Michael Wilcox

Michael Wilcox

Michael Wilcox is a British playwright. He was resident playwright at the Dovecot Arts Centre in Stockton-on-Tees for the 1977 season. In 1980, he was resident playwright at the Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh. In 2008, he signed a letter against Bush Theatre budget cuts. He was educated at Alleyn Court School, Westcliff-on-Sea; Malvern College in Worcestershire; Borough Road College in Isleworth, London, where he trained to be a teacher; and University College London, where he achieved a BA Honours degree in English Literature. In the early 1970s, Wilcox founded Northern Playwrights Society with dramatist C. P. Taylor to promote the interests of playwrights living in the Northern Arts region. This has evolved into New Writing North, which is one of Britain's most successful regional writers' agencies. In addition to his theatre writing, Wilcox edited five volumes of Gay Plays for Methuen, who also published his autobiographical journal of 1989, Outlaw in the Hills. His monograph "Benjamin Britten's Operas" was published by Absolute Press in 1997 and was shortlisted by the Royal Philharmonic Society for its music book of the year award. Wilcox has also worked as opera librettist for John Metcalf's Tornrak (Welsh National Opera: 1990) and Eddie McGuire's Cullercoats Tommy (Northern Sinfonia and Northern Stage: 1993). For Opera North, he worked with Jeremy Sams on a new libretto for Chabrier's Le roi malgré lui that was first staged at the Edinburgh International Festival as The Reluctant King in 1995. His television dramas include episodes of Crown Court and Cluedo, Cricket (BBC TV : Plays for Tomorrow:1981), Accounts (C4 : Film on Four:1982), Lent (BBC TV : 1985 : Pye and TRICS awards for best script of the year), Inspector Morse : Last Bus to Woodstock (1988) and Doctor Finlay : Winning the Peace (STV : 1993). He has also served as a board member for Northern Arts, Northern Stage, NTC Touring Company, and, for some years, was on the Arts Council of England's New Theatre Writing Panel. His play, Betty and Maud (2010), had its world premiere in the middle of the Pacific Ocean on board a Saga cruise liner. During the 2012 cricket season he was chairman of Haltwhistle Cricket Club in Haltwhistle, Northumberland.

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