Tim Supple's love of dramatic story-telling began at an early age in his home in Sussex. This passion developed into a professional reputation for adapting plays, books, stories and poems into highly visual, musical and imaginative theatrical events. A characteristic critique of his work is the description in the Telegraph of Supple’s 2007 revival of Shakespeare’s A Midsumer Night’s Dream: "... for theatrical excitement and fresh insight, this vivid Indian Dream … strikes me as being in a class of its own. There is a constant feeling of Shakespeare being minted anew, of a company of superbly committed, versatile and highly individual performers getting straight to the heart of the play without having to plough through accreted layers of tradition. Everything seems fresh, spontaneous and positively throbbing with sensuality."

As an assistant director, Supple began working at York’s Theatre Royal and went on to direct works by Arthur Miller, Brechr and Kreutz. Between 1988 and 1991, Tim Supple directed at the Crucible Theatre, Sheffield where he co-adapted and directed Billy Budd, and the Haymarket, Leicester on Oh, what a lovely war! and Guys and Dolls. For Kenneth Branagh’s Renaissance Theatre Company, Supple directed Coriolanus at the Chichester Festival Theatre with Branagh and Dame Judi Dench.

Supple made his debut for the National Theatre in 1988 where he directed David Holman’s Whale in the Lyttleton theatre. He subsequently co-adapted and directed Dario Fo’s Accidental Death of an Anarchist (1990), Billy Liar (1992) and Salman Rushdie’s Haroun and the Sea of Stories in the Cottesloe Theatre (1998). In the Olivier theatre he directed The Villains’ Opera, a new version of The Beggars Opera with music by Stephen Warbeck, and Romeo and Juliet (2000).

For the Royal Shakespeare Company, Supple has directed a production of Wedekind's Spring Awakening translated by Ted Hughes (1995), the Comedy of Errors (1997), a co-adaptation of Hughes' translation of Tales from Ovid (1999), a reworking of Goldoni's A Servant to two Masters by Lee Hall which toured internationally and transferred to the West End (2000), and also a co-adaptation with Salman Rushdie of Midnight’s Children which attracted enormous attention, toured, and transferred to Harlem's Apollo Theatre in New York in 2003.

From 1993 to 2000, Supple was Artistic Director of London’s Young Vic and established a reputation for the re-working and adaptation of classic works. He enjoyed a string of successes: Oedipus, The Slab Boy’s Trilogy, Grimm Tales, which toured abroad and appeared on Broadway, Jungle Book, the Ted Hughes translation of Lorca’s Blood Wedding, Twelfth Night, and a co-adaptation of As I lay Dying by William Faulkner.

Much of Supple’s work has toured nationally and internationally. In Europe, Supple has directed Much Ado about Nothing at the Maxim Gorky Theatre in Berlin (2000) and two works for the National Theatre of Norway: Ostrovsky’s Diary of a Scoundrel (2001) and Tales from Europe (2002).

Tim Supple’s exploration of opera began with a production of Hansel and Gretel for Opera North and he returned in 2003 to direct their new production of Mozart’s Magic Flute (revived 2007). The Linbury Theatre at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden invited Supple to direct Babette's Feast by John Browne, the revival of which he directed in December 2004.

Supple’s work on film includes the widely praised Channel Four production of Twelfth Night.

Supple’s most recent theatre production was A Midsummer Night’s Dream for his own company, Dash Arts, commissioned by the British Council in 2006 and cast and directed in India. The production played a four week tour of India and Sri Lanka and then in Stratford as part of the Royal Shakespeare Company's Complete Works Festival as well as in Verona’s Festival Shakespeariano in June 2006. In 2007 the Dream played a six-week sell-out season at London’s Roundhouse before returning to Stratford for a four week season and then embarking on a 10 week tour of the UK. In 2008 the production returned to India and went on tour to Australia, the US and Canada. The Guardian wrote in 2006: “What was highly impressive in India is sensational in Stratford: in its strangeness, sexuality and communal joy this is the most life-enhancing production of Shakespeare's play since Peter Brooks’s.”

Tim Supple is represented by Jessica Ford at Intermusica, jford@intermusica.co.uk. 
February 2010 / 704 words. Not to be altered without permission. Please destroy all previous biographical material.

Donmar Warehouse / The Cosmonaut's Last Message To The Woman He Once Loved In The Former Soviet Union
"I found my self increasingly gripped by narrative delight as it unfolded…Tim Supple's production leaves the audience to inhabit the spaces between the lines..."
Financial Times, April 2005

"The astute Donmar Warehouse has clearly recognised that Greig is a writer whose time has come, and is offering this high-profile revival of The Cosmonaut's Last Message... first seen in 1999.  It blew me away then, and proves just as potent the second time around, combining wit with heartfelt emotion... TERRIFIC PERFORMANCES"
Daily Telegraph, April 2004

"Dreamlike and metaphoric in form, yoking the realistic, comic, fantastic and mystical"
Evening Standard, April 2004

Royal Opera House / Babette's Feast
"A simple set and clever lighting made for a series of arresting tableaux, particularly that of the magical candlelit dinner table appearing out of the night sky." 
The Telegraph, December 2004 

"Tim Supple's simple yet effective staging, with its magical feast scene"
Metro, December 2004

Opera North / Magic Flute
"It is witty, inventive, and it is outstandingly successful in blending and reconciling the opera's fairy-tale pantomimic features with its more serious elements. It is the work of Tim Supple, best known for his time with the Young Vic. He produced Hansel and Gretel for Opera North, and it was an inspired choice to ask him back for the Flute."
Opera, June 2003

"Tim Supple's theatrical collaborations with the poet Carol Ann Duffy have established them as the fairy-tale dream team… They transform the piece into a wide-eyed adventure story, capturing Mozart's playful naivety without diminishing the intellectual content. As with all of Supple and Duffy's best work, simplicity is a disguise for deep sophistication."
Guardian, April 2003

Channel 4 / Twelfth Night
"Don't miss this rare treat - a marvellous, multicultural production of Shakespeare's play, directed by Tim Supple and produced by Trevor Eve. Set in a tropical neverland somewhere between Notting Hill and Bollywood, it does what all the best modern adaptations do - convince an audience that this is what Shakespeare intended all along."
The Times, May 2003

"Tim Supple's Twelfth Night shown on Channel 4 last year, was always going to be a tough act to follow. That seminal interpretation set Shakespeare's celebration of music and spontaneity in a modern, multicultural society…Parminder Nagra…played an asylum-seeker separated from her twin in a storm and washed into a strange new world. The elements of loneliness and exile had rarely been touched on before."
Islington Tribune, June 2005

Royal Shakespeare Company / Tales from Ovid
"This is an evening of rare dramatic power and verbal beauty in which two dead poets and an outstanding living director combine to magical effect… It is a transforming evening of light and dark, wild laughter and brutal despair, and it is hard to imagine a finer living memorial to Ted Hughes."
Daily Telegraph, April 1999

National Theatre / Haroun and the Sea of Stories
"Rushdie has now found the ideal man to translate his beautiful vision from the page to the stage, for the director Tim Supple has established himself as a nonpareil when it comes to theatrical storytelling. In productions such as Grimm's Tales (sic.) and The Jungle Book he has evolved a highly distinctive, totally unflashy theatrical style, involving strong ensemble acting, a pure simplicity of means, and outstanding original music (by the admirable Adrian Lee) to create shows that enchant adults and children alike.
You can imagine a second-rate director burdening the show with flashy technical special effects. Supple, who has faithfully adapted the book with David Tushingham, will have none of that. This production in the Cottesloe theatre, featuring a largely Asian cast and deftly designed by Melly Still, is staged with superb economy, leaving space for the audience to bring their own imaginations to the tale."
Daily Telegraph, October 1998

"With a floating wall of sumptuous saris at one end and a battery of exotic musical instruments at the other, Tim Supple's traverse staging is the feast of kinetic communal story-telling suffused with haunting Eastern melodies… A tremendous richness of suggestion is transmitted with a stunning simplicity of means."
Independent, October 1998

Young Vic / More Grimm Tales
"Tim Supple's glorious production just happens to be a Christmas show and it just happens to be aimed at children, but adults too should flock to this. Like all the best theatre, the audience are encouraged to collaborate with the cast. This has nothing to do with embarrassing audience participation and everything to do with a thrillingly terse theatrical vocabulary… Bouquets all round."
The Independent, December 1997

These are featured projects related to Tim Supple:

Supple's 'Dream'
"Fabulous, bewitching, fierce and charmingly funny." The Independent on Sunday Two years in the making, Tim Supple's breathtaking production - featuring seven languages: English, Hindi, Bengali, Marathi, Malayalam, Tamil and Sinhalese  - calls on the actors to create an integrated performance using newly-learnt skills beyond any set routines. It caused a sensation in India where it toured the major cities. After a successful run at...