SIMON STOKES

Trained at the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School, Simon is a freelance director, dramaturg, producer and, broadly, a new play specialist.

As Artistic Director of the Bush Theatre in the 1970’s and 80’s, he produced, directed and mentored many now distinguished British playwrights, introduced several of the works of Franz Xaver Kroetz to the UK as well as plays in translation by Wolfgang Bauer, Jean Jordheuil and Manuel Puig and produced a new generation of American playwrights for London audiences.

In the 1980’s and 90’s Simon was Associate Director and Director of Development for the producer, Howard Panter, commissioning and directing new plays for West End production as well as directing freelance in Germany, Switzerland, Israel and the USA.

For the past twenty years he has been Artistic Director at the Theatre Royal Plymouth, producing, co-producing and presenting new plays, predominantly in the award-winning contemporary theatre programme of the theatre’s Drum studio.

World premieres by British writers have included plays by Abi Morgan, Rona Munro, April de Angelis, Debbie Tucker Green, Anthony Neilson, Carl Grose, Mike Bartlett, James Graham and Jack Thorne. Foreign writers have included Mikhail Durnenkov, Roland Schimmelpfennig, the Presnyakov brothers, Sachli Ghomalalizad, Matthew Lopez and Sarah Ruhl.

Frequent co-producing partners have been Frantic Assembly, ATC, Paines Plough, Told By An Idiot, Graeae, sKaGeN, Hoipolloi and, in particular, the Belgian company Ontroerend Goed, serial winners of Edinburgh Festival Fringe Firsts amongst many accolades around the world and currently in their eleventh major collaboration with Plymouth.

Simon was a long-serving member of the Board of Governors of BADA.