Adapting Orwell

Saturday 20 June 5-6pm, Trafalgar Studios

Dominic Cavendish | Chris Durlacher

Orwell never lived to see televisions become as ubiquitous as the telescreens of 1984; none of his own recordings for radio are known to survive; he wrote nothing serious for the stage; and in noting that ‘everyone in this world has someone else whom he can look down on’, felt ‘the book reviewer is better off than the film critic’ since the latter ‘is expected to sell his honour for a glass of inferior sherry’.

Nevertheless, his works have been adapted for screen (big and small), radio and stage, as blockbusters, monologues, dramas, documentaries, musicals and operas. We’ll be asking some of those involved in adapting Orwell about the challenges, the opportunities, the pressures and the pleasures of adapting some of the best-known works in the English language.

Dominic Cavendish is the deputy theatre critic, and comedy critic, for the Daily Telegraph. He is the founding editor of theatrevoice.com, the biggest online resource for audio material about British theatre, now managed by the V&A museum, and has also written on theatre and the arts for The Independent, Time Out and the Big Issue. His adaptation of Coming Up for Air premiered to rave reviews at the Edinburgh Festival 2008, and is joined by treatments of the interrogation scene from 1984, ‘A Hanging’ and ‘Shooting an Elephant’ for Orwell: A Celebration.

Chris Durlacher is a writer, director and producer whose credits include Kenneth Tynan: In Praise of Hardcore for BBC FOUR. In 2003, he wrote the screenplay for George Orwell: A Life in Pictures for the BBC. A Life in Pictures starred Chris Langham as George Orwell, and used Orwell’s written output to create a video archive (only one piece of film is known to exist of the real Orwell, from his time at Eton). George Orwell: A Life in Pictures was acclaimed by the critics, nominated for three BAFTA awards, and winner of an Emmy Award for arts programming.

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