Hello!

On this site you will find my full CV as Director, Actor, Author and Teacher, my brief memoir, A Life with Shakespeare, together with a host of downloadable resources including

edited Shakespeare texts and Shakespeare source material derived from my 18 years as Artistic Director of Shakespeare at the Tobacco Factory.

 You can also find texts of the four plays I wrote in the 1970s and 1980s for the Mermaid Theatre's Molecule Theatre of Science, and those I have written much more recently in collaboration with Dominic Power;

 also some of Dominic's own performed work.

But first, some news:

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Spring 2024

Click on 'Courses' above to see the announcement of my next 'Interpreting Shakespeare' class, on The Tempest to be held in Mousehole, Cornwall from Thursday 9th to Sunday 12th of May.

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Summer 2023

I began to review theatre books for the online Stagetalk Magazine. On its website you will now find my thoughts on five books:

          Greg Doran's My Shakespeare: A Director's Journey through the First Folio

          Oliver Ford Davies' An Actor's Life in Twelve Productions

          Bill Alexander's Exploring Shakespeare: A Director's Notes from the Rehearsal              Room

          Jonathan Bates' Mad About Shakespeare: Life Lessons from the Bard

          Chris Laoutaris'  Shakespeare's Book: The Intertwined Lives Behind the First                  Folio

– all well worth a read.

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April 21st 2022

'Shakespeare on the Factory Floor'

My book about Shakespeare production, based on my Tobacco Factory experience, is published today by Nick Hern Books. It is available widely on the internet, directly from NHB via its website, and at bookshops specialising in theatre books, such as the National Theatre.

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‘The clear-sightedness, wit and depth of knowledge and insight into the plays and their worlds is unparalleled… should be required reading for everyone approaching these plays… A fabulous book, brimful of wisdom and revelations and a gift to anyone interested in Shakespeare or, quite frankly, in people.’ John Heffernan, actor

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‘Andrew Hilton’s Tobacco Factory Shakespeares were an inspiration… What audiences saw and heard was not a display but an uncovering. His productions did not add to the drama: they revealed it... In Shakespeare on the Factory Floor, Hilton has once again lit up Shakespeare: lucid and penetrating on the page and on the stage.’ Susannah Clapp, theatre critic of the Observer

‘The detail and simplicity of Andrew Hilton’s directing is as potent in his writing as it is in the rehearsal room... a wonderful book.’ Dorothea Myer-Bennett, actor

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October 15th 2021

stf exits stage left

At a meeting of Members of Shakespeare at the Tobacco Factory (the Charity) on the 13th of October the Board of Trustees’ explained their decision that stf should cease production and lie dormant for the foreseeable future. A number of Trustees would remain in place to oversee the use of its remaining assets - predicted to be in the region of £70,000 - to create a small annual bursary to help fund young actors and others in the theatre arts struggling to pay for their training. [Autumn 2022 update: the company is now to be wound up completely, with the Bristol Vic Theatre School administering the bursary fund]

   The corona pandemic had hit theatres very hard and had certainly proved a huge obstacle to sustaining stf into the future, but an even more crucial factor behind the decision was that, three years before, the company had lost its spring season at the Tobacco Factory. Shortly after the announcement of my retirement as Artistic Director in 2017, Lauren Scholey and Mike Tweddle informed us that the Tobacco Factory Theatres Management would be taking over the twelve-week spring season, offering us only a short, four-week slot in the early autumn in its place. 

   Though not entirely unexpected - we had never had a long-term hold on the spring slot, and TFT had every right to capitalise on what is one of the best producing periods in the year - this was a crisis for us, the spring season being the economic foundation of our unsubsidised work. From the very beginning in 2000, a twelve-week season at the Factory had made our venture economic; a 4-week one could not. As a result, Morag Massey, now made Executive Director, would have to work single-handed as there could be no new full-time Artistic Director afforded to replace me, and no help in the office, as Hannah Collins’ position had also to be made redundant. Morag put huge energy into developing the company’s national and international touring and into an attempt to find new sources of financial support - perhaps for the very first time from public funds. In the first respect, she succeeded beautifully; for 2018 she secured a five-week season for Elizabeth Freestone’s production of Henry V at the Ustinov Theatre in Bath for June/July, to be followed by the four weeks at the Tobacco Factory in September/October and then a five week U.K. tour to Scarborough, Lancaster, Malvern, Bury St Edmunds and Exeter - the whole thing kicking off with the company’s fourth appearance at the Neuss Shakespeare Festival in Germany; then in 2019 Elizabeth Freestone returned to direct Much Ado About Nothing for the four weeks at the Factory and a return visit to Wilton’s Music Hall. These were exciting new departures, two fine productions, and a triumph for Morag herself, but they did not answer the company’s financial need; its reserves continued to dwindle, and though Morag secured a number of Trust grants, and two from the DCMS Culture Recovery Fund when the pandemic hit, no source of the required revenue funding could be found, and the writing was on the wall.

   I never imagined that stf would survive indefinitely. I never imagined that it would take over my own life for almost two decades, or that it would earn an international reputation. My original idea, indeed, was for a five year plan, with another one to follow if the first proved a success. In my prospectus for the first, commercial, company I had written:

   This [the 5-year plan] is born not only of business practice but of artistic reality. Theatre companies too often outstay their welcome. In this they are encouraged by funding bodies who like to see them take root, then consolidate, grow, even diversify. This is too often an organisational, not an artistic development. While Shakespeare at the Tobacco Factory will not be constituted under some kind of five-year guillotine, there will be no assumption that it will continue unless its vitality is undiminished and its audience is hungry for more.   

   A theatre company hanging on to life merely because (like a mountain) it is there is an unhappy prospect. Though we did have our ups and our downs, I hope stf never lost its zest or purpose, and that it never did outstay its welcome. Whether its enforced closure now is timely, or otherwise, is for others to judge. I will remain forever grateful to George Ferguson for his vision for his wonderful building; to all the many people (I estimate at least 600) who contributed to the company’s success, whether as artists, technicians, administrators, sponsors, patrons, trustees or volunteers; to our co-producers at the Factory, the Barbican and the Bristol Old Vic; and to our hosts in Germany, Romania, Galway and around the UK. I hope all can join with me in looking back with immense pride.

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July 25th 2021:

During lockdown I directed a streamed reading of KING LEAR in aid of 'Acting for Others' charities, with a very distinguished cast, including David Horovitch, Nicholas le Prevost, Rory Kinnear, Dorothea Myer-Bennett and Richard O'Callaghan. The performance, which has attracted some high praise, remains available on YouTube:

https://youtu.be/z1hzjxF88nA

November 1st 2020:

As part of the University of Bristol’s online ‘Good Grief Festival’ (October 30th - November 1st) Saskia Portway and I delivered a 40-minute Lewis Fry Memorial Lecture on ‘Grief in Shakespeare’. You can purchase on-demand access to recordings of all the festival events for 1 year - including the contributions from Robert Webb, Alice Roberts, Nikesh Shukla and Valentine Warner - for only £20, via the festival website:  www.goodgrieffest.com

November 28th 2019:

Jonathan Miller - A personal appreciation

Like so many of my generation working in the theatre, I was deeply saddened to hear of the death yesterday of Sir Jonathan Miller. Jonathan directed a very much admired HAMLET for Shakespeare at the Tobacco Factory in 2008, in a single stroke widening the company’s reach and reputation. That production was a mere breath in an extraordinarily wide-ranging and distinguished career in comedy, medicine, theatre, documentary and opera – few have packed so much into a single life – but it may also be thought that it was a fortunate but rather random moment in stf’s own career.

   The truth is that it was Jonathan who inspired, and enabled me to become a Shakespeare actor and director. Had I not been fortunate to be cast by him in student productions of Hamlet and Julius Caesar when he was seeking to establish his own credentials in classical theatre in the early 1970s, or then to be promoted by him in the professional theatre as both actor and director, it is all but certain that I would never have taken the path I did, and certainly never conceived the idea of a Shakespeare company in an old Tobacco Factory. At one remove Jonathan Miller was stf’s chief begetter.

   I last met him in February 2017 when his wonderful wife Rachel invited me to have lunch with them in their Camden Town home. It was immediately obvious that his memory was affected – for a disconcerting moment he looked blankly at me on the doorstep – perhaps I had come to read the meter, or urge him to repent – but with the materials of memory nudged back into place, he was himself again; charming, witty, irreverent and at times caustic, his enviable command of language seemingly undimmed. I left that day, so thankful to Rachel for the opportunity to be reacquainted with them both, but rightly fearing that I would not see Jonathan again.

   In commentary immediately following his death, I was both saddened and surprised to hear a reference on Radio 4 to his occasional cruelty to those he worked with. Indeed there are many directors who find whipping boys on whom to unload their frustrations and insecurities, but in the five productions of his that I performed in, I never witnessed anything of the kind, nor have I ever heard it said of him before. His command of language could run away with him, and he could never resist the witty but outrageous comment when interviewed by the press or by Michael Parkinson. The world of opera was a particular target; I remember him musing that he could never understand a director wishing to put ‘such an inert mass’ at the centre of his production, or talking of the ‘dinosaur’ sopranos who normally held the stage. The ‘inert mass’ in question was Luciano Pavarotti, and the ‘dinosaurs’ almost comparably distinguished. This failure to self-censor made for entertaining television, but probably hurt him professionally and made enemies of those that would never encounter him in the rehearsal room where, face to face, he was unfailingly courteous, warm and generous; and anyone and everyone was a fit partner – if often a largely silent one – in an urgent and untiring debate about art, science and politics. We were charmed and stimulated – and often helpless with laughter.

   Kate Bassett’s 2012 biography – In Two Minds – is an engrossing account of Jonathan’s astonishing achievement. When I picked it up (I had contributed a few small details to it myself) I expected to recognise every event, every programme, every production. But I discovered I had known only a fraction of the whole.

   He was a very remarkable man indeed, and I owe him more than I can express.