Rudman, Michael Edward

Rudman, Michael Edward (1939– ), American director and producer, who took an MA at Oxford and then worked mainly in Britain. He was with Nottingham Playhouse, Newcastle Playhouse, and the RSC before becoming Artistic Director of the Traverse Theatre, 1970–3, and Hampstead Theatre, 1973–8. His productions at Hampstead included Handke's The Ride across Lake Constance (1973), C. P. Taylor's The Black and White Minstrels (1974), and Frayn's Alphabetical Order (1975) and Clouds (1977), both of which he later directed in the West End. He was an associate director of the National Theatre, 1979–88, being also Director of the Lyttelton, 1979–81. Notable productions at the National were Maugham's For Services Rendered (1979), Neil Simon's Brighton Beach Memoirs (1986), which moved to the Aldwych, Pirandello's Six Characters in Search of an Author, and Beckett's Waiting for Godot (both 1987). He directed Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman at Nottingham (1966), the National (1979), and, with Dustin Hoffman, in 1984 in New York, where he also directed Storey's The Changing Room (1973) and in 1975 Hamlet. He was Director of Chichester Festival Theatre, 1989–91.