Peter Gill (playwright)

Peter Gill (born 7 September 1939) is a Welsh theatre director, playwright and actor. He was born in Cardiff to George John and Margaret Mary (née Browne) Gill, and educated at St Illtyd's College, Cardiff.

An actor from 1957–65, he directed his first production without décor, at the Royal Court Theatre in August 1965, A Collier's Friday Night by D. H. Lawrence. Having begun his career as an actor, he is now best known for his work as a director and playwright.

In 1964 he became Assistant Director at the Royal Court and Associate Director in 1970, best known there as the director of three hitherto under-rated plays by D. H. Lawrence, presented as a group in 1968. In 1969 the Royal Court also presented two of his own first plays, The Sleepers' Den and Over Gardens Out, "which revealed that Gill could evoke with economy of means and lyrical skill the circumstances of his Cardiff boyhood."

Gill was appointed artistic director of the Riverside Studios in 1976, and on 30 May 1976, his Nottingham/Edinburgh production of As You Like It (starring Jane Lapotaire as Rosalind, John Price as Orlando and Zoë Wanamaker as Celia, with a stage design by William Dudley) marked the official opening of the Hammersmith arts centre, formerly a film and television studio. His first Riverside production was a staging of his own version of Chekhov's The Cherry Orchard, which opened to press acclaim on 12 January 1978 (starring Judy Parfitt as Ranevskaya and Julie Covington as Varya, again with a setting designed by William Dudley).

Writing for The Sunday Times, theatre critic Bernard Levin said:

...
Wikipedia