Torben Betts

Torben Betts
Born	(1968-02-10) 10 February 1968 Stamford, Lincolnshire, UK
Occupation	Dramatist

Torben Betts (born 10 February 1968 in Stamford, Lincolnshire) is an English playwright and screenwriter.

Betts attended the University of Liverpool, where he read English Literature and English Language, and originally trained to become an actor, but later changed course to begin writing plays.^[1] Betts stated that part of the reason for this transition was the difficulty he faced as an actor without an agent and that playwriting allowed him to "exercise all my instincts as an actor without actually having to live the life".^[2] In 1999 Alan Ayckbourn invited him to be the resident dramatist at Scarborough's Stephen Joseph Theatre.

A Listening Heaven premiered there that year before a second production took place at the Edinburgh Royal Lyceum in 2001. The play was nominated as the TMA Best New play that year. During this period Betts was enjoying success on the London fringe at the Battersea Arts Centre with plays like Incarcerator, a drama in rhyming couplets and The Biggleswades at the White Bear Theatre Club. Also in that year (2001), his play Clockwatching initiated a series of co-productions between the Orange Tree Theatre in Richmond and The Stephen Joseph Theatre, producing theatre in the round. Betts works in two very distinct styles: a darkly comic social realism, reminiscent of the plays of Ayckbourn or Mike Leigh, and a more tragic, poetic style of a kind associated with dramatists such as Howard Barker.

His brutal anti-capitalist satire The Unconquered, in a touring production by Scotland’s Stellar Quines Theatre Company, won the 2007 Best New Play award at the Critics' Awards for Theatre in Scotland.

Critical reception for Betts's plays has been mostly very positive: The Daily Telegraph claims he has a "profound and highly original theatrical voice", while Liz Lochhead (the makar or national poet of Scotland) suggests he "is just about the most original and extraordinary writer of drama we have."^[3] Michael Billington in his **** Guardian review of Invincible commented that "Torben Betts should be a bigger name." ^[4]

Invincible played at the Orange Tree Theatre March/April 2014 to great critical and popular acclaim and is the fourth of his plays to premiere at that theatre, following Clockwatching (2001), The Company Man (2010) and Muswell Hill (2012). The production transferred to London's St James Theatre in July 2014, again receiving glowing reviews across the board (see the review in the London Evening Standard, Paul Taylor's review and Alice Jones' interview with the playwright also in the Independent).

He also wrote the screenplay for the British independent feature film Downhill, which was released in cinemas nationwide on 30 May 2014. The Independent said "his screenplay for this engaging, quintessentially British road/rambling movie combines knockabout comedy with surprisingly bleak observations." ^[5]

A revival of his acclaimed 2012 play Muswell Hill transferred to London's Park Theatre in February 2015, while his latest work (What Falls Apart) opened at Newcastle's Live Theatre in April. This will be followed in June by a production of his version of Anton Chekhov's The Seagull at Regent's Park Open Air Theatre. He is also adapting Get Carter for Northern Stage, Newcastle, for a production in early 2016.

A major production of Invincible (retitled Victoria) is scheduled to take place in Madrid in September 2015. The play will star Maribel Verdu and has been translated into Spanish by Jordi Galcerán. The Original Theatre Company is embarking on a four-month UK tour of the play during the first half of 2016.

Bibliography

Film

• Downhill (2014)
• Guillemot (2015)

Selected theatre

• A Listening Heaven (1999)
• Incarcerator (1999)
• Five Visions of the Faithful (2000)
• The Biggleswades (2001)
• Clockwatching (2001)^[6]
• The Last Days of Desire (2001, BBC Radio play)
• Her Slightest Touch (2004)
• The Lunatic Queen (2005)^[7]
• The Unconquered (2007)^[8][9]
• The Error of their Ways (2007)
• The Swing of Things (2007)
• Lie of the Land (2008)^[10]
• The Company Man (2010)
• Muswell Hill (2012)
• Invincible (2014)
• What Falls Apart (2015)
• The Seagull (2015)
• Get Carter (2016)

Publications (Oberon Books)

• Plays One (A Listening Heaven, Mummies and Daddies, Clockwatching), (2000)
• Plays Two (Incarcerator, Five Visions of the Faithful, Silence and Violence, The Biggleswades, The Last Days of Desire), (2001)
• Plays Three (The Optimist, The Swing of Things, The Company Man), (2008)
• The Lunatic Queen, 2005
• The Unconquered, 2007
• The Error of Their Ways, 2007
• Lie of the Land, 2008
• Muswell Hill, 2012
• Invincible, 2014
• What Falls Apart, 2015
• The Seagull, 2015

Awards and nominations

• Winner, Best New Play 2006/07 for The Unconquered, Critics Awards for Theatre in Scotland^[11]
• Nominated, Edinburgh Fringe First Award 2008 for Lie of the Land
• Nominated, Best New Play 2001 for A Listening Heaven, TMA Awards
• Nominated/shortlisted, Verity Bargate Award 2000 for Mummies and Daddies
• Nominated, Best New Play at the Off West End Theatre Awards 2010 for The Company Man
• Nominated, Best New Play at the Off West End Theatre Awards 2012 for Muswell Hill
• Nominated, Best New Play at the Off West End Theatre Awards 2014 for Invincible

References

External links

• Official website