Artist Bio

(Bio as of May 2009)

Tom Stoppard wrote his first play, Enter a Free Man, while working as a journalist in Bristol. He continued as a freelance journalist, at the same time writing radio plays, a novel (Lord Malquist and Mr. Moon) and the first of his plays to be staged, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead. His subsequent plays include The Real Inspector Hound, After Magritte, Jumpers, Travesties, Every Good Boy Deserves Favour (a play for actors and orchestra written with Andre Previn), Night and Day, The Real Thing, Hapgood, Arcadia, The Invention of Love and The Coast of Utopia. For Ed Berman’s Company, he wrote Dogg’s Our Pett, Dirty Linen and New-Found-Land, Dogg’s Hamlet and Cahoot’s Macbeth. He adapted Tango (Mrozek) for the Royal Shakespeare Company and Undiscovered Country (Schnitzler), On the Razzle (Nestroy), Rough Crossing (Molnar) and Dalliance (Schnitzler) for the Royal National Theatre. He has also translated Lorca’s House of Bernarda Alba and Václav Havel’s Largo Desolato. His radio plays include If You’re Glad, I’ll Be Frank; Albert’s Bridge (Italia Prize Winner); M is For Moon Among Other Things; The Dissolution of Dominic Boot; Where are They Now?; Artist Descending a Staircase; The Dog it was That Died; and In the Native State. For television he adapted A Walk on the Water (from Enter a Free Man), Three Men in a Boat and The Dog it was That Died and wrote Another Moon Called Earth, A Separate Peace, Neutral Ground, Teeth, Professional Foul (which won awards from BAFTA and the Broadcasting Press Guild) and Squaring the Circle. He adapted his television dramatization of Jerome K. Jerome’s Three Men in a Boat for BBC Radio. Over the years quite a few of these radio plays have been adapted and performed on stage, most notably Albert’s Bridge and Artist Descending a Staircase. His Standard Award-winning plays are Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead, Jumpers, Travesties, Night and Day, The Real Thing, Arcadia and The Invention of Love. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead, Travesties and The Real Thing have also won Tony Awards. Tom Stoppard has written screenplays for Despair, The Romantic Englishwoman, The Human Factor, Brazil, Empire of the Sun, The Russia House, Billy Bathgate and Shakespeare in Love. He directed and wrote the screenplay for the film of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead which won the Prix d’Or at the Venice Film Festival 1990 for Best Film. Arcadia opened in New York in March 1995 to much acclaim, won the 1995 New York Drama Critics’ Circle Award and was nominated for a Tony Award. Earlier in the same year India Ink opened at the Aldwych where it ran until the beginning 1996. It had its American premiere at the American Conservatory Theater, San Francisco. In 1998 the Comedie Francaise revived their production of Arcadia which played earlier that year at the Vieux Colombier and transferred it to the Salle Richelieu. Tom Stoppard’s new adaptation of Chekhov’s The Seagull opened at the Old Vic in the spring of 1997 where it played in rep and his play The Invention of Love, directed by Richard Eyre, opened at the RNT Cottesloe Theatre in autumn 1997. It transferred to the RNT Lyttelton on December 20, 1997, and then to the Theatre Royal Haymarket on November 3, 1998. The Invention of Love won the 1997 Evening Standard Best Play Award. It received its U.S. premiere at the American Conservatory Theatre, San Francisco, at the beginning of 2000 and opened at the Lyceum Theatre on Broadway on March 29, 2001. He wrote the screenplay adaptation of Raymond Chandler’s Poodle Springs for HBO and Shakespeare in Love for Universal which won him an Academy Award for best original screenplay, a Golden Globe, the Broadcast Film Critics and American Guild Awards for Best Screenplay 1998. The Donmar Warehouse revived The Real Thing to huge acclaim in 1999. Their production transferred to the West End in January 2000 and opened on Broadway in April 2000. The production won three Tony Awards including Best Revival. His play The Coast of Utopia, comprised of three plays—Shipwreck, Voyage and Salvage—premiered at the National Theatre in London in June 2002 and all three plays have just had a triumphant run at the Lincoln Center, New York. This production, directed by Jack O’Brien, won a record-breaking seven Tony Awards at the 2007 Tony Awards, including Best Play. His version of Pirandello’s Henry IV opened at the Donmar Warehouse in Autumn 2004 and his brand new play, Rock ’n’ Roll, premiered at the Royal Court in 2006 in a production directed by Trevor Nunn, transferred to the Duke of York’s Theatre in the West End and opened at Bernard B. Jacobs Theatre on Broadway in October 2007. He has more recently adapted a couple of Chekhov plays: Ivanov for the Donamar season at the Wyndham Theatre, which was directed by Michael Grandage and which opened in 2008, and The Cherry Orchard for BAM/ Neal Street Productions which was directed by Sam Mendes and opened in New York in 2009. Tom Stoppard is a CBE and was knighted in 1997. He was honored by the French Government in 1997 when he was made an Officier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres.

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