Giles Smith

I trained at the Guildhall School school of Music & Drama because I wanted to be a good director. What better way to learn about working with actors than train as one?

At the National Theatre I worked with: Trevor Nunn, Richard Eyre, Howard Davies, Vanessa Redgrave, Eileen Atkins, Paul Scofield, Judy Dench and Patrick Marber on “Closer”, both at the National and its West End transfer in 97.

Since 04 I've directed new and classical plays, adaptations and educational projects, working with actors from Italy, France, Germany, Greece, Malta, Iran, Tunisia, Israel, Palestine and the US, often in languages other than English. Amongst the projects I'm most proud of: Hamlet, The Tempest, Measure for Measure, Twelfth Night, Shakespeare's sonnets at The Grotowski theatre, Wroclaw, The Conference of The Birds ­and a multi disciplinary work based on Virginia Woolf’s Mrs Dalloway. In 2012 my play "In the Forest" was invited to New York for the PAM international festival. I wrote the screenplay for "The Unloved" based on the Arnost Lustig novel of the same name. Arnost Lustig was an Auschwitz survivor and was nominated for the Pulitzer and Man Booker. I've directed in the UK, the US, at the Guildhall, Mountview and the Manchester Schools of theatre, the European school for the art of the actor, whose collaborating partners include: the Guildhall; the Russian Academy of Drama, Moscow; ENSATT­, Lyon; ACT San Francisco; the Ecole du Theatre National, Strasbourg; INSAS, Bruxelles and the Hochschule für Musik und Theater HfMT, Hamburg .

For 10 years I was artistic director of j33tre European Theatre Ensemble, responsible for the development, production and direction of the company’s artistic output, directing plays and workshops across Italy, wider Europe and the US. In 2017 scenes from my new play Colour in the Darkness where shown at the National Portrait Gallery, London. The company included Ann Mitchell and Ian Reddington.