Benet Catty is an award-winning theatre director and playwright; also a lighting designer and occasional teacher. He has directed numerous acclaimed revivals, many new plays (several with first-time writers) variously in full scale productions, on tour and on the fringe or in staged readings or workshops; several musicals of different scales; plays of his own and some corporate films.
BACKGROUND
He started out running his own theatre company for three years, presenting revivals of modern classic American and British plays with casts of recent drama school graduates. Amongst others, he directed six productions at the Edinburgh Festival of which three won London fringe transfers and four featured on multiple Critics Choice lists.
He became a freelance director in 2002 when, following a recommendation from Mike Leigh, he was asked to direct A Handful of Rain at New End Theatre in London.
REVIVALS
Benet’s previous professional productions include revivals of Damages, Edmond, Howie the Rookie, Kiss of the Spiderwoman, The Maintenance Man, Popcorn, Sexual Perversity in Chicago, The Shawl, Shopping and F***ing, Speed-the-Plow and the musicals Closer than Ever and Enchanted; as well as the new plays A Handful of Rain, The Fury, The Geezer, I Really Must Be Getting Off, Next Big Thing, Sikhs in the City (UK tour, America, DVD), Soul Sikher (UK tour), Still Waiting for Everything (Tour), Whatever! (Soho), Wildwood Park (Bridewell) and most recently Single Fare to Zurich and Tabooed (New End), for which he won the 2009 Best Director Award from Lost Festival.
WORK WITH NON-PROFESSIONALS
For amateur, pro-am or student companies he has directed A View from the Bridge & Chess (Warwick Arts Centre); Sweeney Todd and Sweet Charity (Wimbledon Light Opera); The Wiz (Leatherhead/Carshalton College); an abbreviated version of Carousel (Arts Ed);and The Roald Dahl Project(which he also wrote) - first for Arts Educational, more recently expanded for Year Out Drama in Stratford.
He also occasionally teaches drama or acting, including to adults in South London and students in North London as well as doing occasional one-off classes with sixth form groups and individual audition coaching.
WORKSHOPS & READINGS
He has directed many workshops and semi-stagings of new musicals including City Lights at the Old Vic, Toys (for MTM:UK), Mata Hari at Central School, Knight on a Bike, Another Day in Vienna and Factor (all at Goldsmiths), and Circus A Go-Go (New End), as well as numerous staged/rehearsed readings including Blind Eye (Prince of Wales); Histrionics/Black Dog Day (Tristan Bates); The Yellow Ticket (Giudecca); Eugene O'Neill's Thirst and F Scott Fitzgerald's Porcelain and Pink (both at the Kings Head) and Shakespeare's Measure for Measure (twice), Twelfth Night and As You Like It (Scoop).
WORK WITH CHILDREN
Aswell as many workshops with children, Benet returned to his former school in 2008 to write and direct Making History, a multi-media play telling the story of the school in its 150th anniversary year. In his school days, he directed productions of Tom Stoppard's Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead, Joshua Sobol's Ghetto and Peter Shaffer's The Royal Hunt of the Sun. He was the only student ever to run the drama society there, and the only one ever to direct more than once.
AS A WRITER
As a writer his plays include All Talk and Nothing Personal which he directed workshop productions of in 2005 and 2006 respectively, as well as an adaptation of Susan Hil's I'm The King of the Castle which he was commissioned to write by Peter Wilson and Kenny Wax but for which the major tour (which Benet was also booked to direct) was put on ice.
His 5-minute play March was also staged for Lost as part of a festival of miniature plays.
All Talk won the award for Best New Writing from the Lost Festival in 2008, presented by Steven Berkoff.
CORPORATE WORK
He has also directed corporate films for Debenhams and the British Video Association and hopes to do more film work including his screen adaptation of All Talk.
LIGHTING DESIGNS
Benet has also been the lighting designer for most of his productions as well as several for other people, frequently being cited in reviews for his work.
FACTS & STATS
His productions have been seen and admired by such luminaries of the theatre establishment as Mike Leigh, Steven Berkoff, Frank Gero, Jude Kelly, Bill Kenwright, Andrew Treagus, Jenny King, David Aukin, John Haynes, Beeban Kidron, Simon McBurney, Lee Menzies, and Nicolas Kent, plus representatives of Cameron Mackintosh, the Swansea Grand, the Tricycle, Riverside Studios, the BBC and the National.
Benet's work has been seen by a total audience of around 29,000 people in 390 performances to date, with 401 different actors and playing in 81 different theatres. These comprise 39 different plays and 15 musicals. Twenty-five of these have been British, European or world premieres, and twenty-nine revivals.
CURRENTLY
Benet is working on a new play which he has been commissioned to write about the life of a well-known journalist which is shortly to be workshopped.
This autumn he directs Andrew Olins' new play LIFE AFTER at New End Theatre (October) and Puccini#s short opera IL TABARRO at St James Piccadilly (November).
