Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead by Tom Stoppard

He was on the board of the National Theatre from 1989-2003. On the Razzle, adapted from Johann Nestroy's Einen Jux will er sich machen, was staged at the National Theatre in 1981, followed by The Real Thing in 1982. Professional Foul (1978) was written for Amnesty International's Prisoner of Conscience Year in 1977. Every Good Boy Deserves Favour (1976), was inspired by his friendship with Viktor Fainberg, who had been imprisoned in Czechoslovakia by the Soviets, and Stoppard began to speak out on behalf of dissidents including the Czech playwright Vaclav Havel, who had been charged with subversion. Travesties (1975) was first staged by the Royal Shakespeare Company in 1974, transferring to New York in 1975 where it won a Tony Award for Best Play. His play Jumpers (1972) was staged at the National Theatre in 1972 and his adaptation of Lorca's The House of Bernarda Alba was first performed in the same year. The Real Inspector Hound was first staged in 1968, followed by productions of Albert's Bridge and If You're Glad I'll Be Frank, both in 1969. The play came to the attention of Kenneth Tynan, then working for the National Theatre, and it was produced at the National in 1967 and on Broadway in 1967, winning a Tony Award for Best Play (USA) in 1968. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead (1967) premiered at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in 1966. Albert's Bridge (1968) was first broadcast by BBC Radio in 1967. He began writing plays for radio and television, including The Dissolution of Dominic Boot (1964), A Walk on the Water, televised in 1963, and The Stand-Ins, later revised as The Real Inspector Hound (1968).

Educated at schools in Nottinghamshire and Yorkshire, he became a journalist working for the Western Daily Press (1954-8) and the Bristol Evening World (1958-60), and became theatre critic for Scene magazine in London (1962-3). He grew up in Singapore and India during the Second World War and moved to England in 1946 with his mother and stepfather, his own father having been killed in Singapore. Playwright Sir Tom Stoppard was born Tomás Straüssler on 3 July 1937 in Zlín, Czechoslovakia.

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead by Tom Stoppard