THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY

William George Q was born in 1970 in Stirling, Scotland.

After appearing at the age of nine in Babes of the Wood with Russell Hunter and Tony Roper, he proceeded to write, direct and act in plays throughout his education. He received a New Writing Award for his play, Delphi, at Oxford University. Despite his involvement in theatre he obtained a creditable degree in Classics from University College.

After giving up piano lessons at the age of fifteen, he learned the blues from his Latin teacher. He played with his band, The Polemics, for a year, before an ESU scholarship took him to the USA. There he recorded a solo album and sang in several choral and close harmony groups. Through 1994 he was a regular at the Ceilidh House & Tron Tavern Songwriters' Showcase, and he performed in the Edinburgh Festival of Music 1994. He also wrote songs for a new play, Hitch, by Harry Bell.

He moved to London to pursue acting courses at the Ecole Philippe Gaulier, funded by the Scottish International Education Trust. His play, The Great Los Angeles Opportunity, was one of the winners in the 1995 London Radio Playwrights' Festival. Restless Farewell, his next drama, scooped the Woolwich Young Radio Playwrights' Award 1996, receiving a production at the Battersea Arts Centre; both plays were broadcast on LBC Radio's Sunday Playhouse. Since arriving in the capital William has become a familiar face gigging at Bunjies Folk Cellar, the Unlaced Plimsoll Club, and Pirate Jenny's at The Vortex Jazz Bar. He now plays guitar and fretless bass for Philip Jeays, a rising star recently invited to the Vancouver International Festival. Jeays - http://www.soc.surrey.ac.uk/~scs1ec/jeays.html -has been described thus:

"The best new songwriter I've heard for ten years" (Tom Robinson)

and

"Just the sort of discovery you're always hoping to make at the Edinburgh Festival but rarely do." (Charles Spencer, Daily Telegraph)

The brilliant Jeays and his "orchestra" will be found at this summer's Festival purveying their twisted postpunk kind of chanson at the Cafe Royal throughout August.

Last year, William wrote text for a promenade spectacle devised by Livestock Theatre: Brink (premièred in the London Festival of Visual Theatre in October 1997 and appearing at this year's Edinburgh Festival). He was also the musician in We Don't Talk About It (Darüber Spricht Man Nicht), a new translation of a German sex education play, in a reading at the BAC.

This year, in between playing several instruments throughout The Warp (the record breaking 24 hour play directed by mad theatrical guru, Ken Campbell; you can spot William in a four line "comedy Scotsman" cameo 18 hours into the legendary show) and knocking off a one woman show called The Great Yes, he has been busy writing long short stories, which he claims are really quite good if you can finish them.

Upcoming projects include a new version of the Salome story for his fledgling theatre company, Seven Sisters. You will currently find him (when not reading scripts for IRDP or tutoring recalcitrant Latin pupils) in a British Library reading room with a pile of books about the controversial Dead Sea Scrolls, pretending not to be asleep.

E-mail: [email protected]

William also has a home page

WILLIAM GEORGE Q - CURRICULUM VITAE

BORN

26-09-70, Stirling, Scotland.

EDUCATION

1994-95 Ecole Philippe Gaulier. (Funded by Scottish International Education Trust.)

1989-93 University College, Oxford. Degree in Classics (Greats).

1988-89 The Taft School, CT, USA (ESU scholar).

1983-88 Glenalmond College, Perthshire, Scotland.

Read William's fascinating account of having one of his plays selected and produced for radio in Writer's Diary

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