Tim Supple's love of story-telling began at an early age in his home in Sussex. This passion developed into a professional reputation for adapting books, stories and poems into highly visual, musical and imaginative theatrical events.
A characteristic critique of his work is the description in the Financial Times of Supple's 1998 production of Rushdie's Haroun and the Sea of Stories: "Supple has become the leading storyteller in British theatre …There are spellbinding group tableaux, musical harmonies and sonorities… explosions of colour and light and fabric… gesture, and song, and great chunks of charm."
As an assistant director, Supple began working at York's Theatre Royal. 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.
In 1993, Supple was appointed Artistic Director of London's Young Vic and established a reputation for the re-working and adaptation of classic works. A string of successes followed: Oedipus, 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.
For the Royal National Theatre Supple co-adapted and directed Salman Rushdie's Haroun and the Sea of Stories and directed The Villains Opera, a new version of A Beggar's Opera with music by Stephen Warbeck. For the Royal Shakespeare Company, Supple has directed a production of Wedekind's Spring Awakening translated by Ted Hughes, the Comedy of Errors, a co-adaptation of Hughes' translation of Tales from Ovid, a reworking of Goldoni's A Servant to two Masters by Lee Hall which toured internationally and transferred to the West End, 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 Europe, Supple has directed Les Miserables in Tel Aviv, Much Ado about Nothing at the Maxim Gorky Theatre in Berlin, and two works for the National Theatre of Norway.
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. 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.
In film, Supple's most recent credit was the widely praised Channel Four production of Twelfth Night. His most recent theatre production was A Midsummer Night's Dream for the Royal Shakespeare Company which Supple 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. The Guardian wrote: "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." The production played again at the Roundhouse in March and April this year, to an equally rapturous reception "This is one of the most sensual and visually beautiful Dreams I have ever seen." (Financial Times )
Tim Supple is represented by Jessica Ford at Intermusica, jford@intermusica.co.uk.
March 2008 / 558 words. Not to be altered without permission. Please destroy all previous biographical material.