Gill, Peter

Gill, Peter (1939– ), Welsh director. He was an actor from 1957 to 1965, the first play he directed being D. H. Lawrence's A Collier's Friday Night at the Royal Court in 1965, one of a trilogy of Lawrence's plays he directed there. He worked mostly at the Royal Court until in 1977 he was appointed the first director of Riverside Studios. His productions there included the highly praised opening production of Chekhov's The Cherry Orchard (1978), Middleton and Rowley's The Changeling (also 1978), and Measure for Measure (1979). In 1980 he joined the National Theatre as Assistant Director, his productions including Turgenev's A Month in the Country (1981), Shaw's Major Barbara (1982), Shepard's Fool for Love (1984), and O'Casey's Juno and the Paycock (1989). He was Director of the National Theatre Studio, 1984–90, and remains an associate director of the National Theatre. He has also written and directed his own plays, including the partly autobiographical The Sleepers' Den (1965) and Over Gardens Out (1969), Small Change (1976), and Mean Tears (1987), about a fraught homosexual relationship.