Giles Pollock Havergal CBE

Order of the British Empire

The Most Excellent Order of the British Empire is an order of chivalry established on 4 June 1917 by George V of the United Kingdom. The Order comprises five classes in civil and military divisions...

 (born 9 June 1938) is a Scottish

Scottish people

The Scottish people , or Scots, are a nation and ethnic group native to Scotland. Historically they emerged from an amalgamation of the Picts and Gaels, incorporating neighbouring Britons to the south as well as invading Germanic peoples such as the Anglo-Saxons and the Norse.In modern use,...

 theatre director, actor

Actor

An actor is a person who acts in a dramatic production and who works in film, television, theatre, or radio in that capacity...

, and playwright

Playwright

A playwright, also called a dramatist, is a person who writes plays.The term is not a variant spelling of "playwrite", but something quite distinct: the word wright is an archaic English term for a craftsman or builder...

. He was artistic director of Glasgow

Glasgow

Glasgow is the largest city in Scotland and third most populous in the United Kingdom. The city is situated on the River Clyde in the country's west central lowlands...

's Citizens Theatre from 1969 until he stepped down in 2003, one of the triumvirate of directors at the theatre, alongside Philip Prowse

Philip Prowse

Philip Prowse is a stage director and designer, and was one of the triumvirate of directors at the Citizens Theatre in Glasgow from 1970 until 2004....

 and Robert David MacDonald

Robert David MacDonald

Robert David MacDonald , was a Scottish playwright, translator and theatre director.-Work as a Theatre Director:...

.

Early years

Giles Pollock Havergal was born in Edinburgh

Edinburgh

Edinburgh is the capital city of Scotland, the second largest city in Scotland, and the eighth most populous in the United Kingdom. The City of Edinburgh Council governs one of Scotland's 32 local government council areas. The council area includes urban Edinburgh and a rural area...

, Scotland

Scotland

Scotland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. Occupying the northern third of the island of Great Britain, it shares a border with England to the south and is bounded by the North Sea to the east, the Atlantic Ocean to the north and west, and the North Channel and Irish Sea to the...

 to Dr. Henry MacLeod Havergal and his wife Margaret.

Career

Havergal was director of Watford

Watford

Watford is a town and borough in Hertfordshire, England, situated northwest of central London and within the bounds of the M25 motorway. The borough is separated from Greater London to the south by the urbanised parish of Watford Rural in the Three Rivers District.Watford was created as an urban...

 Palace Theatre (1965–69) and director of the Citizens Theatre from 1969 to 2003. He directed over 80 plays in Glasgow including works by Shakespeare and Bertolt Brecht

Bertolt Brecht

Bertolt Brecht was a German poet, playwright, and theatre director.An influential theatre practitioner of the 20th century, Brecht made equally significant contributions to dramaturgy and theatrical production, the latter particularly through the seismic impact of the tours undertaken by the...

. He has also directed over 20 children and family Christmas productions, as well as guest-directing for companies such as Scottish Opera.

Havergal's production of Travels with My Aunt

Travels with My Aunt (play)

Travels with My Aunt is a 1989 comedy adapted by Scottish dramatist by Giles Havergal from the Graham Greene novel of the same title. The play was first staged at Citizens Theatre in Glasgow on 10 November 1989 with Havergal, Derwent Watson, Patrick Hannaway, and Christopher Gee, and has since been...

, adapted from the Graham Greene

Graham Greene

Henry Graham Greene, OM, CH was an English author, playwright and literary critic. His works explore the ambivalent moral and political issues of the modern world...

 novel of the same title

Travels with My Aunt

Travels with My Aunt is a novel written by English author Graham Greene.The novel follows the travels of Henry Pulling, a retired bank manager, and his eccentric Aunt Augusta as they find their way across Europe, and eventually even further afield...

, was first presented in Glasgow in 1989 and then played in the West End where it won an Laurence Olivier Award in 1993, and off Broadway in 1995.

Havergal's production of his and Robert David Macdonald's adaptation of Death in Venice

Death in Venice

The novella Death in Venice was written by the German author Thomas Mann, and was first published in 1913 as Der Tod in Venedig. The plot of the work presents a great writer suffering writer's block who visits Venice and is liberated and uplifted, then increasingly obsessed, by the sight of a...

by Thomas Mann

Thomas Mann

Thomas Mann was a German novelist, short story writer, social critic, philanthropist, essayist, and 1929 Nobel Prize laureate, known for his series of highly symbolic and ironic epic novels and novellas, noted for their insight into the psychology of the artist and the intellectual...

 was first presented in Glasgow in 2000. It played at the Manhattan

Manhattan

Manhattan is the oldest and the most densely populated of the five boroughs of New York City. Located primarily on the island of Manhattan at the mouth of the Hudson River, the boundaries of the borough are identical to those of New York County, an original county of the state of New York...

 Ensemble Theater, New York

New York

New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...

in 2002, following performances in Stockholm, Copenhagen & Manchester (UK).

External links