David Edgar (playwright)
| David Edgar | |
|---|---|
| Born |
26 February 1948 Birmingham, England |
| Occupation | Playwright |
| Nationality | British |
David Edgar (born 26 February 1948) is a British playwright and writer who has had more than sixty of his plays published and performed on stage, radio and television around the world, making him one of the most prolific dramatists of the post-1960s generation in Great Britain. He was resident playwright at the Birmingham Repertory Theatre in 1974-5 and has been a board member with them since 1985. Awarded a Fellow in Creative Writing at Leeds Polytechnic, he was made a Bicentennial Arts Fellow (US) (1978–79).
Edgar has enjoyed a long-term association with the Royal Shakespeare Company since 1976, beginning with his play Destiny; he was the company's literary consultant (1984–88), and became an honorary associate artist of the company in 1989. His plays have been directed by former artistic directors of both of the largest British subsidised companies, Trevor Nunn for the RSC and Peter Hall for the National Theatre.
His works have been performed in Ireland, throughout western and eastern Europe, America and as far afield as Australia, New Zealand, Canada and Japan. He is also the author of The Second Time as Farce: Reflections on the Drama of Mean Times (1988) and editor of The State of Play (2000), a book by playwrights on the art of play writing. He had his first operatic libretto The Bridge, performed as part of the Covent Garden Festival in 1998. He is president of the Writers Guild of Great Britain, and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.
He founded the University of Birmingham's MA in Playwriting Studies programme in 1989 and was its director until 1999. He was appointed Professor of Playwriting Studies in 1995.
Edgar was born in Birmingham, England, into the fourth generation of a theatrical family. His maternal grandmother was the character actress Isabel Thornton who had made films in the 1930s, including Laugh with Me (1938); his maternal aunt Nancy Burman ran the Birmingham Repertory Theatre throughout the 1960s and '70s, and his mother Joan (née Burman) was an actress and BBC Overseas Service radio announcer during World War II. His father, Barrie Edgar (1919–2012), was an actor and stage manager at the Birmingham Rep before joining the BBC in 1946, soon working as a television producer, whose credits included Come Dancing and Songs of Praise. Barrie Edgar's father, and David Edgar's grandfather, was the early broadcaster Percy Edgar who had been the founding manager of 5IT – the first BBC radio station to open outside London – and the first regional Director of the BBC Midland Region.
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