26-417: Giles Cooper may refer to: Giles Cooper (playwright) (1918–1966), Anglo-Irish playwright and radio dramatist Giles Cooper (producer) , British entertainment producer, concert promoter and marketer Giles Cooper (actor) (born 1982), British actor [REDACTED] Topics referred to by the same term This disambiguation page lists articles about people with
52-523: A consortium of UK and US producers in 2000 for a five-year period, and it was relaunched as a West End theatre with the anniversary production of Julian Mitchell 's play Another Country , directed by Stephen Henry . Notable productions during this time included Closer to Heaven , the Jonathan Harvey / Pet Shop Boys musical, and The Vagina Monologues . In 2011, the theatre was taken over by JJ Goodman and led by Artistic Director Mig Kimpton under
78-457: A diverse range of new and experimental plays, or plays that were thought to be commercially non-viable on the West End. The theatrical producer Norman Marshall referred to these as 'The Other Theatre' in his 1947 book of the same name. The theatre opened with a revue by Herbert Farjeon entitled Picnic , produced by Harold Scott and with music by Beverley Nichols . Its first important production
104-699: A gypsy in Listen to the Wind at the Arts Theatre in 1955. In August 1955, aged 24, Hall directed the English-language premiere of Samuel Beckett 's Waiting for Godot at the theatre. This was an important turning point in modern theatre for Britain. Subsequently, from 1956 to 1959, Hall ran the Arts Theatre. Between April 1962 and January 1967 the Arts Theatre was known as the New Arts Theatre. From 1967 to 1999
130-507: A woman (played by Toby Robins ) witnesses an assassination on the London Underground and becomes the next would-be victim of the perpetrators; and The Long House were parts of an unrelated trilogy of plays by Cooper broadcast on BBC2 's Theatre 625 during the summer of 1965. He also wrote The Other Man a television drama starring Michael Caine , Siân Phillips and John Thaw and first broadcast on ITV in 1964. Everything in
156-717: Is a theatre in Great Newport Street, in Westminster , Central London . It opened on 20 April 1927 as a members-only club for the performance of unlicensed plays, thus avoiding theatre censorship by the Lord Chamberlain's office. It was one of a small number of committed, independent theatre companies, including the Hampstead Everyman , the Gate Theatre Studio and the Q Theatre , which took risks by producing
182-502: The Duke of York's Theatre in the West End, starring Ian Ogilvy , Angela Thorne , James Laurenson and Stephanie Beacham . Cooper died at the age of 48 after falling from a train as it passed through Surbiton , Surrey , returning from a Guild of Dramatists' Christmas dinner at the Garrick on 2 December 1966. A post-mortem showed he had consumed the equivalent of half a bottle of whisky and
208-642: The Webber Douglas Academy of Dramatic Art in London. A contemporary, joining on the same morning was the actor Michael Denison who recalls their first meeting in his autobiography Overture & Beginners . Cooper's studies were interrupted by the Second World War. Initially conscripted into the ranks, he was selected for training at the Royal Military College, Sandhurst , gained a commission and
234-551: The Arts also became a home for the Unicorn children's theatre, under the direction of its founder Caryl Jenner . She took over the lease, initially for six years. Meanwhile, adult performances continued in the evening, including Tom Stoppard 's satirical double-bill Dirty Linen and New-Found-Land which, opening in June 1976, ran for four years at the Arts. The theatre's lease was taken over by
260-610: The Bell Tolls (1965), Les Misérables , Flaubert's Madame Bovary and Evelyn Waugh 's trilogy of novels Sword of Honour (1967) for Theatre 625 . He was more successful in the theatre with his original works as opposed to adaptations. His first full-length play Never Get Out was staged at the Edinburgh Festival in 1950 and transferred to the Gate Theatre in London. The first of his radio plays to make his reputation
286-512: The Connaught Theatre, Worthing (with Harold Pinter ) and at the Regent's Park Open Air Theatre continued until 1952 when he turned to script editing and then full-time writing. Cooper was a pioneer in writing for the broadcast media, becoming prolific in both radio and television drama. His early successes included radio dramatisations of Dickens' Oliver Twist , William Golding 's Lord of
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#1733086200836312-795: The Flies and John Wyndham 's science fiction novel Day of the Triffids . Wyndham wrote to Cooper congratulating him after the first broadcast. On television he adapted Simenon's Maigret detective novels from the French, which became the major hit of the day (1960–61) starring Rupert Davies as the pipe-smoking sleuth in over 24 episodes, for which he won the Script Award in 1961 of the Guild of Television Producers, which subsequently became BAFTA . He also adapted four Sherlock Holmes stories, Ernest Hemingway 's For Whom
338-888: The Garden was first performed by the Royal Shakespeare Company in 1962 at the Arts Theatre, London; in 1967, an American adaptation by Edward Albee , was first performed in 1967 at the Plymouth Theatre , New York City , and dedicated to Cooper's memory. His last play was Happy Family was first presented at the Hampstead Theatre in 1966 starring Wendy Craig ; it then transferred to the West End with Michael Denison , Dulcie Gray and Robert Flemyng . A revival in 1984 directed by Maria Aitken opened in Windsor and transferred to
364-607: The boys in his class and The Long House (1965). "Out of the Crocodile" ran at the Phoenix Theatre in 1963-64 starring Kenneth More , Celia Johnson and Cyril Raymond . "The Spies are Singing" was presented at the Nottingham Playhouse in 1966, starring the theatre's Artistic Director John Neville . Many of his plays were later adapted for both stage and television. Unman, Wittering and Zigo , Seek Her Out , in which
390-415: The business management of Louis Hartshorn. The Arts now operates as the West End's smallest commercial receiving house , seating a maximum of 350 in a two-tier basement auditorium. In 2014, Louis Hartshorn took over from Mig Kimpton as Executive Director and alongside long standing business partner Brian Hook as Producer. Expanding over an additional floor the Arts Theatre now houses two rehearsal rooms and
416-482: The coroner at Kingston in January 1967 returned a verdict of misadventure. There have been several attempts to attribute his death to suicide, in particularly by The Stage newspaper. When interviewed by Humphrey Carpenter in 1995, BBC radio producer Douglas Cleverdon 's widow, Nest, told him that she believed it was suicide. Cooper's family have always strongly disputed this, not only because it bears no relationship to
442-584: The playwright's apparent frame of mind during the period leading up to his death, but also because it unfairly colours appraisal of his work from an academic standpoint. In 1978 the Giles Cooper Awards for radio drama were established by the BBC in conjunction with the publishers Eyre Methuen , and continued to be awarded until the early 1990s. Giles Cooper had two sons and four grandchildren, including actor Giles Cooper. Arts Theatre The Arts Theatre
468-532: The same name. If an internal link led you here, you may wish to change the link to point directly to the intended article. Retrieved from " https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Giles_Cooper&oldid=995414366 " Category : Human name disambiguation pages Hidden categories: Short description is different from Wikidata All article disambiguation pages All disambiguation pages Giles Cooper (playwright) Giles Stannus Cooper , OBE (9 August 1918 – 2 December 1966)
494-711: The son of Guy Edward Cooper, a Royal Navy Commander, and nephew of politician and writer Bryan Ricco Cooper . Cooper was educated at the prep school Arnold House School , St John's Wood, London , at Lancing College on the South Downs, and later studied languages in Grenoble in the French Alps and at a language school at San Sebastian in Northern Spain. It was here, with the Spanish Civil War raging around him, that he
520-471: The theatre on a sound financial footing. Ronnie Barker made his West End début at the production of Mourning Becomes Electra at the Arts Theatre in 1955 which was directed by Sir Peter Hall , with whom Barker had worked at the Oxford Playhouse . Barker remained a West End actor for some years, appearing in numerous plays between 1955 and 1968. These included two performances each night as he played
546-411: The theatre, choreographed by Andrée Howard . It has subsequently been performed over 200 times by The Royal Ballet, and by Scottish Ballet. In 1942, Alec Clunes and John Hanau took over the running of the theatre and for ten years produced a wide range of plays, winning a reputation as a 'pocket national theatre'. In 1946, Clunes teamed with author Peter Elstob to raise £20,000, which eventually put
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#1733086200836572-574: Was Young Woodley by John Van Druten , staged in 1928, which later transferred to the Savoy Theatre when the Lord Chamberlain's ban was lifted. In 1938, a four-week revival of the Stokes brothers' Oscar Wilde , starring Francis L. Sullivan and produced by Ronald Adam , opened on 25 October. This coincided with a Broadway production of the play. In 1940 the ballet La fête étrange was staged at
598-558: Was Mathry Beacon (1956) about a small detachment of men and women still guarding a Top Secret "missile deflector" somewhere in Wales, some years after the war has ended; the first and only American production, starring Martyn Green , was syndicated to public stations in 1981 by the National Radio Theater of Chicago. Also of note are Unman, Wittering and Zigo (1958) in which a young teacher finds his predecessor has been murdered by
624-562: Was an Anglo-Irish playwright and prolific radio dramatist , writing over sixty scripts for BBC Radio and television. He was awarded the OBE in 1960 for "Services to Broadcasting". A dozen years after his death at only 48 the Giles Cooper Awards for Radio Drama were instituted in his honour, jointly by the BBC and the publishers Eyre Methuen . Giles Stannus Cooper was born into a landed Anglo-Irish family at Carrickmines near Dublin on 9 August 1918,
650-549: Was shot through the arm one evening by a sniper's bullet, while on a mission to purchase cigarettes before dinner. The Royal Navy subsequently came to his rescue, gave him medical attention and dropped him off across the French border at St Jean de Luz. His father had planned the life of a diplomat for him, in which a Cambridge degree in Law and a Call to the Bar were prerequisites. Cooper, however, confounded these plans by enrolling as an actor at
676-660: Was subsequently despatched to the Far East in 1942. He served as an infantry officer in the West Yorkshire Regiment , spending three grueling years in the jungles of Burma fighting the Japanese, on occasion hand-to-hand. After the war he worked as an actor, first at the Arts Theatre under Alec Clunes , where he met his future wife, the actress Gwyneth Lewis. Seasons in repertory theatre at Newquay (with Kenneth Williams ) at
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