Director's Biography

Benjamin Twist - Director

Benjamin Twist co-founded and directed the award winning Scottish theatre company The Merry Mac Fun Co, touring new plays and political cabaret throughout Scotland and Britain for three years. He won Scottish Arts Council awards to work with TAG Theatre Company, Glasgow and the Traverse Theatre in Edinburgh, where he was Associate Director for two years. He directed his first musical, Herringbone, for the theatre’s Edinburgh Festival season in 1990. He has directed with the Scottish Chamber Orchestra, with the Lyric Theatre in Belfast, with Gallowglass Theatre company, Ireland, with Sir Roger Norrington at the South Bank in London directing Purcell’s enormous opera The Fairy Queen, and with the Royal Lyceum Theatre in Edinburgh where he specialised in comedy with such productions as Arsenic & Old Lace, Noises Off, and Comedians.

As Artistic Director of Contact Theatre in Manchester, Ben directed and produced shows including Brecht’s Mother Courage, David Mamet’s Speed-the-Plow, Michael Henry Brown’s Generations of the Dead in the Abyss of Coney Island Madness and The Tempest, with Gary Raymond as Prospero. While in Manchester he directed Sir Peter Maxwell Davies’ chamber opera Miss Donnithorne’s Maggot for the leading contemporary music group Psappha. The production was revived at the Cheltenham International Music Festival, at the St Magnus Festival in Orkney and was the first ever performance to be staged in Stormont Castle in Belfast. For Psappha Ben also adapted the text of Marrying The Hangman from Margaret Atwood’s poem for a new chamber opera, working with composer Ronald Caltabiano. He directed the premiere at the Cheltenham International Music Festival and revived it at the Royal Northern College of Music in Manchester, in New York and San Francisco.

Ben is currently developing a new musical version of Frankenstein. 2001 will see him in Berlin directing Travels with My Aunt, working with young playwrights at the Ignite 2001 festival in New Zealand and directing a new chamber opera The Seer in the Highlands.

See also:

• Responses to the questions posed to the actors