Timberlake Wertenbaker

Dramatist Timberlake Wertenbaker became one of the most influential of Britain's contemporary playwrights in the late 1980s, after various of her award-winning plays including 'Our Country's Good' and 'Three Birds Alighting on a Field' were premiered at the Royal Court. Born Lael Louisiana Timberlake Wertenbaker in New York and raised in Northern Basque Country, France, she was the daughter of Charles Wertenbaker - a foreign correspondent for Time Magazine - and Lael Tucker Wertenbaker - author of various novels including Death of a Man (which chronicled Charles's death). Lael graduated from St. John's College, USA, in 1966 and began her career writing for Time-Life books. She then went on to professional teaching, lecturing in both Greek and French. Before moving to London in the early '80s, where she first developed an interest in writing for the theater, and became a resident-writer for the small theater companies Shared Experience in 1983 and the Royal Court Theatre from 1984-85. It was here where her plays such as 'Abel's Sister', premiered at the and 'The Grace of Mary Traverse', which won 'The Players Most Promising Playwright Award'. She is better known for her later play 'Our Country's Good' - adapted from Thomas Keneally's novel 'The Playmaker'. It chronicled the English arriving in Australia in the late 18th century and too was also premiered at the Royal Court Theatre on the 10th of September, 1988, directed by Max Stafford-Clark and starred Jim Broadbent, Nick Dunning and Alphonsia Emmanuel. In recent years, this specific play has become a text in both GCSE and A-Level drama. Since then she has continued adapting (and sometimes translating) various novels to the stage. These works include pieces by Marivaux, Anouilh, Maeterlinck, Pirandello, Sophocles and Euripides. She has also written several screenplays including the film adaptations of Edith Wharton's The Children and Henry James's The Wings of the Dove. She also wrote the television play, Do Not Disturb. She is also the author of various BBC radio 3 plays including Dianeira, transmitted in 1999 and an adaptation and translation of Euripides' play Hecuba, transmitted in 2001. She also adapted Kadare's novel The H File and most recently Scenes of Seduction on Radio 4 on 7 March 2005. Her most recent play - 'Galileo's Daughter' adapted from the Dava Sobell novel was premiered by the Peter Hall Company in Bath, July, 2004. She currently resides in England.