Caspar Wrede
| Casper Wrede | |
|---|---|
| Born |
Casper Gustav Kenneth Wrede 8 February 1929 Viipuri, Finland |
| Died | 25 September 1998 (aged 69) Helsinki, Finland |
| Occupation | Theatre and Film director |
| Years active | 1951–1993 |
| Spouse(s) |
Dilys Hamlett 1 (1951–1976) (one son) Karin Bang (1982–1998) (two daughters) |
Baron Caspar Wrede af Elimä (or Casper Wrede) (8 February 1929 in Viipuri, Finland – 25 September 1998 in Helsinki, Finland) was a Finnish theatre and film director.
Casper Wrede came from a noble Finnish family of German origin, which owned large estates mainly in eastern Finland between the 17th and 19th centuries, and had been created barons in 1652 by Queen Christina.
In 1951 he left Finland and enrolled at the Old Vic Theatre School in London run by the French director Michel Saint-Denis. He was much influenced by Saint-Denis and his ideas had a great effect on the theatre companies that Wrede helped establish. In 1956 he was involved with the setting up of the Piccolo Theatre company in Chorlton-cum-Hardy, Manchester (which only survived for a year) and in 1959 he founded the 59 Theatre Company, based at the Lyric Theatre (Hammersmith). Michael Elliott was appointed assistant artistic director and, although short-lived, the company achieved considerable success with productions of Brand, Little Eyolf and Danton's Death. During this time Wrede also directed both the stage debut of Alun Owen's play The Rough and Ready Lot and its 1959 television adaptation. Wrede and Elliott went on to run a season of plays at the Old Vic in 1961.
At the same time as his theatre work in the fifties, he directed a number of plays for television including episodes of ITV Television Playhouse and ITV Play of the Week. He also started to direct films which he continued to do through the sixties, including a screen version of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich with Tom Courtenay.
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