Tom Morris

Tom Morris is Artistic Director of Bristol Old Vic.

In 2011 he won the Tony Award for Best Direction of a Play for the National Theatre Broadway production of War Horse, along with co-director Marianne Elliott.

At the helm of Bristol Old Vic, Tom Morris has directed Juliet and Her Romeo and Swallows and Amazons which is playing in the West End this Christmas followed by a national tour.  Tom has also overseen the development of Bristol Jam, the UK’s only festival of improvised performance, and Bristol Ferment, a programme which supports artists, as they develop their work and show it at regular intervals throughout the year.

Tom is also Associate Director at the National Theatre where he developed and co-directed Every Good Boy Deserves Favour and War Horse and co-wrote A Matter of Life and Death with Emma Rice, with whom he also wrote The Wooden Frock and Nights at the Circus for Kneehigh.

Tom was Artistic Director at Battersea Arts Centre (BAC) from 1995 to 2004 where he revolutionised the programme, oversaw a radical management restructure and led the organisation from the verge of bankruptcy to financial stability.  Whilst at BAC, Tom wrote Ben Hur, Jason and the Argonauts and World Cup Final 1966 with Carl Heap and directed many shows including Newsnight the Opera,Macbeth (with Corin Redgrave), and Othello Music

At BAC, Morris also founded BAC Opera, the Festival which launched The Shout’s Tall Stories, Jerry Springer: The Opera and the hugely successful contemporary opera company Tête à Tête.  As part of ENO’s new season, he is currently directing the London stage premiere of John Adams’s The Death of Klinghoffer, a poetic retelling of the 1985 hijacking of a cruise ship Achille Lauro by terrorists which was a flashpoint in the conflict between Israel and Palestine.  See: http://www.eno.org/see-whats-on/productions/production-page.php?itemid=1664&tab=synopsis

Tom was a critic and feature writer for a range of national publications, including The Times Literary Supplement, the Daily Telegraph and the Observer.  Tom has also served on the boards of Complicite, the Arts Patrons’ Trust, Punchdrunk and is Patron and Founding Chair of the JMK Trust.

Related Sessions
Saturday 29 October 2011, 5.15pm Students' Union

Rethinking Privacy in an age of disclosure

"In few places does the free exchange of views take place on so wide a range of issues as at the Battle of Ideas. Whatever the headlines of 2011 prove to be, the Battle of Ideas is where they will be most robustly debated."
Andrew Copson, chief executive, British Humanist Association

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