Ben Power Joins Wessex Grove As Creative Associate

Wessex Grove has announced that Ben Power has joined the company in a consulting capacity as Creative Associate. Power will work alongside the Producing team to commission and develop shows, support artists and evolve and strengthen the company's long-term strategic plans.

Ben Power said “Under Ben and Emily's leadership, Wessex Grove has emerged as one of the most exciting and dynamic commercial producers in the world. Progressive, daring and constantly adventurous, this company makes work that I have loved as an audience member and I'm thrilled to be joining the team. Going forward, building on key relationships with world-class artists, I can't wait to work on a slate of high-definition theatre from the very best writers, directors and performers.”

Wessex Grove's Benjamin Lowy and Emily Vaughan-Barratt added, “We are beyond delighted to welcome Ben to Wessex Grove. We have long admired his work as a writer, and over the last five years have valued his advice as a friend on various artistic strategies and conundrums. His work at The National Theatre with the producing team was well known to be invaluable, and we can't wait to start planning and plotting with him to keep the quality of the work we are doing at the highest level, and expand our thinking!”

Ben Power is a writer, dramaturg and producer for theatre, film and television. His plays have been produced on every stage at The National Theatre. They include his adaptation of The Lehman Trilogy, which transferred from the National's Lyttelton to the West End and Broadway, where it won the Tony Award for Best Play - it has since played all over the world. Other adaptations for the National include Dickens' London Tide (Lyttelton); D.H. Lawrence's Husbands & Sons (Dorfman); Euripides' Medea (Olivier); Shakespeare's Romeo & Juliet (The Shed); and Ibsen's Emperor & Galilean (Olivier). He spent six years as Deputy Artistic Director at the National, ten years as Associate Director and three years programming the award-winning temporary theatre, The Shed. Previously, he was Associate Director of Headlong.

He has commissioned and produced scores of new plays including work by Lucy Prebble, Annie Baker, Mike Bartlett, Debbie Tucker Green, Lucy Kirkwood, Nina Raine, James Graham, Sam Holcroft, Ella Hickson, Natasha Gordon, DC Moore, Wallace Shawn, Patrick Marber and many others.

Other adaptations for the stage include Pirandello's Six Characters in Search of an Author with Rupert Goold (West End, international tour, UK tour); Marlowe's Faustus with Rupert Goold (Hampstead Theatre, National Tour); Milton's Paradise Lost (UK tour); and Shakespeare's A Tender Thing (Royal Shakespeare Company). He was dramaturg on Complicite's A Disappearing Number which won the Olivier, Evening Standard and Critics' Circle awards for Best Play.

Writing for screen includes Munich: The Edge of War for Netflix, which won the Writer's Guild Award for Best Screenplay; and the BAFTA-winning BBC Shakespeare series The Hollow Crown. His forthcoming adaptation of Jo Nesbo's bestselling thriller Blood On Snow, stars Aaron Taylor-Johnson and Benedict Cumberbatch and is directed by Cary Joji Fukunaga. He is currently writing films for Apple and a television series for Netflix. He is published by Faber.

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