Simon Corble

Simon Corble is an English playwright, director and performer. He is the great nephew of Archibald Corble, the British fencer. He grew up in rural Oxfordshire, the son of a country vicar.[1] The family moved north in 1974, and at the age of sixteen he played Hamlet at Lymm Grammar School, Cheshire and "never looked back". After training as an actor at Manchester Polytechnic (now Manchester Metropolitan University) he went on to create his own dramatic works. He has explored the potential of site-specific theatre in both his own works and those of others. On his website he writes that his strengths lie in "comedy, site-specific and promenade theatre, audio work, directing Shakespeare, and in creating unique theatrical experiences".[2]

Simon Corble
Corble receiving the Manchester Evening News award 1997 for his 1997 season with Midsommer Actor
NationalityBritish
Notable worksThe 39 Steps (play)

Writing

According to Tony Craze and Katie Brannigan, Corble writes "in obeyance of the unities of time and space - applying realistic and parallel scales between worlds of performance and real environment (short promenades for short distances traveled in a fictional world, careful allotment of time at each stationary point). Temporal and spatial settings for his work were seen to be of paramount importance. For The Woodlanders, this writer's research included close study of the North of England countryside, until focusing on a site with the largest, most remote wooded area, accessible only by a mile and a half trek."[3]

Midsommer Actors' Company

Corble was the founder and artistic director of the Midsommer Actors' Company (1990–1999) which created open air site-specific theatre with the emphasis on the actor's performance.[4] It moved indoors in 1997 to stage The 39 Steps, a play Corble co-wrote with Nobby Dimon[5] which, proved to have a long life in theatres all over the world, with runs in London's West End and in Broadway. The adaptation, written for a cast of four actors and funded by a £1,000 Yorkshire Arts Grant, premiered in 1995 before an audience of 90 people at the Georgian Theatre Royal in Richmond, North Yorkshire, before embarking on a tour of village halls across the north of England.[6]

Found Theatre

He created Found Theatre in 2005, with the aim of telling powerful stories through simple means.[7]

Playscripts
  • The Woodlanders, 1991
  • Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, 1992 (a dramatisation of the 14th century Arthurian romance); it was originally written for The Midsommer Actors' Company in 1992 and played in eight outdoor venues.;[8] Corble later substantially revised the play, which was produced indoors by Cardboard Menagerie at the O'Reilly Theatre, Oxford in February 2014.[9]
  • The Wonderland Adventures of Alice
  • The Fisherman and his Soul, 1995-2007[10]
  • The 39 Steps, 1996
  • Dracula, 1998
  • The Hound of the Baskervilles[1]
  • The Signalman, 2008[11]
  • Operation Mincemeat, 2008 (based on the successful British deception plan of the same name in the Second World War)[12]
  • Sward! - The Story of a Meadow, 2010[13]

Notes
  1. Corble, Simon (2012). The Hound of The Baskervilles: A Sherlock Holmes Play. MX Publishing. ISBN 978-1780922768.
  2. Simon Corble's website
  3. Tony Craze and Katie Brannigan, Writing for Moving Theatre Archived 19 December 2007 at the Wayback Machine, 1998. Retrieved 7 July 2009.
  4. See Midsommer Actors' Company archive photos on flickr.com
  5. "Midsommer move indoors but don't lower their sights", Northwich Guardian, 23 November 1997. Retrieved 26 April 2009.
  6. Johnson, Andrew (15 June 2008). "Thirty-nine steps to an unlikely theatrical triumph". The Independent. Retrieved 1 May 2013.
  7. Archive photos on flickr.com
  8. Turner, Francesca (7 July 1992). "Gawayne and the Green Knight". The Guardian.
  9. Nirula, Srishti (16 February 2014). "Sir Gawain pulls our strings". The Oxford Student. Retrieved 17 February 2014.
    - Hopkins, Andrea (15 February 2014). "Sir Gawain And The Green Knight". Daily Info, Oxford. Retrieved 18 February 2014.
  10. Staged after rehearsals on the Greek island of Ikaria; see "The Fisherman and his Soul", The Stage, 13 October 2005. Retrieved 6 July 2009.
  11. "A Dickensian tale", on tour in small-scale venues in autumn 2009, according to Simon Corble's website.
  12. Premiered at the 2010 Adelaide Fringe Festival, performed by the Adelaide University Fringe Club to critical acclaim. See: Adelaide Theatre Guide Operation Mincemeat. Retrieved 27 February 2010.
  13. Blaize website description Archived 9 May 2010 at the Wayback Machine
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