Simon Corble is an English

playwright A playwright or dramatist is a person who writes plays. Etymology The word "play" is from Middle English pleye, from Old English plæġ, pleġa, plæġa ("play, exercise; sport, game; drama, applause"). The word "wright" is an archaic English ...

, director and performer. He is the great nephew of

Archibald Corble Archibald Corble (26 May 1883 – 22 January 1944) was a British fencer. His weapon was the sabre. He competed at three Olympic Games - 1912, 1924 and 1928. He was twice British Sabre Champion at the British Fencing Championships, in 1922 an ...

, the British fencer. He grew up in rural Oxfordshire, the son of a country vicar. 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".

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 a close study of the North of England countryside, focusing on a site with the largest, most remote wooded area, accessible only by a mile and a half trek."

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 an emphasis on the actor's performance. It moved indoors in 1997 to stage '' The 39 Steps'', a play Corble co-wrote with Nobby Dimon which, proved to have a long life in theatres all over the world, with runs in London's

West End West End most commonly refers to: * West End of London, an area of central London, England * West End theatre, a popular term for mainstream professional theatre staged in the large theatres of London, England West End may also refer to: Pl ...

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 The Georgian Theatre Royal is a theatre and historic Georgian playhouse in the market town of Richmond, North Yorkshire, England. It is among the oldest of Britain's extant theatres. It was built in 1788 by the actor-manager Samuel Butler (1 ...

in Richmond, North Yorkshire, before embarking on a tour of village halls across the north of England.

Found Theatre

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

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.; Corble later substantially revised the play, which was produced indoors by Cardboard Menagerie at the O'Reilly Theatre, Oxford in February 2014. *''The Wonderland Adventures of Alice'' *''The Fisherman and his Soul'', 1995-2007 *'' The 39 Steps'', 1996 *''

Dracula ''Dracula'' is a novel by Bram Stoker, published in 1897. As an epistolary novel, the narrative is related through letters, diary entries, and newspaper articles. It has no single protagonist, but opens with solicitor Jonathan Harker taking ...

'', 1998 *'' The Hound of the Baskervilles'' *''The Signalman'', 2008 *''Operation Mincemeat'', 2008 (based on the successful British deception plan of the same name in the Second World War) *''Sward! – The Story of a Meadow'', 2010Blaize website description

Notes

External links

Found Theatre website

Simon Corble's website
{{DEFAULTSORT:Corble, Simon English dramatists and playwrights English male stage actors English theatre directors Living people Year of birth missing (living people) Alumni of Manchester Metropolitan University English male dramatists and playwrights