The Directors Guild Peter Brook Lecture: Mike Leigh

The annual Directors Guild Peter Brook Lecture is a platform for leading directors of stage and screen to give a personal view of their craft, culture and industry; past speakers include Nicholas Hytner, Phyllida Lloyd and Peter Brook himself. The Guild and the British Library are delighted to welcome Mike Leigh, award-winning director of devised theatre and film, to deliver this year's lecture, and to join Indhu Rubasingham, Artistic Director of the Tricycle Theatre, in conversation.

Mike Leigh

Writer-director Mike Leigh trained at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, Camberwell and Central Art Schools in London, and at the London Film School, of which he is now the Chairman.

His first feature film was Bleak Moments (1971); this was followed by the full-length television films, Hard Labour (1973), Nuts in May (1975), The Kiss of Death (1976), Who’s Who (1978), Grown-Ups (1980), Home Sweet Home (1982), Meantime (1983), and Four Days In July (1984).

Other feature films are High Hopes (1988), Life Is Sweet (1990), Naked (1993)), Secrets and Lies (1996), Career Girls (1997), Topsy-Turvy (1999), All Or Nothing (2002), Vera Drake (2004) Happy-Go-Lucky (2008) and Another Year (2010).

He has written and directed over twenty stage plays.  These include Babies Grow Old (1974), Abigail’s Party (1977), Ecstasy (1979), Goose-Pimples (1981), Smelling A Rat (1988), Greek Tragedy (1989), It’s A Great Big Shame! (1993), Two Thousand Years (2005) and Grief (2011).

Indhu Rubasingham

Indhu is Artistic Director of the Tricycle Theatre.
 
Her inaugural production at the Tricycle, Red Velvet, was nominated for an Olivier Award for Outstanding Achievement by an Affiliate Theatre.  The play also garnered two Most Promising Playwright awards for Lolita Chakrabarti from the Evening Standard Theatre Awards and the Critics’ Circle Awards as well as Best Actor at the 2012 Critics’ Circle Awards for Adrian Lester. The production will return to the Tricycle in 2014 prior to a run at St Ann's Warehouse, New York. 

She was recently awarded the Arts & Culture Award at the Asian Women of Achievement Awards for astounding achievements in theatre.  

Indhu was awarded the Carlton Multi-Cultural Achievement Award for Performing Arts and in 2010 she received the Liberty Human Rights Arts Award for The Great Game: Afghanistan.  She has previously been Associate Director of The Gate Theatre, Birmingham Rep and The Young Vic.

For the Tricycle Theatre: Paper Dolls; Red Velvet; Women, Power And Politics; Stones In His Pockets; Detaining Justice; The Great Game: Afghanistan; Fabulation; Starstruck.  

Other selected directing credits include: Belong, Disconnect, Free Outgoing, Lift Off, Clubland, The Crutch, Sugar Mummies (Royal Court); Ruined, (Almeida); Yellowman, Anna In The Tropics (Hampstead Theatre); The Waiting Room (National Theatre); The Ramayana (National Theatre/ Birmingham Rep); Secret Rapture, The Misanthrope (Minerva, Chichester); Romeo And Juliet (Festival Theatre, Chichester); Pure Gold (Soho Theatre); No Boys Cricket Club, Party Girls (Stratford East); Wuthering Heights (Birmingham Rep); Heartbreak House (Watford Palace); Sugar Dollies, Shakuntala (The Gate); A River Sutra (Three Mill Island Studios); Rhinoceros (Uc Davies, California) And A Doll’s House (Young Vic).