The Playwrights Database

• Home

• Playwrights

• Plays
• Characters
• Literary Agents
• Play Publishers
• Theatres
• Gay/Lesbian
• Useful Links
• About Doollee
• Submit Info to Doollee

web doollee.com

JEREMY WELLER

  
Nationality:    English
email:    n/a     Website:    n/a

Literary Agent:    n/a

Jeremy Weller first worked with Tadeusz Kantor as an observer of his Theatre in Warsaw before returning to Edinburgh to found this project. He was a student of philosophy and art at Goldsmith's College prior to directing. His need to create something real led to Theatre plays that Sarah Kane said "made her know what she wanted to do in life". In her autobiography she relates that MAD , the third play of the trilogy produced in the summer of 1992 at the Edinburgh Festival and which I, Charlie Wiseman, helped to audition and rehearse, "changed my life". It is "experiential" and "in yer face", as she calls it. Like the other two plays that preceded her first visit to the Edinburgh Festival, GLAD and BAD (1991)- which involved young offenders from near Edinburgh, all three being awarded Fringe Firsts, in fact and MAD (1992) which involved women who had had nervous breakdowns, they force the audience to sit in a fairly confined space and confront the actors or real people combined so closely physically as well as emotionally that it is not possible for them to escape responding "instinctively". Irving Wardle described Glad as " a Cathy Come Home" for the Nineties" and said if one went to the Festival for on reason the second year when Bad was produced and Glad re-performed " it should be to see these plays". In fact he said that one should see Mad for pretty much the same reasons. Michael Billington "Glad is like a Hogarth print come to life" and Nicholas de Jongh also had great praise. Before Mad even - after Glad and Bad - the GMP ( see website for further info.) was awarded a ' Prudential Nomination'. the male lead from the street in Glad was Terry Rigby, whose obituary by Jean Findlay appeared in the Independent. He was described as the inspiration for a new Theatre. Glad was also invited to Bonn, Berlin, Paris and Dublin and London. the trip to Berlin was filmed as a half-hour documentary for the BBC, with Richard Jobson, then married to MAriella Frostrup directing it. the Paris and Bonn guest productions were supported financially by the British Council and it was also on the BBC World Service. Moscow and New York also beckoned but could not come up with funding. the trips were very stressful for volunteers and professionals working with amateurs but also fulfilling. the Bishop of Edinburgh Richard Holloway has been a Patron from the start and has applauded the ability of the work to provide social rehabilitation for the participants from disadvantaged backgrounds. the Volksbuehne in East Berlin, which was the first place that the play was invited to tour was the Number One Theatre in East Berlin in the Nineteen Seventies; famous from the late Nineteenth Century - 1889 and on into the Twentieth Century as " the first Theatre in Europe to produce Dramas for and about ordinary people" as opposed to being about nobility or royalty. the arrival of GLAD just after the Wall's falling and the start of a new Theatre time when they were trying to re-find their roots after having lost their way in the 1980s as they became increasingly overrun by spies from the Stasi - East German State security - literally spying on each-other marked a turning point. the Theatre invited us to stay for a second week as it was hailed by the press of both the former East and West Germany as " a hit and the best thing on in Berlin"; resulting in us coming back and starting a project involving East and West Berlin homeless people and encouraging people to see the positive aspects of a state that subsidized Theatre and the Arts and sought to give working people a chance to reflect on life and their role in society and in which there was little homelessness if any as basic food and housing and electricity were available. It was a piece that would result in the formation of a company 'the Rats' involving actors from the street that became the best-known social/artistic project for students of social sciences and throughout Europe. In its second year 1993 it was already awarded a progress prize by the German Academy of Arts and was also a reason that the Theatre was shortly after voted "best German stage" in united Germany. A more innovative project would be hard to find after the fall of the wall in United Germany. It would be difficult for Frank Castorf, the dissident who has been artistic director of the Theatre ever since late in 1992 - after GLAD and certainly not before - to have won his reputation for innovative work and to be made "Director of the Year" without this background of innovation. It was voted Theatre of the year again a couple of years later.\ Jeremy Weller actually was awarded Fringe Firsts five years running setting an unbroken record.

Buy Plays with Doollee

Each page of doollee.com has links to play/book outlets, either directly to the Publisher, through Stageplays.com and Amazon to the second hand and 1st editions of AbeBooks. These links will automatically take you to the relevant area obviating the need for further search.
AbeBooks.co.uk   AbeBooks.com   Stageplays.com   amazon.com   amazon.co.uk   amazon.ca

---

whether you are a Playwright who wishes to make their entry definitive, an unlisted Playwright or a User with a tale to tell - we want to hear from you.
download WORD submission template

below is a list of Jeremy Weller's plays - click on a Play Title for more information

        20/52         Bad         Glad         Home - A Philosophy Of Violence         IN THIS LIFE         Mad         Soldiers