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{{Short description|English dramatist (1935–2024)}}
{{lede too short|date=April 2024}}
{{Use British English|date=August 2011}} {{Use British English|date=August 2011}}
{{More footnotes|date=December 2009}} {{Use dmy dates|date=September 2020}}
{{Infobox writer
⚫ | name = Trevor Griffiths
| birth_date = {{Birth date|1935|4|4|df=y}}
| birth_place = ], England
| death_date = {{Death date and age|2024|3|29|1935|4|4|df=y}}
| death_place = ], England
| resting_place =
| occupation = Dramatist
| period = 1964–2011
| spouse = {{ubl|{{marriage|Janice Stansfield|1960|1977|end = died}}|Gill Cliff}}
| children = 3
| alma_mater = ]
⚫ }}
⚫ '''Trevor Griffiths''' (4 April 1935 – 29 March 2024) was an English dramatist.


==Early life ==
⚫ '''Trevor Griffiths''' (born 4 April 1935, ], Manchester) is an English ].
Born in ], ] and brought up as a ] by his mother, Annie, a bus conductor and father, Ernest, who worked in a factory. He attended ] before being accepted into ] in 1952 to read English.<ref name="Coveney">{{cite news |last1=Coveney |first1=Michael |date=2 April 2024 |title=Trevor Griffiths obituary |url=https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2024/apr/02/trevor-griffiths-obituary |access-date=2 April 2024 |work=The Guardian |publisher=}}</ref> He graduated in 1955.<ref name=":0">{{Cite news |last=Wolf |first=Matt |date=2024-04-13 |title=Trevor Griffiths, Marxist Writer for Stage and Screen, Dies at 88 |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/09/theater/trevor-griffiths-dead.html |access-date=2024-04-13 |work=The New York Times |page=A22 |language=en-US |volume=173 |issue=60123 |issn=0362-4331}}</ref> After a brief involvement with professional football and a year in ], he became a teacher<ref name = Coveney/> and then an education officer for the ].<ref name=":0" />


==Career==
Raised as a Roman Catholic, he attended ] before being accepted into ] in 1952 to read English. After a brief involvement with professional football and a year in National Service, he became a teacher.
===1960s–1970s===
Griffiths became chairman of the Manchester Left Club, and the editor of the ]'s ''Northern Voice'' newspaper. Gradually he tired of political journalism, began writing plays, and was eventually commissioned by ] to provide a script for '']'' (BBC, 1964–70). The play, "The Love Maniac", was about a teacher, but even though Garnett took the commission with him when he moved to ] and formed Kestrel Productions, it was never produced.<ref name=screenonlinebio/>


He became chairman of the Manchester Left Club, and the editor of the ]'s ''Northern Voice'' newspaper. Gradually he tired of political journalism, began writing plays, and was eventually commissioned by ] to provide a script for '']'' (BBC, 1964–70). The play, "The Love Maniac", was about a teacher, but even though Garnett took the commission with him when he moved to ] and formed Kestrel Productions, it was never produced. Buoyed by Garnett's enthusiasm and influenced by the Paris evenements of May 1968, he wrote ''Occupations'', a stage play about ] and the Fiat factory occupations of 1920s Italy.<ref name="Chalmers">Robert Chalmers , ''The Independent'', 9 August 2009</ref> Buoyed by Garnett's enthusiasm and influenced by the ], he wrote ''Occupations'', a stage play about the Italian Communist ] and the Fiat ] of 1920s Italy.<ref name="Chalmers">Robert Chalmers, , '']'', 9 August 2009.</ref> The play had been submitted to the ] (RSC) as early as 1964, but had then been rejected as being "too controversial".<ref name="Howard19">Alycia Smith Howard, , Aldershot: Ashgate, 2006, pp. 19–20.</ref> Following its premiere in Manchester the previous year,<ref name="Patterson">Michael Patterson, , Cambridge University Press, 2003, p. 69.</ref> the eventual RSC production in 1971 of ''Occupations'', Griffiths first full-length stage play,<ref name="Patterson"/> was directed by ]. Intending to affect "bourgeois theatre" with his viewpoint, Griffiths described his approach as being "committed to analysing ] and to condemn ] without discrediting socialism in the eyes of the world".<ref name="Howard19"/>


The play soon brought him to the attention of ], the literary manager of the ] who promptly commissioned Griffiths to write the play that became ''The Party''. This critique of the British revolutionary left featured the National's artistic director ] in his last stage role as the Glaswegian ]ist John Tagg.<ref name="Chalmers"/> A series of television plays, such as "All Good Men" ('']'', BBC, 31 January 1974) and "Absolute Beginners" (BBC, 19 April 1974, in the series '']''), followed. He developed this further with his series about parliamentary democracy, '']'' (ITV, 1976), which was probably the highest expression of his dialectical technique. The play soon brought him to the attention of ], the literary manager of the ] who promptly commissioned Griffiths to write the play that became ''The Party''.<ref name=screenonlinebio/> This critique of the British revolutionary left featured the National's artistic director ] in his last stage role as the Glaswegian ]ist John Tagg.<ref name="Chalmers"/> Griffiths had by now begun to write television plays, such as "All Good Men" ('']'', BBC, 31 January 1974) and "Through the Night" (2 December 1975).<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://www.screenonline.org.uk/tv/id/1046969/index.html|title=BFI Screenonline: All Good Men (1974)|website=www.screenonline.org.uk}}</ref><ref name=throughthenight>{{Cite web|url=http://www.screenonline.org.uk/tv/id/1086102/index.html|title=BFI Screenonline: Through the Night (1975)|website=www.screenonline.org.uk}}</ref> Influenced by the experience of his wife, the latter is concerned with a woman's treatment for breast cancer.<ref name=throughthenight/> In between these two plays came "Absolute Beginners" (BBC, 19 April 1974), in the series '']'', which presents a version of events in 1903 involving ] and ].<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://www.screenonline.org.uk/tv/id/1046963/index.html|title=BFI Screenonline: Absolute Beginners (1974)|website=www.screenonline.org.uk}}</ref> He developed a series about parliamentary democracy, '']'', which was first shown by ] in the summer of 1976.<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://www.screenonline.org.uk/tv/id/557903/index.html|title=BFI Screenonline: Bill Brand (1976)|website=www.screenonline.org.uk}}</ref>


⚫ Despite his considerable success in the theatre, he said of his work as a television dramatist in 1976: "I simply cannot understand socialist playwrights who do not devote most of their time to television... hat if for every '']'' that went out, a ''Bill Brand'' went out, there would be a real struggle for the popular imagination... nd people would be free to make liberating choices about where reality lies."<ref name=screenonlinebio>{{Cite web|url=http://www.screenonline.org.uk/people/id/539442/index.html|title=BFI Screenonline: Griffiths, Trevor (1935- ) Biography|website=www.screenonline.org.uk}}</ref>
⚫ In the meantime Griffiths returned to the theatre with the ] production of '']'' directed by ] first performed on 20 February 1975, which later transferred to Broadway. '']'' is set in a Manchester night-school, where a group of budding comics gather for a final briefing before performing to an agent from London. The play is set in real time, i.e. as the real time is 7.27, the clock on the wall of the school room also says 7.27. Griffiths' reputation at the time was such that ] asked him to write a screenplay for project about the US revolutionary ], which eventually became the Oscar-winning film '']'' (1981), but Griffiths departed from the project before the script was completed and estimates that only 45% of the script for the finished film was by himself.<ref name="Chalmers"/>


In the meantime, Griffiths had continued to write for the theatre with '']'' commissioned by the ]. The premiere production of the play was directed by ], then artistic director of the Nottingham theatre, and was first performed on 20 February 1975.<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://www.theguardian.com/stage/2015/feb/20/comedians-trevor-griffiths-racist-sexist-standup-comedy-40th-anniversary|title=Comedians: racist and sexist standups who messed with audiences' minds|date=20 February 2015|website=the Guardian}}</ref> '']'' is set in a Manchester night-school, where a group of budding comics gather for a final briefing before performing to an agent from London. The play is set in real time, i.e. as the real time is 7.27, the clock on the wall of the school room also says 7.27. It subsequently transferred to Broadway, and was later adapted for television by Eyre while he was responsible for ''Play for Today''.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.ibdb.com/broadway-production/comedians-3875#People|title=Comedians – Broadway Play – Original &#124; IBDB|website=www.ibdb.com}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web|url=http://www.screenonline.org.uk/tv/id/1044487/index.html|title=BFI Screenonline: Comedians (1979)|website=www.screenonline.org.uk}}</ref>
⚫ Griffiths continued to work in the theatre, gaining success with the touring production of ''Oi for England'' (ITV, 17 April 1982). His television play, ''Country'' (BBC, 20 October 1981), set just before the Labour victory at the ] is "a not wholly unsympathetic study of a Tory family".<ref name="Chalmers"/> He wrote the television serial, ''Last Place on Earth'' (ITV, 1985),{{Citation needed|date=December 2009}} the screenplay for '']'' (1986) for director ], and the play '']'' (1990), an adaptation of a film.


===1980s===
⚫ Griffiths's ''Food for Ravens'' (BBC, 15 November 1997), was commissioned to mark the 100th anniversary of ]'s birth, but at one point the BBC decided not to network the play, and instead restrict it to Wales. Only a newspaper campaign led by Griffiths and the leading actor ] caused the BBC to relent, and it was finally shown in a late-night slot on ].M<ref name="Chalmers"/>
⚫ Griffiths' reputation at the time was such that ] asked him to write a screenplay for a project about the US revolutionary ], which eventually became the Oscar-winning film '']'' (1981), but Griffiths departed from the project before the script was completed and estimated that he had written only 45% of the script for the finished film.<ref name="Chalmers"/>


⚫ Griffiths continued to work in the theatre, gaining success with the touring production of ''Oi for England'' (ITV, 17 April 1982). His television play, ''Country'' (BBC, 20 October 1981), set just before the Labour victory at the ] is "a not wholly unsympathetic study of a Tory family".<ref name="Chalmers"/> He wrote the television serial, '']'' (ITV, 1985), and the screenplay for '']'' (1986) for director ].<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://literature.britishcouncil.org/writer/trevor-griffiths|title=Trevor Griffiths - Literature|website=literature.britishcouncil.org}}</ref> He created a screen adaptation in 1981 for ]'s novel '']'' and in 1990, ''Piano'', a stage version of a 1977 film itself based on ]'s play, '']''.<ref name=":0" />
⚫ Despite his considerable success in the theatre, he said of his work as a television dramatist in 1976: "I simply cannot understand socialist playwrights who do not devote most of their time to television.... hat if for every '']'' that went out, a ''Bill Brand'' went out, there would be a real struggle for the popular imagination.... nd people would be free to make liberating choices about where reality lies."{{Citation needed|date=December 2009}}


===1990s–2000s===
⚫ In November 2008 Griffiths participated in a discussion on “The Writer and Revolution” with the ]'s arts editor David Walsh at the University of Manchester.<ref></ref> In 2009 he completed the play '']''.
⚫ Griffiths's ''Food for Ravens'' (BBC, 15 November 1997), was commissioned to mark the 100th anniversary of ]'s birth, but at one point the BBC decided not to network the play, and instead restrict it to ]. Only a newspaper campaign led by Griffiths and the leading actor ] caused the BBC to relent, and it was finally shown in a late-night slot on ].<ref name="Chalmers"/>


⚫ In November 2008 Griffiths participated in a discussion on "The Writer and Revolution" with the ]'s arts editor ] at the University of Manchester.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2008/11/tgdw-n13.html|title=Trevor Griffiths and David Walsh discuss "The Writer and Revolution"|website=World Socialist Web Site|date=13 November 2008 }}</ref> In 2009 he completed his last play, '']''.<ref>{{Cite news|url=https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/a-new-world-a-life-of-thomas-paine-at-shakespeares-globe-se1-gwkzn07d8p0|title=A New World: A Life of Thomas Paine at Shakespeare's Globe, SE1|first=Maxie|last=Szalwinska|date=21 June 2023 |via=www.thetimes.co.uk}}</ref>
⚫ He participated in the ]'s 2011 project ''Sixty Six'' for which he has written a piece based upon a chapter of the ]<ref>http://www.bushtheatre.co.uk/biography/writers/</ref>


⚫ Griffiths participated in the ]'s 2011 project '']'', for which he wrote a piece based on the book of ] from the ].<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://bushtheatre.co.uk/person_org/sixty-six-writers/|title=Sixty-Six Writers|website=bushtheatre.co.uk}}</ref>
By way of ], there is a thread which runs through Griffiths’ work and life that, some might say, oversteps the boundaries of ]. Griffiths’ romance with politics and revolution may be questioned in works such as Fatherland in which a man learns that his father was a nazi.


==Personal life and death==
Griffiths is an anarchist and his chosen epitaph up yours sunshine, ]. Eddie Waters in Comedians, possibly an alter ego of Griffiths, confesses obtaining an erection at the sight of nazi concentration camps. Underlining Griffiths’ personal catch phrase “strategic penetration”.
In 1960, Griffiths married Janice Stansfield; the couple had three children and were married until her death in an aviation accident in Cuba in 1977.<ref name = Coveney/> Griffiths married Gill Cliff in 1992.<ref name = Coveney/><ref name=":0" /> He lived in ].<ref name = Coveney/>

Yet no political institution is perfect, as Griffiths himself acknowledges in works from Bill Brand to the more mature ].

At the dawning of the millennium Griffiths was gifted a manuscript, the most precious text in all the world. He burnt it. And the day man invaded Babylon he broke his own heart.<ref>http://www.Joss-Ink.com</ref>

It was ruled a ] by the ] in 2004.


Griffiths died from heart failure at his home on 29 March 2024, six days before his 89th birthday.<ref name = Coveney/><ref name=":0" />


==References== ==References==
{{Reflist}} {{Reflist|30em}}


==External links== ==External links==
* *
* *, BFI Screenonline
* {{imdb name|0341767}}
* *, ]
* *
* *Ann Talbot, , World Socialist Web Site, 21 February 2008.


{{Writers Guild of America Award for Best Original Screenplay}}
{{Use dmy dates|date=August 2011}}


{{Authority control|VIAF=42397151}} {{Authority control}}


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| DATE OF BIRTH = 4 April 1935
| PLACE OF BIRTH =
| DATE OF DEATH =
| PLACE OF DEATH =
⚫ }}
{{DEFAULTSORT:Griffiths, Trevor}} {{DEFAULTSORT:Griffiths, Trevor}}
] ]
] ]
] ]
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Latest revision as of 12:28, 13 April 2024

English dramatist (1935–2024)
This article's lead section may be too short to adequately summarize the key points. Please consider expanding the lead to provide an accessible overview of all important aspects of the article. (April 2024)

Trevor Griffiths
Born(1935-04-04)4 April 1935
Manchester, England
Died29 March 2024(2024-03-29) (aged 88)
Boston Spa, England
OccupationDramatist
Alma materManchester University
Period1964–2011
Spouse
  • Janice Stansfield ​ ​(m. 1960; died 1977)​
  • Gill Cliff
Children3

Trevor Griffiths (4 April 1935 – 29 March 2024) was an English dramatist.

Early life

Born in Ancoats, Manchester and brought up as a Roman Catholic by his mother, Annie, a bus conductor and father, Ernest, who worked in a factory. He attended St. Bede's College before being accepted into Manchester University in 1952 to read English. He graduated in 1955. After a brief involvement with professional football and a year in national service, he became a teacher and then an education officer for the BBC.

Career

1960s–1970s

Griffiths became chairman of the Manchester Left Club, and the editor of the Labour Party's Northern Voice newspaper. Gradually he tired of political journalism, began writing plays, and was eventually commissioned by Tony Garnett to provide a script for The Wednesday Play (BBC, 1964–70). The play, "The Love Maniac", was about a teacher, but even though Garnett took the commission with him when he moved to London Weekend Television and formed Kestrel Productions, it was never produced.

Buoyed by Garnett's enthusiasm and influenced by the Paris events of May 1968, he wrote Occupations, a stage play about the Italian Communist Antonio Gramsci and the Fiat factory occupations of 1920s Italy. The play had been submitted to the Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC) as early as 1964, but had then been rejected as being "too controversial". Following its premiere in Manchester the previous year, the eventual RSC production in 1971 of Occupations, Griffiths first full-length stage play, was directed by Buzz Goodbody. Intending to affect "bourgeois theatre" with his viewpoint, Griffiths described his approach as being "committed to analysing Marxism and to condemn Stalinism without discrediting socialism in the eyes of the world".

The play soon brought him to the attention of Kenneth Tynan, the literary manager of the National Theatre Company who promptly commissioned Griffiths to write the play that became The Party. This critique of the British revolutionary left featured the National's artistic director Laurence Olivier in his last stage role as the Glaswegian Trotskyist John Tagg. Griffiths had by now begun to write television plays, such as "All Good Men" (Play for Today, BBC, 31 January 1974) and "Through the Night" (2 December 1975). Influenced by the experience of his wife, the latter is concerned with a woman's treatment for breast cancer. In between these two plays came "Absolute Beginners" (BBC, 19 April 1974), in the series Fall of Eagles, which presents a version of events in 1903 involving Lenin and Trotsky. He developed a series about parliamentary democracy, Bill Brand, which was first shown by ITV in the summer of 1976.

Despite his considerable success in the theatre, he said of his work as a television dramatist in 1976: "I simply cannot understand socialist playwrights who do not devote most of their time to television... hat if for every Sweeney that went out, a Bill Brand went out, there would be a real struggle for the popular imagination... nd people would be free to make liberating choices about where reality lies."

In the meantime, Griffiths had continued to write for the theatre with Comedians commissioned by the Nottingham Playhouse. The premiere production of the play was directed by Richard Eyre, then artistic director of the Nottingham theatre, and was first performed on 20 February 1975. Comedians is set in a Manchester night-school, where a group of budding comics gather for a final briefing before performing to an agent from London. The play is set in real time, i.e. as the real time is 7.27, the clock on the wall of the school room also says 7.27. It subsequently transferred to Broadway, and was later adapted for television by Eyre while he was responsible for Play for Today.

1980s

Griffiths' reputation at the time was such that Warren Beatty asked him to write a screenplay for a project about the US revolutionary John Reed, which eventually became the Oscar-winning film Reds (1981), but Griffiths departed from the project before the script was completed and estimated that he had written only 45% of the script for the finished film.

Griffiths continued to work in the theatre, gaining success with the touring production of Oi for England (ITV, 17 April 1982). His television play, Country (BBC, 20 October 1981), set just before the Labour victory at the 1945 general election is "a not wholly unsympathetic study of a Tory family". He wrote the television serial, The Last Place on Earth (ITV, 1985), and the screenplay for Fatherland (1986) for director Ken Loach. He created a screen adaptation in 1981 for D.H. Lawrence's novel Sons and Lovers and in 1990, Piano, a stage version of a 1977 film itself based on Anton Chekov's play, Platonov.

1990s–2000s

Griffiths's Food for Ravens (BBC, 15 November 1997), was commissioned to mark the 100th anniversary of Aneurin Bevan's birth, but at one point the BBC decided not to network the play, and instead restrict it to Wales. Only a newspaper campaign led by Griffiths and the leading actor Brian Cox caused the BBC to relent, and it was finally shown in a late-night slot on BBC2.

In November 2008 Griffiths participated in a discussion on "The Writer and Revolution" with the World Socialist Web Site's arts editor David Walsh at the University of Manchester. In 2009 he completed his last play, A New World: A Life of Thomas Paine.

Griffiths participated in the Bush Theatre's 2011 project Sixty-Six Books, for which he wrote a piece based on the book of Habakkuk from the King James Bible.

Personal life and death

In 1960, Griffiths married Janice Stansfield; the couple had three children and were married until her death in an aviation accident in Cuba in 1977. Griffiths married Gill Cliff in 1992. He lived in Boston Spa.

Griffiths died from heart failure at his home on 29 March 2024, six days before his 89th birthday.

References

  1. ^ Coveney, Michael (2 April 2024). "Trevor Griffiths obituary". The Guardian. Retrieved 2 April 2024.
  2. ^ Wolf, Matt (13 April 2024). "Trevor Griffiths, Marxist Writer for Stage and Screen, Dies at 88". The New York Times. Vol. 173, no. 60123. p. A22. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 13 April 2024.
  3. ^ "BFI Screenonline: Griffiths, Trevor (1935- ) Biography". www.screenonline.org.uk.
  4. ^ Robert Chalmers, "Putting the world to rights: Trevor Griffiths on Olivier's dope-smoking, Marxist ranting and his 20-year purgatory", The Independent, 9 August 2009.
  5. ^ Alycia Smith Howard, Studio Shakespeare: The Royal Shakespeare Company at The Other Place, Aldershot: Ashgate, 2006, pp. 19–20.
  6. ^ Michael Patterson, Strategies of Political Theatre: Postwar British Playwrights, Cambridge University Press, 2003, p. 69.
  7. "BFI Screenonline: All Good Men (1974)". www.screenonline.org.uk.
  8. ^ "BFI Screenonline: Through the Night (1975)". www.screenonline.org.uk.
  9. "BFI Screenonline: Absolute Beginners (1974)". www.screenonline.org.uk.
  10. "BFI Screenonline: Bill Brand (1976)". www.screenonline.org.uk.
  11. "Comedians: racist and sexist standups who messed with audiences' minds". the Guardian. 20 February 2015.
  12. "Comedians – Broadway Play – Original | IBDB". www.ibdb.com.
  13. "BFI Screenonline: Comedians (1979)". www.screenonline.org.uk.
  14. "Trevor Griffiths - Literature". literature.britishcouncil.org.
  15. "Trevor Griffiths and David Walsh discuss "The Writer and Revolution"". World Socialist Web Site. 13 November 2008.
  16. Szalwinska, Maxie (21 June 2023). "A New World: A Life of Thomas Paine at Shakespeare's Globe, SE1" – via www.thetimes.co.uk.
  17. "Sixty-Six Writers". bushtheatre.co.uk.

External links

Writers Guild of America Award for Best Original Screenplay
Original Drama
(1969–1983)
Original Comedy
(1969–1983)
Original Screenplay
(1984–present)
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