Brief Biography

BARRIE HESKETH, Actor and Theatre Director

1950s Received professional training at The Central School of Speech and Drama (London)

1961 The Cold Heart, a radio drama broadcast on the BBC, starring Wilfred Pickles

1966 Inaugurated The Mull Little Theatre with his wife, Marianne, (supported by The Scottish Arts Council, The Highlands and Islands Development Board and The Michael Marks Charitable Trust (Marks & Spencer).  Notable productions include Shakespeare’s The Tempest and Macbeth; world premiere of Chekhov’s Tatyana Rapin.  Toured UK, The Netherlands and Germany

1983: Barrie and Marianne awarded the MBE for Services to Scottish Theatre

1984 Ostrich, a comedy for two, written in partnership with Marianne, published by Samuel French, London

April 1984 Death of Marianne

1984/5 A Sprat to Catch a Whale, a play for two based on the collected correspondence between Bernard Shaw and Margaret Wheeler (as a young mother whose baby was mistakenly swapped whilst in a nursing home); performed in Scotland and on The Surrey Theatre Link

1986 Elected Member of the Senior Common Room, Churchill College, Cambridge

1987 The New Prometheus, a monologue based on the life of Daniel Paul Schreber, performed in New York, Cambridge and Berlin.  Adapted as an art film for Werner Kubny Filmproduktion (project not realised)

1997 Taking Off - The Story of the Mull Little Theatre, with Foreword by the late Paul Scofield, published by The New Iona Press, Inverness.  Highly recommended by the writer Neal Ascherson in The Independent on Sunday

1988 onwards A Subject Index of Shakespeare’s Works along Psychological Principles, a database (ongoing)

1990 onwards Six Essays on Aspects of Shakespeare’s Plays; Three Monologues for Miserable People (not yet submitted for publication), and William Shakespeare – Dark Phoenix