Polly Teale has won the Evening Standard Theatre Award as Best Director for Shared Experience acclaimed production of After Mrs Rochester. Also written by Polly Teale, After Mrs Rochester transferred to the Duke of York's Theatre from the Lyric Hammersmith where it became the surprise hit of the summer season in the West End.

The play was at the Lyric in April and May and Shared Experience returned this month to Hammersmith with Madame Bovary Breakfast with Emma, another play directed by Polly Teale.

After Mrs Rochester depicts the life of Jean Rhys, whose inspired prequel to Jane Eyre, Wide SargassoSea, gave Mrs Rochester, the madwoman in the attic, her own remarkable story.

Jean Rhys own life was no less extraordinary and provided the inspirational subjectfor Polly Teale compelling play. Her character is exploredthrough her life, her work, her relationships and her obsession with Charlotte Bronte first Mrs Rochester in Jane Eyre, a novel which Polly Teale also adaptedand directed for Shared Experience originally in 1997 and again in 2000.

Diana Quick and Madeleine Potter created the double role of Jean Rhys Diana Quick as the older, alcoholic writer about to pen her masterpiece, Wide Sargasso Sea, and Madeleine Potter as Ella, the young Jean whogrew up in Dominica in the West Indies before being sent to school in England when she was sixteen. Following a series of demi-monde jobs, Rhys settledin Paris and with the encouragement of Ford MaddoxFord who also suggested she change her name to Jean, began to write. She published several novels and short stories between 1927 and 1939 during whichtime she returned to England and then disappeared from public view until Wide Sargasso Sea was publishedin 1966.

Polly Teale is the joint Artistic Director of Shared Experiencewith Nancy Meckler. Her work for the company includesher own adaptation of Jane Eyre, War and Peace and The Mill on the Floss (co-directed with Nancy Meckler), A Doll's House, The House of Bernarda Alba, The Clearingby Helen Edmundson and Fay Weldon's adaptation ofMadame Bovary Breakfast with Emma.

Shared Experience's After Mrs Rochester have been also nominated for two TMA Awards, the Opus Award for Best Touring Production and Sarah Ball for Best Supporting Actress, but the prizes went to Lyndsey Marshal for A Midsummer Night's Dream at Bristol Old Vic and another A Midsummer Night's Dream, a Watermill Theatre production by Propeller.

Shared Experience Web site

Lyric Web site


Evening Standard Theatre Award 2003 Winners

Best actor - Michael Sheen (Caligula)
Best actress - Sandy McDade (Iron)
Best play - Democracy by Michael Frayn
The Carlton Television award for best musical - Jerry Springer: The Opera
Sydney Edwards award for best director - Polly Teale (After Mrs Rochester)
Best stage designer - Christopher Oram (Caligula)
Charles Wintour award for most promising playwright - Kwame Kwei-Armah (Elmina's Kitchen)
Outstanding newcomer - Tom Hardy (Blood/In Arabia We'd All Be Kings)
Special Award - Max Stafford-Clark
Patricia Rothermere Award - Lord Attenborough
Patricia Rothermere Scholarship - Elif Yesil