Vice Principal (Vocational) of LAMDA
A director and playwright, John Bashford trained at LAMDA. After graduating, he worked in the UK with the Churchill Theatre Company and on national tours with the Cambridge Theatre Company before travelling to Australia, where he lived for ten years.
John is a graduate of the NIDA (National Institute of Dramatic Art, University of New South Wales) Directors Course. From 1986 to 1992, he was the Artistic Director of the Warehouse Theatre, Sydney, where productions included The Sonnets, Not about Heroes, Dr Faustus, New Australia and The Duchess of Malfi. His other theatre credits in Australia include directing the premieres of The White Rose of Annandale and Rust in the Dust by Steven Dawson for Wingandaprayer, Gulls and Away for Now Theatre, International Young Playwrights Festival and assistant directing at the Sydney Theatre Company (Phillip Kier) and Nimrod (Richard Cotteril). He was one of the founding shareholders of the Belvoir Street Theatre.
Since returning to the UK, John has worked with Sir Peter Hall on Piaf, On Approval and Hamlet, formed Briefly Shakespeare (with actor Andrew Vezey) and directed and taught at LAMDA and in Japan. Other productions include Arcadia, Search and Destroy, Othello, The Winter's Tale, Baal, The Art of Success, A Midsummer Night's Dream, Serious Money, What the Butler Saw, Tales from the Vienna Woods and The Suicide.
John's writing credits include Some Kinda' Arizona, which he directed for his new company, Hare's Breadth at the Warehouse Theatre, Croydon (2007). He was commissioned by LAMDA and Sitos to write what became Daemons - After Frankenstein and which toured Holland, Belgium and Northern Germany (2004). New Australia, his first play, premiered in Sydney in 1992. He has recently completed a new play called The Hop Garden and is working on another, Crossing the Gulf.
John sits on the Board of Governors for the Conservatoire for Dance and Drama (CDD).