre in 1962, Boris Vian’s The Empire Builder, and two years later accepted the administrative post of RSC Artistic Controller, helping to plan programmes of new plays and European classics at the Aldwych Theatre in London. He also took over responsiblity for running the Aldwych from 1969 to 1972, and again in 1975-77. During this period he championed the plays of David Mercer and Maxim Gorky.

For BBC television he directed Ice Age, The Beaux Stratagem and Langrishe, Go Down in 1978. He also produced Play of the Month, 1977-79.

He left the Royal Shakespeare Company in 1979, taking up an appointment as an artistic director at the Brooklyn Academy of Music and to found a resident theatre company modelled on the RSC.[1]

After teaching at the Yale School of Drama in 1981, he returned to England where he directed The Merry Wives of Windsor in 1982, and Pericles, Prince of Tyre in 1984, as part of a Shakespeare series for BBC television, as well as making his debut as a feature film director with Betrayal in 1983.[2]

He was made an honorary Associate of the RSC in 1991. Since 2005 he has often directed at the Williamstown Theatre Festival, Massachusetts [1]

[edit] Theatre

His theatre directing credits include:

[edit] Films

[edit] Television

Produced and presented the BBC arts magazine Monitor 1958-1964 and Review 1971-1972. Also produced Kean (Jean-Paul Sartre, 1954) for BBC television (starring Anthony Hopkins and directed by James Cellan Jones) 1978.

Directed the following productions:

Also various episodes of:

[edit] References

  1. ^ Sally Beauman's history of the RSC, p. 344.
  2. ^ The Macmillan International Film Encyclopedia, Ephraim Katz, Macmillan (1994). ISBN 0333616014.

[edit] External links