“Supple has become the leading storyteller in British theatre …” Financial Times
Tim Supple's love of dramatic story-telling began at an early age in his home in Sussex. This passion developed into a professional reputation for adapting plays, books, stories and poems into highly visual, musical and imaginative theatrical events. A characteristic critique of his work is the description in the Telegraph of Supple’s 2007 revival of Shakespeare’s A Midsumer Night’s Dream: "... for theatrical excitement and fresh insight, this vivid Indian Dream … strikes me as being in a class of its own. There is a constant feeling of Shakespeare being minted anew, of a company of superbly committed, versatile and highly individual performers getting straight to the heart of the play without having to plough through accreted layers of tradition. Everything seems fresh, spontaneous and positively throbbing with sensuality."
As an assistant director, Supple began working at York’s Theatre Royal and went on to direct works by Arthur Miller, Brechr and Kreutz. Between 1988 and 1991, Tim Supple directed at the Crucible Theatre, Sheffield where he co-adapted and directed Billy Budd, and the Haymarket, Leicester on Oh, what a lovely war! and Guys and Dolls. For Kenneth Branagh’s Renaissance Theatre Company, Supple directed Coriolanus at the Chichester Festival Theatre with Branagh and Dame Judi Dench.
Supple made his debut for the National Theatre in 1988 where he directed David Holman’s Whale in the Lyttleton theatre. He subsequently co-adapted and directed Dario Fo’s Accidental Death of an Anarchist (1990), Billy Liar (1992) and Salman Rushdie’s Haroun and the Sea of Stories in the Cottesloe Theatre (1998). In the Olivier theatre he directed The Villains’ Opera, a new version of The Beggars Opera with music by Stephen Warbeck, and Romeo and Juliet (2000).
For the Royal Shakespeare Company, Supple has directed a production of Wedekind's Spring Awakening translated by Ted Hughes (1995), the Comedy of Errors (1997), a co-adaptation of Hughes' translation of Tales from Ovid (1999), a reworking of Goldoni's A Servant to two Masters by Lee Hall which toured internationally and transferred to the West End (2000), and also a co-adaptation with Salman Rushdie of Midnight’s Children which attracted enormous attention, toured, and transferred to Harlem's Apollo Theatre in New York in 2003.
From 1993 to 2000, Supple was Artistic Director of London’s Young Vic and established a reputation for the re-working and adaptation of classic works. He enjoyed a string of successes: Oedipus, The Slab Boy’s Trilogy, Grimm Tales, which toured abroad and appeared on Broadway, Jungle Book, the Ted Hughes translation of Lorca’s Blood Wedding, Twelfth Night, and a co-adaptation of As I lay Dying by William Faulkner.
Much of Supple’s work has toured nationally and internationally. In Europe, Supple has directed Les Miserables in Tel Aviv (1999), Much Ado about Nothing at the Maxim Gorky Theatre in Berlin (2000), and two works for the National Theatre of Norway: Ostrovsky’s Diary of a Scoundrel (2001) and Tales from Europe (2002).
Tim Supple’s exploration of opera began with a production of Hansel and Gretel for Opera North and he returned in 2003 to direct their new production of Mozart’s Magic Flute (revived 2007). The Linbury Theatre at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden invited Supple to direct Babette's Feast by John Browne, the revival of which he directed in December 2004.
Supple’s work on film includes the widely praised Channel Four production of Twelfth Night.
Supple’s most recent theatre production was A Midsummer Night’s Dream for his own company, Dash Arts, commissioned by the British Council in 2006 and cast and directed in India. The production played a four week tour of India and Sri Lanka and then in Stratford as part of the Royal Shakespeare Company's Complete Works Festival as well as in Verona’s Festival Shakespeariano in June 2006. In 2007 the Dream played a six-week sell-out season at London’s Roundhouse before returning to Stratford for a four week season and then embarking on a 10 week tour of the UK. In 2008 the production returned to India and went on tour to Australia, the US and Canada. The Guardian wrote in 2006: “What was highly impressive in India is sensational in Stratford: in its strangeness, sexuality and communal joy this is the most life-enhancing production of Shakespeare's play since Peter Brooks’s.”
Tim Supple is represented by Jessica Ford at Intermusica, jford@intermusica.co.uk.
August 2008 / 704 words. Not to be altered without permission. Please destroy all previous biographical material.