About The Author

Simon Corble is a playwright, director and erstwhile actor. He grew up in rural Oxfordshire, the youngest son of a country vicar; the family moved North in 1974, as his father took on a “more challenging parish”, on the banks of the Manchester Ship Canal. Given the chance, aged sixteen, to play Hamlet at Lymm Grammar School, Corble’s determined course “to create dramatic experiences” was set. As part of his professional training at what is now Manchester Metropolitan University, he was given the freedom to experiment and create his own work, which included a dance-drama based on Orwell’s novel “1984”.

A brief career as an actor was cut short by a severe viral illness in 1985. Returning to full health, in 1990 he founded Midsommer Actors’ Company, which staged site-specific, promenade performances in atmospheric places. The first project was The Tempest on the tiny island of Hilbre, Wirral, with both audience and actors cut-off by the advancing waters. It was after this seminal and therapeutic experience that he set about writing his own adaptations of classic tales for a new form of theatre. 1991 saw The Woodlanders take shape, (from Thomas Hardy’s novel) over several miles of forest in West Yorkshire. Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, created in verse from the medieval epic poem, toured a succession of wild and rocky venues across the North of England in 1992. Many more adaptations, (and a Manchester Evening News Theatre Award) followed, including The Hound of the Baskervilles, which began life in 1995 and was last produced by The Isle of Man Arts Council / Found Theatre in 2007.

Working as both a director and writer for a variety of regional theatre companies, he joined forces with Nobby Dimon in 1996 to create The Thirty Nine Steps. This has gone on to have an incredibly long life in theatres all over the world, including runs on Broadway and in London’s West End, where it won an Olivier Award for Best New Comedy in 2007.

In the early years of the Millennium, Corble took an extended sabbatical from the theatre, working as a guide on the remote and wild Greek island of Ikaria. It was here that he first forged a friendship with Judy, a colleague to whom he is now married.

He returned to England to focus on the writing of new plays, frequently with a strong environmental theme. SWARD! - a musical play commissioned in 2010 by Blaize - told the story of an upland hay meadow in the Pennines. He has also written a number of audio trails for locations around The Peak District National Park, where he now lives with his young family. There are occasional forays back into Greece; a country and culture that maintain a powerful influence on his life and work.