In the early 1950s, after a spell at Guildford Repertoire (1953), he appeared in numerous stage plays and comedies in repertoire at the Oxford Playhouse and the Bristol Old Vic.
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He later went on to work in repertory theatre at the Bristol Old Vic, Guildford and Northampton, before joining the company at Birmingham, where his fellow actors included Derek Jacobi, Rosemary Leach and Albert Finney.
She has taken part in productions of Six Degrees of Separation, Thérèse Raquin, The School for Scandal, Hotel Paradiso, and others in locations as diverse as the Royal Court, Bristol Old Vic, the Nottingham Playhouse, the National Theatre and others.
In 2013, the Festival continued its tradition of presenting important local, national, and international premieres including the US Premiere of a new production of A midsummer night's dream, a collaboration between Bristol Old Vic (England) in association with Handspring Puppet Company (South Africa).
She was no less busy in the 50s, with notable appearances including Lionel Shapiro’s The Bridge for Bristol Old Vic (1952); 13 for Dinner (Duke of York's Theatre, 1953); the world premier of I Capture the Castle, with Virginia McKenna, Bill Travers and a young Roger Moore, which opened at Grand Theatre, Blackpool before transferring to the Aldwych Theatre in 1954; and Robert Morley’s Six Months’ Grace (Phoenix Theatre, 1957).
He received formation at the Théâtre du Soleil (in 1970), at the Teatro da Cornucópia, with professors of the Bristol Old Vic School (in 1981) and, in 1991, at the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, with Polina Klimovitskaia.
Louise Plowright (born 1956 in Cheshire) is a British actress, who trained at the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School where she studied alongside Mark Strong and Cathryn Bradshaw, and first came to prominence playing abrasive hairdresser Julie Cooper in the television soap opera EastEnders from 1989 to 1990.
Other theatre work includes The Biko Inquest at the Riverside Studios with Albert Finney; Manningham in Gaslight at Salisbury Playhouse; Dionysus in The Bacchae at Bristol Old Vic; Banquo in Macbeth and Hortensio in The Taming of the Shrew.
She founded Wild Iris theatre company in 1992, for which she directed theatre productions at the Bristol Old Vic theatre, the Tricycle Theatre, the Bush Theatre and the Battersea Arts Centre.
Her stage career took her from repertory theatre at the Bristol Old Vic and Pitlochry, to West End appearances including Noël Coward's Present Laughter, Mame with Ginger Rogers, An Italian Straw Hat, Anyone For Denis?, and Deathtrap.
Bailey has worked extensively in British theatre, including Chichester, Bristol Old Vic, the West Yorkshire Playhouse, London's West End, the Royal Court, the National Theatre, the Old Vic, the Arts Theatre, Hampstead, the Tricycle Theatre and the company Shared Experience with whom she received a TMA nomination as Best Supporting Performance for her role in Kindertransport (2007).
As a freelance director she directed Shakespeare's As you like it at the Bristol Old Vic, and a devised adaptation of Hansel and Gretel for the Lyric Hammersmith in London.