Jim Sharman

Jim Sharman
Born James David Sharman
(1945-03-12) 12 March 1945
Sydney, New South Wales, Australia
Occupation Screenwriter, film/stage director, producer

James David "Jim" Sharman (born 12 March 1945), the son of boxing tent entrepreneur Jimmy Sharman, is an Australian director and writer for film and stage with more than 70 productions to his credit.[1] He is renowned in Australia for his work as a theatre director from the 1960s to the present, and is best known internationally as the director of the 1973 theatrical hit The Rocky Horror Show, its film adaptation The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975) and the film's follow-up Shock Treatment (1981).[2]

Jim Sharman, was best known as the director of "The Rocky Horror Picture Show"

Biography

Sharman was born to James Michael Sharman (1912–2006) and Christina McAndleish Sharman (1914–2003). He was educated in Sydney, though his upbringing included time spent on Australian showgrounds where his father and grandfather ran a travelling sideshow of popular legend: Jimmy Sharman's Boxing Troupe. This brought him into contact with the world of circus and travelling vaudeville.[3] Developing an interest in theatre, he graduated from the production course at the National Institute of Dramatic Art in Sydney in 1966.[1]

Sharman created a series of ground-breaking productions of experimental theatre, many for the Old Tote Theatre Company, culminating in a controversial staging of Mozart's Don Giovanni for Opera Australia, when he was 21 years old. Over the following decade, he directed three rock musicals that defined their era: Hair in 1969 (Sydney, Melbourne, Tokyo, Boston)[3] (he also designed the original Sydney production); Jesus Christ Superstar in 1972 (Australia and Palace Theatre, London)[3] and created the original production of The Rocky Horror Show with Richard O'Brien in 1973 (Royal Court Theatre, London – subsequently in Sydney, Los Angeles, Melbourne, New York City).[3][4] He cowrote the screenplay and directed the international cult hit film The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975) for Twentieth Century Fox, and directed its loosely based sequel Shock Treatment in 1981. In 1985, he directed third year students at NIDA in the production of A Dream Play.

In the following decades, Sharman directed a series of new works and Australian premieres, including a series of productions of plays by Patrick White in the late 1970s: The Season at Sarsaparilla, Big Toys, Netherwood and A Cheery Soul – which are credited with reviving the Nobel Laureate's career as a dramatist.[3][5] He also directed the film The Night the Prowler, from a screenplay adapted by White from one of his short stories, and notable as White's only produced film screenplay. One of Sharman's most frequent creative collaborators was production designer Brian Thomson, a partnership that began at the Old Tote and continued through their ground-breaking and widely praised stage productions, the rock musicals Hair, Jesus Christ Superstar and The Rocky Horror Show, and the films Shirley Thompson vs. the Aliens, The Rocky Horror Picture Show and Shock Treatment.

Sharman was Artistic Director of a transformational Adelaide Festival of Arts in 1982 and, while in South Australia, he created Lighthouse, a theatre company which specialised in radical stagings of classics and premieres of new work by major Australian dramatists, including Louis Nowra, Stephen Sewell and Patrick White. The ensemble included many major Australian artists, including actors Geoffrey Rush, Gillian Jones, John Wood and Kerry Walker and associate director Neil Armfield, who would further develop this adventurous tradition at Sydney's Belvoir Street Theatre.

Continuing as a freelance director, Sharman's most recent work has been Stephen Sewell's Three Furies – scenes from the life of Francis Bacon, for which he won a Helpmann Award for Best Direction of a Play. It played at the 2005 Sydney and Auckland Festivals and the 2006 Perth and Adelaide Festivals.[3] In 2006, he revived his landmark staging of Benjamin Britten's Death in Venice for Opera Australia.[6] In 2009, he will direct a new production of Mozart's Così fan tutte for Opera Australia, a collaboration with the Berlin-based Australian conductor Simon Hewett.[7]

In August 2008, Sharman's memoirs Blood and Tinsel were published by Melbourne University Publishing where he talks about his childhood on the road with Jimmy Sharman's Boxing Troupe and also speaks out for the first time about The Rocky Horror Picture Show and his many productions.[4][5]

A noted director of theatre, his credits include Jesus Christ Superstar

Select credits

Theatre

Films

References

  1. 1 2 Moyle, John (2 August 2008). "Sharman relives his musical journey". ninemsn. Retrieved 24 January 2009.
  2. ↑ Robyn Anderson & Sue Adler, "Jim Sharman", Cinema Papers, March–April 1979, pp. 269-271
  3. 1 2 3 4 5 6 "Solitary man". The Australian. 26 July 2008. Retrieved 24 January 2009.
  4. 1 2 Kelly, Fran (29 July 2008). "Jim Sharman's autobiography Blood and Tinsel". Australian Broadcasting Corporation. Retrieved 24 January 2009.
  5. 1 2 Sharman, Jim (26 July 2008). "Dusting off Mr White". The Canberra Times. Retrieved 24 January 2009.
  6. ↑ "Jim Sharman in Così coup". Opera Australia. Retrieved 24 January 2009.
  7. ↑ "2009 Season Announcement". Opera Australia. Retrieved 24 January 2009.

External links

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