Phil Willmott is a British director, playwright, arts journalist, teacher, and founder of London based theatre production company The Steam Industry. He was the Artistic Director of the Finborough Theatre in London's Earl's Court from 1994 to 1999. He is also chief theatre reviewer for the British satirical radio series Mind The Gap, and chief critic for the online ticketing agency London Box Office.
Career at a glance
Phil Willmott is a multi-award winning director, artistic director, playwright, composer, librettist, teacher, arts journalist, and occasional actor. He has worked in theatres across the world on everything from classical drama, musicals and family shows to cabaret and cutting edge new writing.
Positions
He is founding Artistic Director of his award winning theatre company THE STEAM INDUSTRY incorporating The Finborough Theatre and London's annual Free Theatre Festival at the open-air "Scoop" amphitheatre on the South Bank. He was an Associate Artist of London's acclaimed Battersea Arts Centre for ten years and has also been Associate Director of the Yvonne Arnaud Theatre in Guildford and Co-Director of the UK's leading degree course in Musical Theatre at Arts Educational Schools London where he was also Head of Acting.
Awards
In 2009, he was awarded a prestigious TMA award for "Outstanding production of a musical" and nominated for the What's on Stage "Best Regional Theatre" prize for his musical Once Upon a Time at the Adelphi . In London he received a Peter Brook Award for his annual classical productions and family shows at the Scoop and numerous London Fringe Awards. In 2014 he was awarded the first ever Owle Schreame Award for innovation in historical theatre, for his production of The Ring Cycle Plays. He has also been the recipient of a Brooks Atkinson New Dramatists Award in New York.
London theatre directing
In the West End, he directed the tenth anniversary cast of Fame and Treasure Island ; A Midsummer Night's Dream in Dubai; Blowing Whistles ; You Don't Kiss ; the DVD recording of rock musical Poe at the Abbey Road Studios and Liberace's Suit and I Love You You're Perfect, Now Change. For his own company, The Steam Industry, award winning productions of new writing have included The Fundraisers, Fucking Men, Watch Out for Mr Stork, Venetian Heat, Born Bad and The Oedipus Table, and classics such as Crime and Punishment, The Grapes of Wrath, Trelawny of the 'Wells' and Loyalties and Blood Wedding, Helen of Troy, Disney's Jungle Book, Petite Rouge, The Caucasian Chalk Circle, The Cyclops, Children of Hercules, Treasure Island, Oedipus, Agamemnon, Androcles and the Lion, and The London Nativity at the Scoop. His other notable Steam Industry productions include Joe DiPietro's play Fucking Men which transferred from the Finborough Theatre to a box office record-breaking run Off West End at The Kings Head; Victor/Victoria, The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui ; Measure for Measure ; Ring Round the Moon ; The Winter's Tale ; Titus Andronicus, Germaine Greer'sLysistrata, Murdered Sleep, Inherit the Wind, Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, The Sound of Music, The King and I, Calamity Jane and Sweet Charity ; South Pacific, Joe Orton's Funeral Games and his own musical Dick Daredevil and play Venom ; Joe Orton's Crimes of Passion and his own plays Stealing the Scene, Succulence and Mermaid Sandwich ; and radical Shakespeare adaptations The Wax King, Iago and Illyria at The Man in The Moon. In 2013, Willmott directed the Modern World Premiere of Fair Em at the Union Theatre.
Regional theatre directing
For Liverpool's Everyman and Playhouse theatres he has directed Much Ado About Nothing, Billy Liar, Athol Fugard's Master Harold and the Boys & his own musicals Once Upon a Time at the Adelphi & Around the World in Eighty Days. Elsewhere regionally he has directed Rent ; Pal Joey ; Beautiful and Damned ; Angels in America and Kiss of the Spider Woman .
Family shows
Pantomime includes two productions of Lesley Joseph in Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs ; Sleeping Beauty ; his own versions of Snow White starring Toyah Willcox, Richard O'Brien, Warwick Davies and Suzanne Shaw ; Aladdin and writing a new Pantomusical of Dick Whittington for Oxford Playhouse.
Cabaret, concert and event directing
He has directed cabaret and concert tours of Four Poofs and A Piano and Nonsense, Children's Laureate Michael Rosen's collaboration with composer Colin Riley. He devised and directed Ugly Bugs Ball with the BBC Big Band for the 2009 Olympic Launch Day. His community play Don Juan in Kingston launched the Rose Theatre in Kingston with a cast of nearly 200, and he has directed on-board entertainment for Swan Hellenic's Minerva Cruise Ships and staged The London International Film Awards.
Teaching and new writing development
He has led new writing development projects at Soho Theatre and The National Theatre Studio, lectured at Goldsmith's College, RADA and the Brit School and directed students in The Seven Ages of Sondheim, Nicholas Nickleby, Petite Rouge, Sherlock Holmes – The Early Years and Jesus Christ Superstar Romeo and Juliet Dear Anyone Napoli Millionaria, Three Men on a Horse and BackstageThe Taming of the Shrew, Howard Barker's The Possibilities and First Love
Playwriting, composition and journalism
His work as a playwright and composer is widely published and performed internationally and as a journalist he regularly broadcasts, blogs and writes about theatre.
