Teacher, academic, director, actor- Sue Curtis approaches her work as poet, playwright and librettist from the solid foundation of a lifetime’s varied experience of literature and theatre.
She took her first two degrees, in English Literature and Psychology, and a B.Hons (First Class), in English Literature at the University of Natal. An M.Phil in English Literature, awarded for a thesis on Jacobean Drama and the Morality Tradition, from the University of York, followed. She trained as an actor at Mountview in London, and took her PGCE at King’s College, London.
An inspirational teacher, she has spent much of her life as an academic, lecturing at universities in South Africa, Austria, and England, and teaching English Literature at King Edward’s School in Bath.
While at King Edward’s, she founded a Department of Drama and Theatre Studies, which she ran for twenty years. By the time she left, the school had a purpose built theatre, drama/film studio, and full time professional theatre technician. Drama was available at A and GCSE Level, and as a weekly subject for Years 7 and 8, changing into film studies – a course in which the exam took the form of films made by the pupils – in Year 9.
When she ran the department her passion for theatre and her commitment to professional production values communicated itself to her students, over 150 of whom now work in the media industry as actors, writers, directors, stage, lighting, sound and costume designers, fundraisers, producers, theatre managers , television announcers and film-makers.
She worked as a actor and as an award-winning director in Austria, South Africa and England.
Since leaving teaching, she has worked full time as a poet, playwright and librettist, collaborating with the composer Jools Scott.
She has written stage plays, operas, musicals, children’s stories, screenplays and poems.
Apart from time cheerfully spent raising three children – all of whom now work in media and design in London – running a theatre, running for the council in Haringey – she has devoted her life, one way and another, to drama as literature and as theatre.
Her work is varied; dark, subtle, intelligent and funny; she is as happy writing lyrics for Elizabethan characters as dialogue for modern teenagers or Victorian vampires; as much at home having fun in a child’s world of imagination as revelling in the intellectual thuggery of Jacobean satire.
Sue can be contacted direct at suemcurtis@hotmail.com
She is represented by
Rachel Daniels
Berlin Associates
* 7 Tyers Gate
London SE1 3HX
( +44 (0)20 7632 5284
