Culture Now: Stephen Poliakoff

Stephen Poliakoff is in conversation with Geoffrey Colman, discussing his career and his recent BBC television series Dancing on the Edge.

Stephen Poliakoff, CBE, is one of the most influential writers for the screen and stage. He was appointed writer-in-residence at the National Theatre for 1976, the same year as he won the Evening Standard’s Most Promising Playwright Award for Hitting Town and City Sugar. He has won a BAFTA Award for Best Single Play for Caught on a Train (1980), the Evening Standard’s Best British Film Award for Close My Eyes (1992), the Critics’ Circle Best Play Award for Blinded by the Sun (1996), and the Prix Italia and the Royal Television Society Best Drama Award for Shooting the Past (1999), and for Perfect Strangers (2002), for which he was also awarded the Dennis Potter Award at the 2002 BAFTAs. The Lost Prince (2003) was the winner of three Emmy Awards in 2005 including Outstanding Mini Series, and Gideon’s Daughter (2006) won two Golden Globes and a Peabody Award in 2007. His most recent film for the cinema was Glorious 39 (2009) and his most recent stage play was My City (2011) at the Almeida.

An Associate Master of the Theatre Royal Haymarket and features writer for The Stage, Geoffrey Colman is currently Head of Acting at the Central School of Speech and Drama. As a freelance director and acting coach his career has combined work in opera, theatre and film/TV. In this diverse field he has worked with playwrights, composers, actors and singers (and holograms of actors) from various performance contexts ranging from writers at the National Theatre of Finland and Institut del Teatre Barcelona, to actors with Miramax Films, models on Britain's Next Top Model, the comedian Lenny Henry and the award winning international Transglobal Underground recording artist Natasha Atlas.