Forgotten Ground Regained
Simon Corble
Born in rural Oxfordshire, England, Simon Corble attended Lymm Grammar School, Cheshire where he was gifted the chance to play Hamlet when just shy of seventeen. He went on to train as an actor at what is now Manchester Metropolitan University, where he quickly discovered a passion and ability to direct and create original works of theatre.
Besides being co-creator of the West End and Broadway stage show of The 39 Steps, Simon is best known in the North of England for his daring work in wild places throughout the 1990’s with his company, Midsommer Actors. It was for this unique form of open-air theatre that his writing career began. His adaptation of Thomas Hardy’s novel, The Woodlanders took them into the forest at Hardcastle Crags, West Yorkshire and his production of The Hound of the Baskervilles began life on the moorlands at Brimham Rocks, near Harrogate. His verse-play of the medieval epic, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, entirely in alliterative verse, was revived in Oxford in 2014. His First World War adaptation of the Of Mice and Men story, set on an English working farm, won a Manchester Evening News Theatre Award. Simon collaborated with the Library Theatre, Manchester in 1994 to write and direct The Wonderland Adventures of Alice, which toured Victorian parks all over England. He has also written and directed for The London Bubble, Lancaster Duke’s Playhouse, and Harrogate Theatre, among very many others.
Simon’s play, OPERATION MINCEMEAT, had its world premiere at the Adelaide Festival in Australia, February 2010. It deals with the remarkable true story of The Man Who Never Was. He won a commission to write a play, SWARD! for Blaize theatre company in 2011 which toured all over the North of England, educating and amusing audiences on the subject of upland hay meadows, (he is a passionate conservationist).
His first collection of poetry, featuring his own black-and-white photography, was White Light White Peak, published by Fly on the Wall Press in 2019. Simon toured a multi-media stage show of the same name, featuring a live performance of the poems, his projected photography and wildlife sound recordings. He also writes and photographs trails for the Royal Geographical Society, The Peak District National Park and The National Trust – many of these are as audio work, featuring poetry and drama. In 2021 he launched a podcast, "Two Peas in a Pod – The Psychologist and the Poet", with his psychologist friend, Adriana Summers.
He is currently working on quill-and-ink illustrations for his second collection of poetry, which has the birds of England’s uplands as it focus and also on Tales Around a Campfire, a collection which has evolved out of a story-telling project around an actual campfire at the Neolithic ‘Arbor Low’ stone circle, near his home in the Peak District of England.
An excerpt from is dramatic adaptation of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (the girdle scene from Book III) was published in Forgotten Ground Regained, Issue #4, Winter, 2024.