Jonathan Holmes: biography

education

Jonathan Holmes was born in South Yorkshire. He graduated with a first-class degree in English with History from Birmingham University, holds an MPhil in English Studies from the same institution, and received a Ph.D from the Shakespeare Institute in Stratford Upon Avon.

university teaching, research, publications

His Ph.D was later published by Routledge as Merely Players, and in 2001 he was appointed lecturer in English and Drama at Royal Holloway College, University of London. Whilst there he designed a new undergraduate degree programme in Drama and English, and published another book on Renaissance aesthetics entitled Refiguring Mimesis.

In his six years at the College he was guest speaker at colloquia around the world, including international conferences in New Orleans, San Francisco, Victoria (Canada), Budapest, Dublin, and Oxford. He is a specialist in the works of John Donne and William Shakespeare, and, more broadly, in the philosophy of aesthetics. He left Royal Holloway in 2007 as Senior Lecturer in Drama.

the John Donne Celebration at St Paul's Cathedral

In 2005 his ongoing research into Donne led to the rediscovery of the scores for several songs by the poet. These received their first performance in four centuries at St. Paul’s Cathedral in June of that year, where they were sung by the sopranos Dame Emma Kirkby and Carolyn Sampson, and the choir The Sixteen conducted by Sir Harry Christophers. The event also featured readings by Harriet Walter, Imogen Stubbs, Michael Pennington and Michael Maloney.

theatre director

Parallel to his academic career, Holmes began directing for the theatre professionally in 1999. His devised play Wolfsong, based on the work of Angela Carter, was named best of the Edinburgh Festival in that year. The Edinburgh Evening News gave it five stars and called it “A beautifully poetic and wonderfully paced play… a triumph that draws the audience into a mythical world with mesmerising energy and subtle force.” Since then he has directed a range of work including Shakespeare, devised pieces, and new plays, at venues such as the Riverside Studios, The Royal Court New Writing Festival, and in Edinburgh.

fallujah

In 2007 he wrote, directed and produced the verbatim play Fallujah, which ran for 40 performances in a specially designed space at the Truman Brewery on Brick Lane. The play was accompanied by an original score by Nitin Sawhney and a unique installation set designed by Lucy Orta. The cast included Harriet Walter, Irene Jacob and Imogen Stubbs. The script of Fallujah was published at the same time, and is still the fullest account of the atrocities committed during the 2004-5 sieges of Fallujah.

The production was covered by every English broadsheet, by the BBC (BBC 1, Radio 4, World Service, Radio 3), by Al-Jazeera and by The New York Times. Jon Snow at Channel Four News called it “brilliant cutting edge theatre. An exceptional audience experience." The show was ‘pick of the week’ in Time Out, and made it into the critics’ choice of the top five shows to see in London. It was also the third most emailed theatre production in New York, and featured on the front page of Yahoo! It has now become a set text on many US university syllabi and has toured to Prague and Berlin. Future productions are mooted in New York, Glasgow, Paris and Tel Aviv.

music in performance

More recently, he began directing regularly at the newly revamped South Bank Centre in collaboration with The Sixteen, with a particular focus on rethinking music in performance. His libretto for the opera Killing Time is currently in development at The National Theatre.

conflict prevention projects

Since 2004 Holmes has been an Artist in Residence at the charity Peace Direct and actively involved in conflict prevention projects. In 2005 he founded the ethical consultancy Agent For Change, and remained its director until 2006. In the same year he won the Guardian/UnLtd Social Entrepreneurship Award, resulting in a grant from UnLtd towards the development of the Fallujah project.

film work

He is currently working on a film, Perpetual Peace, which documents grassroots peacemaking activities around the globe and features contributions from Karen Armstrong, John Berger, Tony Benn, Harold Pinter, Noreena Hertz, George Monbiot and others. The film is due to be completed in 2008; an associated book of the same name, written by Holmes, will also be published that year.

Past film projects have included a pair of short films, premiered at the Curzon Soho cinema on Shaftesbury Avenue in 2003, starring Elliot Cowan and Rebeca Lenkiewicz, and documentaries filmed in Kenya, Uganda and Antarctica.

the jericho house

In 2008 he set up The Jericho House, a movable performance venue specialising in cross-media collaborations around the theme of hospitality. The Jericho House is groundbreaking in its use of sound and music, leading Holmes to set up a partnership with The Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience examining the effect of sound on the brain.

Jonathan Holmes lives in London.