Background

Timberlake Wertenbaker was born on February 19, 1951, in New York City, New York, United States. She is the daughter of Charles and Lael Wertenbaker.

Career

Timberlake Wertenbaker has written over a dozen plays since 1978 and translated more than ten dramatic works from non-English-speaking playwrights. She has written extensively for the stage, radio and film. Her thematic range as a writer is impressive: from the history of convicts and penal colonies to the transformative potential of art to immigration and asylum, Wertenbaker's plays are ambitious in vision. Her early work examined themes of language, the right to speak and of the powers of silence.

Her first work was This Is No Place for Tallulah Bankhead (1978). Wertenbaker's 1988 play, Our Country's Good, is based on Thomas Keneally's novel The Playmaker, which was in turn based on the 1789 production of George Farquhar's dramatic comedy The Recruiting Officer. The Recruiting Officer was the first play ever performed in Australia, and it was performed by the first group of male and female convicts to arrive there - with the idea that the activity of producing and acting in a play might help rehabilitate the prisoners. Wertenbaker's play is intended to be performed in repertory with The Recruiting Officer, with actors from one play appearing in corresponding roles in the other.

In Three Birds Alighting on a Field (1992), Wertenbaker satirizes the English art establishment. The play seems to want to argue that the financial free-for-all of the eighties destroyed a cherished system of values. A women-centered play, The Break of Day nevertheless features a large number of men in its cast. The leading female characters are of the generation that led the women's movement for individual and political progress, but the great tragedy of the play is seeing how the same women who changed history have themselves been caught unawares by time.

For the Royal Court, the Royal Shakespeare Company and other theatres she wrote such plays as The Third (1980), Second Sentence (1980), Inside Out (1982), Home Leave (1982), Abel's Sister (1984), The Love of the Nightingale (1989), After Darwin (1998), The Ash Girl (an adaptation of "Cinderella") (2000), Credible Witness (2001), Galileo's Daughter (2004), Divine Intervention (2006), Arden City (2008), The Line (2009), Our Ajax (2013), The Ant and the Cicada (2014), Jefferson's Garden (2015), Winter Hill (2017) and others.

Her translations and adaptations include Mephisto by Ariane Mnouchkine (1986), Léocadia by Jean Anouilh (1987), False Admissions; Successful Strategies; La Dispute: Three Plays by Marivaux (1989), The Thebans by Sophocles (1992), Filumena by Eduardo De Filippo (1998), Hecuba by Euripides (2001), Jenůfa by Gabriela Preissova (2007), Hippolytus by Euripides (2009), Phedre by Jean Racine (2009), Elektra by Sophocles (2010 and 2012), Antigone by Sophocles (2011), Britannicus by Jean Racine (2011) and others.

Wertenbaker was also the resident writer for Shared Experience in 1983 and writer-in-residence at Royal Court Theatre in 1985. She was the Royden B. Davis professor of Theatre at Georgetown University. She was the Leverhulme Artist in Residence at the Freud Museum in 2011. She was also the artistic director of the New Perspective Theatre Company. Now Wertenbaker teaches at the University of East Anglia.

Achievements

• Timberlake Wertenbaker is one of the most exciting, prolific and recognized playwrights. She is the recipient of a great number of awards for her works.
  
  These are the 1985 Plays and Players Most Promising Playwright Award for The Grace of Mary Traverse, 1988 Evening Standard Theatre Award for Most Promising Playwright for Our Country's Good, 1988 Laurence Olivier Award for Best New Play for Our Country's Good, 1989 Eileen Anderson Central Television Drama Award for The Love of the Nightingale, 1989 Whiting Award for Drama, 1990 New York Drama Critics' Circle Award for Best Foreign Play for Our Country's Good, 1991 Critics' Circle Theatre Award for Best West End Play for Three Birds Alighting on a Field, 1992 Susan Smith Blackburn Prize for Three Birds Alighting on a Field, 1992 Writers Guild of America Award for Best West End Play for Three Birds Alighting on a Field and 2016 Writers Guild of America Award for Best New Play for Jefferson's Garden.
  
  Her works were also nominated for various awards. In 2006 Wertenbaker became a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.

Works

More photos

• book

  • Timberlake Wertenbaker: Plays 2: The Break of Day, After Darwin, Credible Witness, The Ash Girl, Dianeira

    (In this second collection of her plays, Timberlake Werten...)

    2002
  • What is the Custom of Your Grief?

    (What is the Custom of Your Grief? features an English sch...)

    2018
  • The Grace of Mary Traverse

    (The Grace of Mary Traverse traces one young woman's attem...)

    1985
  • Ash Girl

    (With her mother dead and her father away, the Ash Girl li...)

    2000
  • Timberlake Wertenbaker: Plays: Plays One: New Anatomies, the Grace of Mary Traverse, Our Country's Good, the Love of the Nightingale, Three Birds Alighting on a Field

    (This book is a collection of Timberlake Wertenbaker's pla...)

    1996
  • After Darwin

    (Millie, a director, discusses with her actors, Ian and To...)

    1998
  • The Line

    (From unexpected quarters in nineteenth-century France, a ...)

    2009
  • Our Ajax

    (Torn between army politics and the love of his soldiers o...)

    2013
  • The Love of the Nightingale

    (The core of the story concerns Tereus, King of Thrace, wh...)

    1989
  • Winter Hill

    (Heroism is danger and risk, and frankly, until now, it's ...)

    2017
  • Credible Witness

    (A young man flees to a distant land and vanishes. His mot...)

    2001
  • Our Country's Good

    (Australia 1789. A young married lieutenant is directing r...)

    1988
  • Jefferson's Garden

    (America. 1776. Christian is a Quaker. His family came to ...)

    2015

Membership

Timberlake Wertenbaker is a member of the Dramatists Club and Writers' Guild of Great Britain. She served on the Executive Council of the English Stage Company from 1992 till 1997 and on the Executive Committee of PEN from 1998 till 2001.

Interests

• walking and flowers

Connections

Timberlake Wertenbaker is married to John Man. The marriage produced one daughter.

Father:

Charles Wertenbaker

(11 February 1901 - 8 January 1955)

Charles Wertenbaker was an American journalist particularly known for his work at Time. He was also the author of articles for New Yorker and Harper's Magazine as well as books.

Mother:

Lael Wertenbaker

Lael Tucker Wertenbaker was an American author and journalist. Wertenbaker was best known for ''Death of a Man,'' her harrowing book about her husband's death.

husband:

John Man

John Man (born 15 May 1941) is a British historian and travel writer with a special interest in Asia. His many acclaimed books include bestselling biographies of Genghis Khan and Attila the Hun, as well as The Great Wall and The Terracotta Army.