Philip Wilson Director (Photograph © Brian Morrison)
Philip Wilson - Director
Philip is a freelance director who spent four very successful years as the Artistic Director of Salisbury Playhouse (2007-2011). While he was there, the Playhouse was described as “a regional theatre with all guns blazing”. He won the Regional Theatre Young Director Scheme bursary back in 1995, and in 2015 he was awarded the inaugural David Fraser/Andrea Wonfor Directing for Television Bursary.
Philip’s book, Dramatic Adventures in Rhetoric, co-written with Giles Taylor, is published by Oberon Books, and his adaptations of Philip Pullman’s Grimm Tales are available from Nick Hern Books.
Recent projects include Perfect Nonsense by the Goodale Brothers after PG Wodehouse and Terence Rattigan’s After The Danceat Theatre By The Lake in Keswick, and the British Premiere of Ken Ludwig’s A Fox on the Fairway at Queen’s Theatre Hornchurch. His adaptations of Philip Pullman’s Grimm Tales – originally produced in his own immersive stagings at Shoreditch Town Hall and then the Oxo Bargehouse in 2014 and 2015 – were performed at Chichester last summer, and will be staged at the Unicorn Theatre in London this Christmas.
His other productions include: The Star, The Norman Conquests, Noises Off, Dr Faustus and The Astonished Heart / Still Life(Liverpool Playhouse), As You Like It (Storyhouse, Chester), Beacons (Park Theatre, London), his own adaptations of Philip Pullman’s Grimm Tales (Oxo Tower Bargehouse & Shoreditch Town Hall, London), The Three Lions (St. James Theatre, Pleasance London & Edinburgh and UK Tour); How Many Miles to Babylon? (Lyric Belfast), Toro! Toro! (national tour), Twist of Gold (Polka, London), the books of Ruth and 2 Samuel in Sixty-Six Books (Bush Theatre, London & Westminster Abbey), The Importance of Being Earnest/Travesties (Birmingham Rep), If Love Were All and In Praise Of Love (Minerva, Chichester), The Found Man(Traverse, Edinburgh), Un Uomo Trovato (Teatro della Limonaia, Florence), Ain’t Misbehavin’ (Sheffield Crucible) and Breaking The Code (Theatre Royal, Northampton).
While at Salisbury Playhouse, he directed The Game of Love and Chance, The Constant Wife, The Picture, Private Lives, Arsenic and Old Lace, The Winslow Boy, his own adaptation of JL Carr’s A Month in the Country, What the Butler Saw, People at Sea, Alphabetical Order and Corpse! He also directed and designed Blackbird, Faith Healer and Toro! Toro! (TMA Award nomination, Best Show for Children and Young People).
As Artistic Director of STAGE D’OR Theatre Company, he directed The Humorous Lieutenant (BAC), his own translation of The Queen and the Rebels (Courtyard Theatre, London) and Bloody Poetry (Troubadour Crypt).
Philip also spent two years as a producer for the BBC, and was the Performance Consultant for the film Shakespeare in Love.