Jez Butterworth
Playwright and director Jez Butterworth arrives at Port Eliot fresh from Olivier Award success with his West End play Jerusalem (2009). Having been described as “a vision of Englishness”, his plays and films have won numerous awards, including Evening Standard and George Devine awards for his Royal Court Theatre play Mojo (1995), which was adapted for film in 1997 and starred Harold Pinter.
Jez’s work often depicts the dark and complex side of English society. None more so than in his film Birthday Girl (2001, starring Nicole Kidman), which focuses on the idea of “residential oppression”, when a thirty-something bank clerk from small-town St Albans finds his life being interrogated after the arrival of his Russian mail-order bride.
Jerusalem, described as a “comic, contemporary vision of life in our green and pleasant land”, has received endless praise since it opened at the Royal Court last July, with the Telegraph stating it to be “rich, strange and continuously gripping” and The Times calling it “bold, ebullient and hilarious”. Jez will be sharing some unique and entertaining insights at the Idler’s Academy.
“Butterworth’s England is messy, chaotic, rebellious - and above all, infused with the spirit of Shakespeare. Perfect.”
The Guardian
“A profane intelligence that zeroes in on the pedantry of the nanny state.”
This is London
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Video:
Watch the official trailer of Jez Butterworth’s Jerusalem:
