Tom Stoppard

Tom Stoppard wrote his first play, Enter a Free Man, whilst working as a journalist in Bristol. He continued as a freelance journalist, at the same time writing radio plays, a novel (Lord Malquist and Mr Moon), and the first of his plays to be staged, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead. His subsequent plays include: The Real Inspector Hound, After Magritte, Jumpers, Travesties, Every Good Boy Deserves Favour (a play for actors and orchestra written with André Previn), Night and Day, The Real Thing, Hapgood, Arcadia, The Invention of Love and The Coast of Utopia.

For Ed Berman’s Company, he wrote Dogg’s Our Pett, Dirty Linen, New-Found Land, Dogg’s Hamlet and Cahoot’s Macbeth. He adapted Tango (Mrozek) for the RSC; Undiscovered Country (Schnitzler), On the Razzle (Nestroy), Rough Crossing (Molnar) and Dalliance (Schnitzler) for the Royal National Theatre. He has also translated Lorca’s House of Bernarda Alba and Vaclav Havel’s Largo Desolato.

His radio plays include: If You’re Glad, I’ll Be Frank, Albert’s Bridge (Italia Prize Winner); M Is For Moon Among Other Things, The Dissolution of Dominic Boot, Where Are They Now?, Artist Descending a Staircase, The Dog It Was that Died and In the Native State and for television he adapted A Walk on the Water (from Enter a Free Man), Three Men in a Boat and The Dog It Was that Died and wrote Another Moon Called Earth, A Separate Peace, Neutral Ground, Teeth and Professional Foul, which won awards from BAFTA and the Broadcasting Press Guild, and Squaring The Circle. He adapted his television dramatisation of Jerome K Jerome’s Three Men in a Boat for BBC Radio.

His Evening Standard award-winning plays are: Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead, Jumpers, Travesties, Night and Day, The Real Thing, Arcadia, The Invention of Love and Rock ‘N’ Roll. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead, Travesties, The Real Thing and The Coast of Utopia have won Tony Awards.

Tom Stoppard has written screenplays for Despair, The Romantic Englishwoman, The Human Factor, Brazil, Empire of the Sun, The Russia House, Billy Bathgate, Poodle Springs (for HBO) and Shakespeare in Love which won him an Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay, a Golden Globe, the Broadcast Film Critics and American Guild Awards for Best Screenplay 1998. He directed and wrote the screenplay for the film of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead, which won the Prix d’Or at the Venice Film Festival 1990 for Best Film. He wrote the screenplay adaptation of Raymond Chandler’s Poodle Springs for HBO.

Arcadia opened in New York in March 1995 and won the 1995 New York Drama Critics’ Circle Award and received a Tony nomination. Earlier in the same year, Indian Ink opened at the Aldwych. It had its American premiere at the American Conservatory Theater, San Francisco. In 1998, the Comédie Française revived their production of Arcadia, which played earlier that year at the Vieux Colombier and transferred it to the Salle Richelieu.
His adaptation of Chekhov’s The Seagull opened at The Old Vic in the spring of 1997 and his play The Invention of Love, directed by Richard Eyre, opened at the RNT Cottesloe Theatre in autumn 1997. It transferred to the RNT Lyttelton in December and transferred to the Theatre Royal Haymarket in November 1998. The Invention of Love won the 1997 Evening Standard Best Play Award. It received its US premiere at the American Conservatory Theater, San Francisco at the beginning of 2000 and opened at the Lyceum Theatre, Broadway in March 2001.

His trilogy The Coast of Utopia – comprising of three plays, Shipwreck, Voyage and Salvage - premiered at the National Theatre in London in June 2002 and then transferred to the Lincoln Center, New York. This production, directed by Jack O’Brien, won seven Tony Awards at the 2007 Tony Awards, including Best Play. His version of Pirandello’s Henry IV opened at the Donmar Warehouse in autumn 2004.

Rock ‘N’ Roll premiered at the Royal Court in summer 2006 (directed by Trevor Nunn), transferred to the Duke of York’s Theatre in the West End and opened on Broadway in November 2007. His adaptation of Chekov’s Ivanov opened at the Donmar Warehouse in September 2008 and in 2009 his version of The Cherry Orchard formed part of The Bridge Project at the Old Vic and BAM.

Tom Stoppard is a CBE and was knighted in 1997.