Name Sam Boardman-Jacobs | Role Playwright | |
Sam Boardman-Jacobs (born 1942) is a Wales-based playwright, director scenographer and recently choreographer, since receiving a master's degree from Trinity/ Laban. He now commutes between France and the UK.
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Biography
Boardman-Jacobs was Reader in Theatre & Media Drama at the University of Glamorgan. His research interests include Holocaust drama, Yiddish theatre, gay and lesbian theatre, Spanish playwright Federico García Lorca, and the Spanish Civil War. These interests are reflected in his plays.
He won acclaim for his work on Holocaust and Yiddish drama with the Manchester Youth Theatre and received a grant from the European Association of Jewish Culture in 2002 for his play Trying To Be, an exploration of Jewish identity set in contemporary Britain. Sam recently took an MA in Choreography at Laban, London, and now makes choreographic dance theatre with Found Reality Dance Theatre, Cardiff, of which he is artistic director.
Play Federico For Me is the fictional story of Catalan actress Margarita Xirgu, who, during her exile after the Spanish Civil War, depends upon the ghost of Federico García Lorca, in her political-artistic battle with Eva Perón over the first performance of Lorca's "The House of Bernarda Alba". His translation and adaptation of Lorca's El público was produced by the Found Reality Theatre Company in 2005. His 2007 radio play, The Sixth Column Has Better Legs, describes the experiences of four chorus girls in Madrid while the city is under siege.
Passion for the Impossible tells the story of Violette Leduc and Jean Genet in wartime Paris and Red Hot and Blue is the story of singer Libby Holman, on the night before her suicide, as she looks back over a life that included a murder trial, an affair with Montgomery Clift and early Civil Rights campaigning during the Second World War.
In 2003 he taught for the Lemonia Disabled Writers' Residential Course, a project organised by Graeae Theatre Company, Writernet and Tŷ Newydd. The production of his 2004 play, Embracing Barbarians, based on the political and sexual fantasies of dying Greek poet Constantine Cavafy, Sam attempted to make the piece accessible to both deaf and hearing performers and audiences, while casting a deaf performer in the role of a hearing character.
He has taught on several Writing Menoring and Dramaturgy courses at venues ranging from The Soho Theatre and The Actor's centre London to the Arvon Foundation and Ty Newydd in North Wales and on MA in Scriptwriting courses in Cardiff and Exeter. He now teaches Master classes in Scriptwriting and Dramaturgy in France and the UK.
He was also a scriptwriter for 12 years on BBC Radio 4's The Archers and one of the writers for Channel 4's Brookside. He translates from Spanish to English.
Stage plays
Radio plays
Dance theatre productions
with Found Reality Dance Theatre: