After Graduating from Bristol
University, Simon spent three years in stage management
before directing his first productions. He wrote and
directed Double Act at the Leicester Haymarket
Studio and Captain Incredible at the Leicester
Phoenix Arts Centre before going to the Bolton Octagon
as Young People's Director. At the Octagon he directed
several youth theatre productions including The Tempest
and his own play Love In A Field Of Poppies,
which later went on to win the Joshua Tetley Award.
He also directed the premier of John Chamber's play
Yoiks, Oiks!!
Simon wrote and directed
Rock-Me-Amadeus - a play about Mozart which toured
nationally for Compass Theatre; and Now We Are Engaged
for the national Museum of Photography, Film and Television.
He also wrote Fairplay, commissioned by Southport
Arts Centre and broadcast by BBC Radio Four in 1995.
In 1993 he took over as director of The Angles Theatre
and Arts Centre, and whilst there he directed productions
of A Midsummer Nights Dream, An Evening With
Gary Lineker and his own adaptation of The Snow
Queen.
Simon joined Hull
Truck Theatre in September 1995, where he has directed
Alan Ayckbourn's Relatively Speaking, The
Twelve Days of Christmas by world famous children's
TV author John Cunliffe, John Godber's Hooray For
Hollywood, Mick Martin's A Weekend In England,
David Bown's Stand, Shakespeare's Macbeth
and Alan Bennett's Talking Heads. He also directed
Kissing Sid James by Robert Farquhar which played
at Hull Truck Theatre in February 1999 before embarking
on a nation-wide tour of Great Britain. He wrote and
directed Gold!, an 80's musical, for Hull Truck
Theatre which also toured nationally through Autumn
1999.
In 1999 he became Executive
Director of the
Octagon Theatre in Bolton. Here he directed
Misconceptions by David Lewis which will was
nominated for Best Production in the Manchester News
Theatre Awards 2001, and 100 years in Worktown,
a Year of the Artist funded projected which produced
a piece of theatre from an oral history project examining
working life in Bolton over the last century.
He
worked for two years in Television, both for the BBC
and on ITV's "Coronation
Street" as the programme's Script Editor.
In
April 2005 Simon joined the Gala
Theatre in Durham as Director. Over the last three
years he has worked with a new team at Gala to make
the venue one of the most successful in the North East.
The Gala now presents more films and performances each
year and audiences continue to grow.
One of the most important strands of
his work in Durham are the in-house professional productions
- Simon has directed all seven of these to date and
is working on some exciting, high profile projects for
the future. He has also recently collaborated with Rodney
Bewes on a new play about Jerome
K. Jerome which is currently on a national tour.
Later this year he will be writing and directing the
Gala's first in-house pantomime, Aladdin.