Sir Thomas Malory’s Le Morte D’Arthur, which charts the life and death of King Arthur, clocks in at over 600 pages. It’s understandable then that it’s taken the English translator and adapter of classic plays, Mike Poulton, nearly ten years to adapt the text for the Royal Shakespeare Company’s recent production of the same name. Mike will be in conversation with Terry Hands, Director of Clwyd Theatre Company, about how he condensed Malory’s compilation of stories into a three and half hour stage production that includes such well known myths as Excalibur and the sword in the stone, the love triangle of Arthur, Guinevere and Sir Lancelot, the Knights of the Round Table, and the search for the Holy Grail.

Mike Poulton is an English translator and adapter of classic plays for contemporary audiences.He began his career in 1995 with Anton Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya and Ivan Turgenev’s Fortune’s Fool, which were staged at the Chichester Festival Theatre, the former with Derek Jacobi, the latter with Alan Bates. Bates reprised his role for a 2002 Broadway production that earned Poulton a Tony Award nomination for Best Play.

Poulton’s subsequent works include Chekov’s Three Sisters, The Cherry Orchard and The Seagull, Euripides’ Ion, Henrik Ibsen’s Hedda Gabler and Ghosts, August Strindberg’s The Father and Dance of Death. His adaptation of Friedrich von Schiller’s Don Carlos was performed at the Chichester and in the West End with Derek Jacobi. Mary Stuart was performed at Clwyd Theatr Cymru and Wallenstein at Chichester. Other adaptations include Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales for the Royal Shakespeare Company which was presented at the Gielgud Theatre from July to September 2006 and two plays based on Thomas Malory’s Le Morte d’Arthur.

Terry Hands is an award-winning British stage director and producer, who founded the Liverpool Everyman Theatre in 1964. He became joint Artistic Director of the Royal Shakespeare Company in 1978 with Trevor Nunn in 1978, and Chief Executive in 1986. In 1997 he became been director of Clwyd Theatr Cymru.

He has won numerous awards and accolades including the 1983 Laurence Olivier and the London Critics Circle Theatre Awards for Best Director for Cyrano de Bergerac. He was nominated for three Tony Awards in 1985: Best Direction of a Play and Best Lighting Design for Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing, and Best Lighting Design for Cyrano de Bergerac. In 1993, he was awarded both the London Evening Standard and the London Critics Circle Theatre Awards for Best Director for Tamburlaine the Great.

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