Neil Armfield

Neil Geoffrey Armfield AO (born 22 April 1955) is an Australian director of theatre, film and opera.

Born in Sydney, Armfield was the youngest of three boys. The son of a factory worker at the nearby Arnott's biscuit factory he was brought up in the suburb of Concord adjacent to Exile Bay. He was educated at the (then) selective publicly funded Homebush Boys High School and the University of Sydney graduating in 1977 and became Co-Artistic Director of the Nimrod Theatre Company in 1979. He joined South Australia’s Lighthouse Theatre before returning to Sydney in 1985, where he was involved in the purchase of Belvoir St Theatre and the formation of Company B, becoming its first Artistic Director in 1994.^[1][2]

In April 2008 he was selected as a participant in the Towards a creative Australia strand of the Australia 2020 Summit. Armfield announced in 2009 that the 2010 season would be his last as Belvoir artistic director, but he has subsequently directed under the new artistic director Ralph Myers.^[3]

Company B Work

For Company B, he has directed

Signal Driver State of Shock Aftershocks Master Builder The Diary of a Madman Diving for Pearls The Tempest Ghosts Hate No Sugar Hamlet The Blind Giant is Dancing The Alchemist

WASP The Seagull The Governor’s Family As You Like It The Judas Kiss The Small Poppies Suddenly Last Summer The Marriage of Figaro Emma’s Nose Aliwa My Zinc Bed Waiting For Godot The Underpants

The Lieutenant of Inishmore Gulpilil The Spook The Fever Cloudstreet Picasso at the Lapin Agile Dead Heart A Cheery Soul Night on Bald Mountain Stuff Happens The Adventures of Snugglepot & Cuddlepie and Little Ragged Blossom Keating! Summer of the Seventeenth Doll

Companies worked with

• Nimrod Theatre Company
• State Theatre Company of South Australia
• Queensland Theatre Company
• Sydney Theatre Company
• Seymour Group
• Melbourne Theatre Company
• Opera Australia
• Welsh National Opera
• Canadian Opera Company
• Zurich Opera
• English National Opera
• Royal Opera Covent Garden
• Lyric Opera of Chicago
• Houston Grand Opera

Film

• 1990 The Castanet Club
• 1987 Twelfth Night
• 2006 Candy starring Heath Ledger, Abbie Cornish, Geoffrey Rush

Awards and honours

Australian

• Officer of the Order of Australia for ...service to the arts, nationally and internationally, as a director of theatre, opera and film, and as a promoter of innovative Australian productions including Australian Indigenous drama. (January 2007) ^[4]
• Honorary Doctor of Literature at the University of Sydney (April 2006)^[5]
• Sydney Theatre Critics Circle Award for Best Director and Best Production
• 1989, Major Award for Significant Contribution to Sydney Theatre
• several Green Room Awards
• AFI Award for Best Director (Mini-series Eden’s Lost)
• several Helpmann Awards
• Sidney Myer Performing Arts Award for Outstanding Achievement in the Performing Arts in Australia

International

• Dublin Festival, Best Production (Cloudstreet)
• Dora Mavor Moore Awards, Canada, Best Director and Best Musical for Billy Budd
• Barclays Best Opera Production Award (Billy Budd)
• Jesse Kempf

External links

• Neil Armfield at the Internet Movie Database
• Talking Heads - Armfield interview by Peter Thompson for ABC1 (July 2010)

References

1. ^ Mitter, Shomit; Maria Shevtsova (2005). Fifty Key Theatre Directors. Routledge. p. 236. ISBN 0415187311. 
2. ^ Atkinson, Ann; Linsay Knight (1996). The dictionary of performing arts in Australia. Margaret McPhee. Allen & Unwin. p. 11. ISBN 1863738983. 
3. ^ http://www.stevedow.com.au/Default.aspx?id=445
4. ^ It's an Honour website
5. ^ Neil Armfield awarded Honorary doctorate

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Name	Armfield, Neil
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Date of birth	22 April 1955
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