David Rudkin
David Rudkin was born in 1936 of Irish and English parentage. His first play, Afore Night Come, written while he was reading Classics at Oxford, was premièred by the Royal Shakespeare Company in 1962. In a career spanning sixty years, in theatre, cinema, television, radio, and musical theatre, he has worked with, among others, François Truffaut, Fred Zinnemann, Peter Hall, Peter Brook and Pierre Audi. His screenplay, Testimony, drawn from the disputed memoirs of Shostakovich, was awarded the Gold Medal for Screenplay at the New York Film Festival, 1988. He has also translated Schoenberg, and plays by Aeschylus, Euripides, Ibsen and Genet from their original languages for stage and radio. A full-length opera (with Param Vir) on the Buddha is scheduled by Theater Bonn for their Beethoven 250th anniversary season, on hold from 2020