John Godber Photographs
- Rehearsals and Portraits -

John Godber became Hull Truck’s artistic director in 1984, since when the company has grown to be one of the best contemporary theatre groups in Britain. John is the third most performed British playwright after Shakespeare and Ayckbourn. His writing is strong and direct, as well as totally unique, and as often as not drawn from personal experience. Whether the experience is incidental, from the living of his life, or an experience knowingly entered into by way of research for a play in embryo, all of John’s work is suffused with the flavour of his Yorkshire roots, of which he is very proud.

When a playwright is directing his own material, it can be difficult to separate and analyse the quality of the direction from the essence of the work itself. When Godber directs the work of others, we see a true craftsman in action. He has the ability to give an established play new legs without altering its basic structure, to somehow make it work on many new levels. He does this even with his own masterworks, notably Bouncers and Teechers. But with these he goes further. Rarely satisfied with a straight bringback, he will rework scene after scene, often adding topicality by inserting material from news of the day, revisiting in the safe knowledge that his vintage script is untarnished by this action. No other playwrights would dare to do this to their babies.

John Godber’s sharp observations of language and behaviour often bring us wonderfully surreal lines, such as in the opening moments of Bouncers….”All human life is here…it’s a midnight circus”… pure Godber..