David Jones (director)

David Hugh Jones (19 February 1934 – 19 September 2008) was an English stage, television and film director.

For other people with the same name, see David Jones.

David Jones
Born
David Hugh Jones

(1934-02-19)19 February 1934
Poole, Dorset, England, United Kingdom
Died19 September 2008(2008-09-19) (aged 74)
Rockport, Maine, United States
Alma materChrist's College, Cambridge
Yale School of Drama
Occupation(s)Film director, television director, theatre director
Spouse(s)Sheila Allen
Joyce Tenneson
ChildrenJesse and Joe

Life and career

Jones was born in Poole, Dorset, the son of John David Jones and his wife Gwendolen Agnes Langworthy (Ricketts), and was educated at Taunton School and Christ's College, Cambridge.[1][2] Originally a television director, he first worked for BBC producer Huw Wheldon working on the Monitor arts television series from 1958 to 1964.[1][3] His first London stage production was a triple-bill of T.S. Eliot's Sweeney Agonistes, W.B. Yeats's Purgatory and Samuel Beckett's Krapp's Last Tape at the Mermaid Theatre in 1961.

He directed his first production for the Royal Shakespeare Company at the Arts Theatre in 1962, Boris Vian's The Empire Builder, and two years later accepted the administrative post Artistic Controller at the Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC), helping to plan programmes of new plays and European classics at the Aldwych Theatre in London.[4] He also took over responsibility for running the Aldwych from 1969 to 1972, and again in 1975–77. During this period he championed the plays of David Mercer and Maxim Gorky.[2]

For BBC television he directed Ice Age, The Beaux Stratagem and Langrishe, Go Down (1978).[3] He also produced Play of the Month (1977–79).

He left the Royal Shakespeare Company in 1979, taking up an appointment as an artistic director at the Brooklyn Academy of Music and to found a resident theatre company modelled on the RSC (Beauman 344).[5]

After teaching at the Yale School of Drama in 1981, he returned to England, where for the BBC Television Shakespeare series he directed The Merry Wives of Windsor (1982), and Pericles, Prince of Tyre (1984), and made his debut as a feature film director with Betrayal (1983), based on Harold Pinter's screenplay adaptation of his 1978 play Betrayal.[3]

From 1973 to 1978, Jones was Artistic Director of the Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC), at the Aldwych Theatre, where he directed plays by William Shakespeare, Bertolt Brecht, Anton Chekhov, Seán O'Casey, Maxim Gorky, Harley Granville-Barker, Graham Greene, and others, and became an honorary associate director of the RSC in 1991. From 1979 to 1981, he was Artistic Director of the BAM Theater Company (1979–1981).[6]

He also directed three productions at the Williamstown Theatre Festival, in Williamstown, Massachusetts: On the Razzle (1981), by Tom Stoppard (2005); Sweet Bird of Youth (1959), by Tennessee Williams (2006), and The Autumn Garden (1951), by Lillian Hellman (2007).[7]

Private life

Jones married the British actress Sheila Allen in 1964 with whom he had two sons, Jesse (of Brooklyn, New York) and Joseph (of Tucson, Arizona).[8] After his divorce from Allen, Jones's partner of the last 20 years of his life was photographer Joyce Tenneson; the couple lived in New York at the time of his death.[8]

Theatre

Films

Television

Produced and presented the BBC arts magazine Monitor (1958–1964) and Review (1971–1972). Also produced Kean (Jean-Paul Sartre, 1954) for BBC television (starring Anthony Hopkins and directed by James Cellan Jones) (1978).[9]

Directed the following productions:

Also various episodes of:

Notes
  1. "David Jones: theatre, television and film director" – via www.thetimes.co.uk.
  2. Weber, Bruce (1 October 2008). "David Jones, Film Director, Dies at 74". The New York Times.
  3. "David Jones". BFI. Archived from the original on 18 July 2018.
  4. "David Jones | Theatricalia". theatricalia.com.
  5. "David Hugh Jones". IMDb. Retrieved 23 October 2020.
  6. "David Jones: Biography". Minerva Theatre, Chichester, Chichester Theatre Festival. 2007. Archived from the original on 5 March 2008. Retrieved 26 September 2008.
  7. "Past Seasons: David Jones". Williamstown Theatre Festival. Retrieved 26 September 2008.
  8. Michael Billington (23 September 2008). "Obituary: David Jones: Theatre, Television and Film Director Famed for His Interpretations of Gorky and Pinter". Guardian.co.uk. Retrieved 6 February 2009.
  9. "Play of the Month: Kean". 26 November 1978. p. 32 – via BBC Genome.

References
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