Simon Stone
Born in Basel in 1984. Moved to Cambridge in 1991 and on to Melbourne in 1996. Studied at Victoria College of the Arts. Founded the theatre company «The Hayloft Project» in 2007. His over-writing of Ibsen’s «The Wild Duck» was invited to the 2013 Ibsen Festival in Oslo, to the Wiener Festwochen and the Holland Festival in Amsterdam. In 2015 he made the feature film «The Daughter», which was shown at the film festivals in Venice, Toronto, London and Stockholm. From 2015 to 2017 Stone was Resident Director at Theater Basel, where his productions included «John Gabriel Borkman» after Henrik Ibsen (2015, co-production by Theater Basel, Vienna Burgtheater and the Wiener Festwochen, named «Production of the Year», by «Theater heute» magazine and invited to the Berlin Theatertreffen 2016); «Angels in America» by Tony Kushner (2015, awarded the NESTROY Prize for «Best Production in the German Language»); «The Dead City» by Erich Wolfgang Korngold (2016) and «Three Sisters» after Anton Chekhov (2016, named «Play of the Year» by «Theater heute», invited to the Berlin Theatertreffen 2017). This was followed by numerous international productions including «Yerma» after Frederico García Lorca (2016, Young Vic Theatre, London); «Ibsen Huis» after motifs by Henrik Ibsen (2017, Toneelgroep Amsterdam); «Lear» by Aribert Reimann (2017, Salzburg Festival); «Hotel Strindberg» after August Strindberg (2018, co-production by the Vienna Burgtheater and Theater Basel, invited to the Berlin Theatertreffen 2019); «La Trilogie de la vengeance» after motifs by Ford, Middleton, Shakespeare and de Vega (2019, Odéon – Théâtre de l’Europe); «Médée» by Luigi Cherubini (2019, Salzburg Festival) and «La Traviata» by Giuseppe Verdi (2019, Opéra national de Paris).
Productions
The Australian writer and director Simon Stone took Chekhov’s famous play as the starting point for his rewriting – voted «Play of the Year 2017» in «Theater heute» magazine – that combines rapid fire dialogue, subtle character studies and the ambivalence that arises from them while locating the play thematically in the here and now.
Drei Schwestern (Three sisters)
PART I: MILLENNIUM APPROACHES
PART II: PERESTROIKA
The mid-1980s: the outbreak of the disease AIDS alarms New York. Louis, son of a wealthy Jewish family, abandons his sick boyfriend Prior and starts a relationship with conservative Mormon lawyer Joe. When Joe’s drug-dependent wife Harper retreats into dreams of everlasting ice, his strictly religious mother flies in outraged from Salt Lake City. The Republican Roy Cohn, a cynical and power-obsessed lawyer, insists until his last breath that he is not gay and does not have AIDS. Even on his deathbed, he refuses to stop arguing about this with his black nurse Belize. And then an angel breaks through Prior’s bedroom ceiling.
Engel in Amerika (Angels in America)
The Australian playwright and director Simon Stone whose attention-grabbing contemporary interpretations of classic dramas have caused an international sensation, takes characters, narrative threads and motifs from Horváth’s works, catapults them into the present day and weaves them together into a touching, post-heroic panorama of human effort in times of crisis.
Unsere Zeit (Our Time)