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, publication
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.
In 2007 he began working with director Penny Woolcock on an original
screenplay provisionally entitled Lovely Head.
Jonathan Holmes lives in London.
