William Scoular

William Scoular is a stage director, writer and filmmaker.

He was born in Glasgow, Scotland and is a graduate of Oxford University where he read English at Lincoln College. He first attracted attention for his assured direction of a professional production of The Importance of Being Earnest at the New (now Apollo) Theatre, Oxford while he was still an undergraduate. He was soon directing productions, on both sides of the Atlantic, praised for their clarity and vision. His acclaimed production of Samuel Beckett’s Footfalls (starring Elizabeth Shepherd and Jennifer Phipps) was invited to the prestigious World Stage Festival (Toronto) and his production of Berkoff’s Women (with Linda Marlowe) at the New Ambassador’s Theatre in London’s West End received unanimous rave reviews. He directed Keith Carradine and John Goodman in the world premiere of My Time Ain’t Long: The Jimmy Rogers Story and Elizabeth Shepherd and Graham Harley in Alan Bennett’s A Cream Cracker Under the Settee, Waiting for the Telegram and Playing Sandwiches.

Equally at home with contemporary and classical theatre, Scoular’s other theatre credits include: Gardner McKay’s Seamarks, Edward Albee’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf, Tom Stoppard’s Dogg’s Hamlet, Lee McDougall’s High Life, Stephen Belber’s Tape, Ian Heggie’s Politics in the Park, Ashlin Halfnight’s Answering Bell, West Side Story, Cabaret, Oklahoma, Oliver, Kiss Me Kate, Side by Side by Sondheim, Hamlet, Othello, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Romeo and Juliet, Henry V and Macbeth.

Apart from numerous music videos, Scoular’s work in film includes Passage to Sydney (a documentary about equestrian Emil Fauree), and the award-winning Canadian movie The Death and Life of Nancy Eaton.

He is the author of Not An Ordinary Place, Secret Agent: The Life of Harry Somers (to be published in the autumn of 2008), and co-author (with Vivian H. H. Green) of the Canadian bestseller A Question of Guilt.

Current projects include a production of Gardner McKay’s Toyer (West End and Broadway), the feature film Children of the Lie for Whizbang Films and a biography of Vivian Green, the renowned Oxford historian and acknowledged original of John le Carre’s master spy, George Smiley.