Andrew Hilton


Andrew Piers Marsden Hilton is an English actor, theatre director, and author best known for the creation of the Shakespeare at the Tobacco Factory company in Bristol in 1999.

Background and education

Hilton was born in Bolton, Lancashire, and educated at Bolton School. He read English at Churchill College, Cambridge, studying under George Steiner and Michael Long. He worked as a student actor for Jonathan Miller and via that connection entered the professional theatre as a trainee director at Bernard Miles' Mermaid Theatre in London. There he worked from 1971 to 1975, much of his time directing and writing plays about science for the theatre's educational wing, the Molecule Theatre. He became a Mermaid Associate Director in 1974.
In 1975 he joined the Greenwich Company as an actor for Jonathan Miller's productions of Measure for Measure and All's Well that Ends Well, quickly followed by a 3-year contract with the National Theatre, beginning at the London Old Vic and moving to the new theatre on the South Bank. There he appeared in the Peter Hall/Albert Finney Hamlet and Tamburlaine the Great, the John Schlesinger/John Gielgud Julius Caesar, Elijah Moshinky's production of Troilus & Cressida, and Michael Blakemore's production of Ben Travers' Plunder.
He then joined the Bristol Old Vic company in 1978, where he played in over twenty productions, roles including Haig and the Sergeant-Major in Oh What a Lovely War!, Flavius in Timon of Athens, Kershaw in Destiny, Ernst in Cabaret and Wyke in Sleuth. It was there in 1983 that he met his wife-to-be, the stage manager and artist, Diana Favell.
There followed several years of TV and radio work, interspersed with theatre jobs in Manchester and York, a UK tour of The Royal Hunt of the Sun and a British Council tour of the Far and Middle East.

Shakespeare at the Tobacco Factory

In 1989 Hilton and Favell joined a group of actors, writers and directors to start the first regular pub theatre in Bristol, dedicated largely to new writing. The company, Show of Strength Theatre Company, found the Hen & Chicken pub in the south of the city, in Bedminster, and inaugurated winter seasons there that were to last for six years and attract national attention.
Hilton directed six productions for the company – the world premières of Tales of the Undead by Dominic Power, and Let's Do It and Rough Music by James Wilson; the UK premiere of Michael Gow's Away; the English professional première of Brian Friel's Living Quarters; and an in-the-round production of Measure for Measure. In 1998, after Hilton and Favell had both left the company, Show of Strength moved its operation to the Tobacco Factory – then in process of restoration and redevelopment by George Ferguson – and it was this that inspired them to create 'Shakespeare at the Tobacco Factory in 1999.
Shakespeare at the Tobacco Factory began as a commercial venture and survived as such for five spring seasons at the Tobacco Factory Theatre, winning a Peter Brook/Empty Space Award in 2001 and culminating in the transfer of the 2004 season of Macbeth and The Changeling to the Barbican's Pit Theatre. The company was then reformed as a charity, as it now continues. In addition to spring seasons at the Factory it has co-produced with the Bristol Old Vic, and appeared in the Galway Festival. A programme of national touring began in 2013 with Two Gentlemen of Verona, and a new collaboration with the University of Bristol in 2014. In 2015 the company began international touring, playing at the Neuss Festival in Germany in 2015, 2016 & 2017, and at the Craiova International Festival in Romania in 2016.
While Shakespeare has clearly been his main focus, Hilton has attracted high praise for his three Chekhov productions - Three Sisters, Uncle Vanya and The Cherry Orchard - and also for his productions of Tom Stoppard's Arcadia, Sheridan's The School for Scandal and Friel's Living Quarters.
In most of his work Hilton works in collaboration with the playwright, Dominic Power, who edits Shakespeare with him and has also contributed new scenes to Measure for Measure, The Changeling, The Taming of the Shrew, Two Gentlemen of Verona and All's Well That Ends Well. He has also enjoyed longstanding collaborations with the designer Harriet de Winton, the composer John Telfer and the composer & sound designers Elizabeth Purnell and Dan Jones.
He stepped down as Artistic Director of Shakespeare at the Tobacco Factory to resume freelance work in July 2017.

Productions

Tales of the Undead by Dominic Power
Let's Do It by James Wilson
Living Quarters by Brian Friel
Measure for Measure by Shakespeare
Away by Michael Gow's
Serious Money by Caryl Churchill
Rough Music by James Wilson
King Lear and A Midsummer Night's Dream
Measure for Measure and Coriolanus
The Winter's Tale and Twelfth Night'
Troilus & Cressida and As You Like It
Macbeth and Middleton & Rowley's The Changeling
Pericles and Chekhov's Three Sisters
Titus Andronicus and Love's Labours Lost
Othello and Much Ado about Nothing
The Taming of the Shrew'
Julius Caesar and Antony & Cleopatra
Chekhov's Uncle Vanya
The Tempest and A Midsummer Night's Dream
Molière/Tony Harrison's The Misanthrope
Richard II
The Comedy of Errors
King Lear
Chekhov's The Cherry Orchard
Richard III and Two Gentlemen of Verona
As You Like It and Tom Stoppard's Arcadia
Allan Monkhouse's The Conquering Hero
Sheridan's The School for Scandal
Friel's Living Quarters
Hamlet and All's Well That Ends Well
Moliere's Tartuffe

Authorship

Sparks!
It's Not What It Seems
Ten
Transcontinental – Governor Stanford
The Patent-Office Robbery
Fire Island
Chekov's Gun
With Dominic Power, a radical new version of Moliere's Tartuffe
Hilton is a Patron of Warwick's Shakespeare Young Company, and of the Bridge Foundation for Psychotherapy and the Arts. In 2013 he was awarded an Honorary Doctorate of Letters by the University of Bristol for his services to theatre in the City.
He teaches freelance at the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School and at the University of Bristol.