STEPHEN BAYLY
Stephen is a director and producer with over 40 years experience in film, television, and theatre. He trained on the director's course at the National Film and Television School GB. He formed the Scott Free Enterprises production company and produced films for Tony and Ridley Scott, in coproduction with directors such as Claude Chabrol and Volker Schloendorf. With Linda James he formed the production company Red Rooster Film and Television, and directed films for the Welsh language channel S4C, including The Works, And Pigs Might Fly, the tv series Joni Jones, and the Cannes-selected award-winning Coming Up Roses. He directed the feature film comedy Just Ask for Diamond (1988) with Susanna York and Roy Kinnear. Subsequently he produced a number of television films for Red Rooster, and independently produced Richard III (1995) with Sir Ian McKellen, Annette Bening, and Robert Downey Jr. The film was nominated for 2 Oscars and won a Golden Bear in Berlin, as well as several BAFTAs and the Evening Standard Best Film Award. In 1996 Stephen produced Mrs. Dalloway, directed by Marleen Gorris, based on Virginia Woolf's novel, and starring Vanessa Redgrave.
Between 1997 and 2003 Stephen was Director of the National Film and Television School GB.
In 2004 Stephen helped to establish the now highly-regarded Actors Temple in London, a training ground for actors specialising in the techniques of Sanford Meisner. He has studied Meisner Technique intensively since 2004 and now teaches directors and actors jointly in his ‘Working with Actors’ workshops. As well as delivering workshops for the Directors Guild and several UK universities and conservatories, Stephen is a professor at the Escuela Internacional de Cine y Televisión in Cuba. He has given workshops and lectures in Spain, The Netherlands, Colombia, Panamá, Chile, Brazil, and Nigeria. He has lectured on Shakespeare in Film at Harvard, University of Pennsylvania, and the University of Chile.
In Havana he established La Peña Meisner de La Habana (now El Arranque) a theatre group consisting of former acting and directing students. For La Peña Stephen has directe: ’Las Tumbas Olividadas’, Stephen’s adaptation of Edgar Lee Masters’ Spoon River Anthology (Teatros El Sótano and Adolfo Llauradó, Feb and May/June 2012), Joe Penhall’s Blue/Orange (Teatro Bertolt Brecht, June/July 2013), and, most recently, Martin Sherman’s ‘Bent’ (Teatro Bertolt Brecht, Aug/Sept 2014). The latter was the first ever presentation of this controversial play in Cuba.
Stephen is a member of BAFTA and the DGGB, and resides most of the year in Havana.