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14 unusual facts about Royal Court Theatre


Biyi Bandele

As a playwright, Bandele has worked with the Royal Court Theatre, the Royal Shakespeare Company, as well as writing radio drama and screenplays for television.

Edgar Chías

He has written a number of plays including De insomnio y media noche, which was performed at the Royal Court Theatre in London in 2006 under the title On Insomnia and Midnight (English translation by David Johnston).

Francesca Beard

She has had a short play on at the Royal Court Theatre and was one of the fifty "most promising new writers in Britain" currently on attachment to the Royal Court and the BBC.

Keith Johnstone

In the late 1950s, as a play-reader, director and drama teacher at the Royal Court Theatre in London, he chose to reverse all that his teachers had told him in an attempt to create more spontaneous actors.

Lizzy Dijeh

She is a former member of the Royal Court Young Writer's Programme and its Invitation Group.

Mabel Capper

In October 1912, her play The Betrothal of Number 13 was produced at the Royal Court Theatre.

Michael McClure

In 1968, actor Rip Torn directed a notable production at The Royal Court Theatre and it has most recently been revived at a smaller venue, the Old Red Lion Theatre in 2006 under the direction of Nic Saunders with new music by Terry Riley.

Nick Grosso

In 1993 Grosso's monologue Mama Don't was produced by the Royal Court Young People's Theatre and put on at the Commonwealth Institute, London.

Presnyakov brothers

Playing the Victim wasfirst staged at the Traverse Theater as part of the Edinburgh Fringe Festival (co- produced with the Royal Court Theatre) and Told by an Idiot in 2003.

The Ritual Slaughter of Gorge Mastromas

It premiered at the Royal Court Theatre from 5 September to 19 October 2013, in a production directed by Vicky Featherstone, starring Tom Brooke in the title role and with a cast also including Pippa Haywood, Joshua James, Kate O'Flynn, Alan Williams, Jonathan McGuiness and Aaron Monaghan.

Vassily Sigarev

His plays Plasticine, Black Milk and Ladybird were first produced in the West by the Royal Court Theatre, in 2002, 2003 and 2004, respectively.

Violet Vanbrugh

In 1889 she joined the Kendals at the Royal Court Theatre and on tour in the U.S. Two years later, back in London, she joined Henry Irving and Ellen Terry in their famous Shakespeare company at the Lyceum Theatre.

In 1889 she joined the Kendals at the Royal Court Theatre as Lady Gillingham in The Weaker Sex, and at the end of the year travelled with them to the U.S., where she played Lady Ingram in the comedy A Scrap of Paper and in dramas such as The Iron Master, Impulse and A White Lie and comedies such The Weaker Sex.

Zoë Dominic

Dominic's work as a theatre photographer began in the Royal Court Theatre around 1957, and she became known for photographing the postwar British theatre revival, including actors Laurence Olivier, Joan Plowright and Maggie Smith and performers Maria Callas, Margot Fonteyn and Rudolf Nureyev.


Alison Newman

Newman has extensive theatre experience, including Loveplay by Moira Buffini; Luminosity by Nick Stafford; Night of the Soul by David Farr and The Big Lie by Anthony Neilson, all for the RSC, as well as The Censor and The Lying Kind, both by Anthony Neilson, for the Royal Court Theatre, London.

Catherine Steadman

On stage she played Izzy in the original production of Polly Stenham's play That Face at the Royal Court Theatre for which she was praised by critics.

Daniel Kaluuya

In 2010 Kaluuya played the lead role in Roy Williams' Sucker Punch at the Royal Court Theatre in London for which both the play and Kaluuya won rave reviews and he won both the Evening Standard Award and Critics' Circle Theatre Award for Outstanding Newcomer.

David Tinker

It was subsequently adapted into a stage play called Falkland Sound by Louise Page which was first performed at the Royal Court Theatre in 1983.

Deborah Norton

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.

Dina Richardson

Richardson continued her studies of music and drama at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts, the Lee Strasberg Theatre and Film Institute and the Royal Court Theatre Young People's Theatre in London.

Encore Theatre Magazine

It was not an ideologically-driven magazine; it was not consistent; it admired the Royal Court, Theatre Workshop, Ionesco, Arden, and Tynan, and it often attacked all of these.

Femi Euba

A Lagosian by birth, he studied acting at the Rose Bruford College of Speech and Drama, earning a diploma in 1965, after which he appeared in many shows on the London Stage, including the Royal Court Theatre production of Wole Soyinka's The Lion and the Jewel, and Shakespeare's Macbeth, with the late Sir Alec Guinness as Macbeth and the late Simone Signoret as Lady Macbeth.

Gregory Motton

Gregory Motton's first two plays went on in quick succession: Chicken (directed by Kate Harwood) at the Riverside Studios in April 1987, and then Ambulance (directed by Lindsay Posner) at the Royal Court in September 1987.

Harry Hepple

He has appeared on stage in theatres across the UK including the Young Vic, Live Theatre Newcastle, the Traverse Theatre, the Royal National Theatre, the Bush and the Royal Court Theatre.

Jo Joyner

She also played a male role in Brendan Behan's play The Hostage and appeared in The One With the Oven, at the Royal Court Theatre.

Marion Bailey

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).

Marion Terry

The same year, she starred with Lottie Venne and Johnston Forbes-Robertson in G. W. Godfrey's comedy The Parvenu at the Court Theatre.

My Mother Said I Never Should

A revised edition premiered at the Royal Court Theatre on 23 February 1989 and in a recent revival premiered on 29 September 2009 at the Watford Palace Theatre.

Pluto Press

New departures in publishing included working with Max Stafford-Clark and the Royal Court Theatre to encourage theatre-goers to read play scripts by printing programmes that included the entire play.

Polly Stenham

In 2013 her third play No Quarter was staged at the Royal Court, directed by Jeremy Herrin and starring Tom Sturridge.

Her second play, Tusk Tusk premiered in the downstairs teatre at the Royal Court in March 2009 directed by Jeremy Herrin.

Rudolph Walker

On the stage, he appeared in the first production of Mustapha Matura's Play Mas at the Royal Court Theatre in 1974, and has played the titular character in stage productions of Shakespeare's Othello, directed by David Thacker and Charles Marowitz, and also Caliban in a production of The Tempest directed by Jonathan Miller.

Sizwe Banzi Is Dead

In 1972, Fugard directed the play's world premiere in Cape Town, followed the next year by a staging at London's Royal Court Theatre which transferred to the Ambassadors, with Kani as Styles and Buntu and Ntshona as Robert/Sizwe.

St. John Emile Clavering Hankin

Hankin's admiration of the work of George Bernard Shaw led him to associate himself with the Stage Society and the Royal Court Theatre.

Stephanie Leonidas

Her theatrical roles have included Adela in a production of Lorca's The House of Bernarda Alba at Coventry's Belgrade Theatre, and Dani in The Sugar Syndrome, staged at the Royal Court Theatre Upstairs, London, in 2003.

Stephen Fewell

He has also appeared in classical theatre, in various Doctor Who audio productions, an episode of the 2005 Channel 4 drama The Courtroom, Headlong Theatre's production of Paradise Lost at the Hackney Empire and in the musical play ENRON at the Royal Court and in the West End.

The Bentley London

It is located at 27-33 Harrington Gardens in south Kensington, lying between Cromwell Road to the north and Brompton Road to the south in close proximity to some of London's major museums including the Natural History Museum, Victoria and Albert Museum and other sites of note such as the Royal Albert Hall, Sloane Square and the Royal Court Theatre, and the boutiques of Knightsbridge such as Harrods and Harvey Nichols.

Tsegaye Gabre-Medhin

In 1960 he travelled to Europe to study experimental drama at the Royal Court Theatre in London and the Comédie-Française in Paris.

Wearing My Rolex

An a cappella version of "Wearing My Rolex", performed by the main cast, featured in the original Royal Court Theatre production of Laura Wade's stage play Posh (2010).

West Yorkshire Playhouse

A typical recent season (Autumn-Winter 2007) included: Casanova by Carol Ann Duffy and Told By An Idiot, with Lyric Hammersmith; a stage adaptation of Don Quixote; Brief Encounter with Kneehigh Theatre and Birmingham Repertory Theatre; Rough Crossings adapted by Caryl Phillips from Simon Schama's book; Salonika, first performed at the Royal Court Theatre in 1982.

William Gaskill

He was the artistic director of the Royal Court Theatre between 1965 and 1972, where he directed premieres of plays by writers including David Hare, John Arden, Edward Bond and Arnold Wesker, as well as introducing many of Bertolt Brecht's works to British audiences.

Women Beware Women

A modern adaptation by Howard Barker at the Royal Court Theatre in 1986, in which the first two-thirds of Middleton's play were preserved but the ending was entirely revamped; among other changes, Sordido rapes Bianca before her wedding.