Sebastian Doggart

Sebastian Doggart is an English-American television producer, director, writer, journalist, translator, cinematographer and human rights activist.

Education

Doggart was educated at Montessori-style primary schools; Haverford School; Horris Hill School; Eton College, where he won an Oppidan Scholarship and the Queen's Prize for French; and King's College, Cambridge, where he obtained the top First class degree in Social and Political Sciences, and an MA, and was elected a Scholar. In 1984 he became the last student in Eton's history to receive corporal punishment.

Early writing career

Doggart began his career as a journalist in Latin America, working as a reporter on the ''Lima Times'' during two years he took off before going to Cambridge. Within three months on the job, he was promoted to co-Editor of the newspaper. At 19, he was the youngest editor the paper had had. In 1990, he moved to Argentina, where he became Finance and Economics Editor for the ''Buenos Aires Herald'', chronicling an extraordinary period of hyperinflation, wholescale privatizations, and deregulation under President Carlos Menem's neo-liberal government.

Doggart parleyed his journalism work into a book, ''Investment Opportunities in Argentina'', which had a foreword by Menem himself. Published in 1990, a month after he went to Cambridge, Doggart's own tutor, David Lehmann, reviewed the book in ''Professional Investor'': "As the first optimistic economic report on Argentina to have been produced for some 20 years, this study acts as a clear indicator of the international business community's growing interest in the region."

Theatre career

After leaving Cambridge, Doggart trained as a drama director at Central School of Speech and Drama. His production of ''Ms Lear''which radically re-interpreted King Lear as a neo-Thatcherite womanperformed at theatres in London and Amsterdam. On graduating, he directed productions for eminent British companies Cheek by Jowl (world tour of ''The Duchess of Malfi''); Actors Touring Company (''Ion'' by Euripides); Theatre Museum Covent Garden (''Playing with Fire'' by August Strindberg) and Creation Theatre Company ('' Romeo and Juliet'', which Doggart set in 18th century Ireland, with English Capulets and Irish Montagues).

Doggart established himself as the leading translator/director of Latin American plays on the British stage. His production of ''Mistress of Desires'', on which he collaborated directly with Nobel Laureate Mario Vargas Llosa, premiered in 1993. He worked directly with Carlos Fuentes on the British premiere of ''Orchids in the Moonlight'', a dream play about the love between two Mexican actresses exiled in Hollywood's maze of mirrors. Doggart rehearsed the play in Cuba and opened in the Teatro Nacional, Havana. The production went on to perform at the Edinburgh Festival. According to ''Scotland on Sunday'', the production was "rich in language and movement, fantasy and reality, sensuality and cruelty; as iconoclastic as the magic realist boom of the 1960s." In 1994, Doggart translated and directed ''Night of the Assassins'', by the Cuban author Jose Triana, staging it at the Technis theatre in London and at the Edinburgh Festival. According to ''The Scotsman'': "Brilliant, at times almost unbearable to watch, the British premiere of this award-winning Cuban play is utterly compelling... The atmosphere of oppression is almost tangible as the audience feel themselves entangled in the hysteria and power games of three siblings enacting or re-enacting the murder of their parents." In 1996, Doggart translated and directed a double bill of plays at The Gate theatre: ''Saying Yes'', by Griselda Gambaro and ''Rappaccini's Daughter'', by Nobel Laureate Octavio Paz, with whom he collaborated on the translation. Sarah Alexander played the leading role of Beatrice. That same translation has been staged internationally, including a production by the Santa Fe Playhouse in July 2006. Doggart has since translated the only plays of two other leading Latin American writers: ''Diatribe of Love against a sitting man'', by Gabriel García Márquez, and ''The Kings'' by Julio Cortázar.

In 1998, Doggart produced Northern Stage's 'Lorca Fiesta', a major festival in Newcastle upon Tyne to celebrate the centenary of the birth of Spanish poet Federico García Lorca. The event included an academic conference of international scholars and translators of Lorca and a dramatization of Lorca's ''Poet in New York'', which Doggart adapted and directed. He was also producer and dramaturg for ''The Moon Comes Out, Federico'', a collaboration between Northern Stage and the Seville-based company Octubre Danza, which fused story-telling, contemporary dance and live ''cante jondo'' to enact Lorca's long poem "Lament to Ignacio Sanchez Mejias".

In 2000, Doggart co-founded the Gaia Arts Center in Havana, Cuba, dedicated to providing theater practitioners with a safe and inspiring place in which to create. In 2007, Doggart devised and co-directed the live performance piece, ''Balance of Ice'', which combined three elements: a piece of music by Canadian composer Andrew Staniland that was inspired by the sounds of ice sheets calving; a dance performance by acclaimed Cuban ballerina Viengsay Valdes that fragmented her usual balletic virtuosity; and edited moving images of the polar ice caps and the threats facing them.

Between 2007–2008, Doggart translated and directed ''Cocinando con Elvis'', a Spanish version of Lee Hall's play ''Cooking with Elvis'', about food, sex, happiness, and Elvis Presley. The production opened at the Teatro Nacional in Havana, and was the first premiere of a British play in Cuba since ''An Inspector Calls'' opened in 1947.

Television career

In 1999, Doggart branched into television production, where he produced and/or directed for the BBC
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