Timberlake Wertenbaker, a renowned dramatist, emerged as one of Britain's most influential contemporary playwrights in the late 1980s, following the premieres of her award-winning plays, including 'Our Country's Good' and 'Three Birds Alighting on a Field', at the prestigious Royal Court Theatre.
Born Lael Louisiana Timberlake Wertenbaker in New York, she was raised in Northern Basque Country, France, as the daughter of Charles Wertenbaker, a foreign correspondent for Time Magazine, and Lael Tucker Wertenbaker, author of novels including 'Death of a Man', which chronicled Charles's death.
Lael graduated from St. John's College, USA, in 1966 and began her career writing for Time-Life books. She then pursued a career in professional teaching, lecturing in both Greek and French. Before relocating to London in the early 1980s, where she developed an interest in writing for the theater, she was a resident-writer for the small theater companies Shared Experience in 1983 and the Royal Court Theatre from 1984-85.
It was during this period that her plays, such as 'Abel's Sister' and 'The Grace of Mary Traverse', premiered, with the latter winning 'The Players Most Promising Playwright Award'. She is, however, better known for her later play 'Our Country's Good', adapted from Thomas Keneally's novel 'The Playmaker', which chronicled the English arrival in Australia in the late 18th century.
The play premiered at the Royal Court Theatre on September 10, 1988, directed by Max Stafford-Clark and starring Jim Broadbent, Nick Dunning, and Alphonsia Emmanuel. Since then, this specific play has become a text in both GCSE and A-Level drama.
In recent years, Timberlake Wertenbaker has continued to adapt and sometimes translate various novels to the stage, including works by Marivaux, Anouilh, Maeterlinck, Pirandello, Sophocles, and Euripides. She has also written several screenplays, including film adaptations of Edith Wharton's 'The Children' and Henry James's 'The Wings of the Dove', as well as the television play 'Do Not Disturb'.
Additionally, she has authored various BBC radio 3 plays, including 'Dianeira', transmitted in 1999, and an adaptation and translation of Euripides' play 'Hecuba', transmitted in 2001. She also adapted Kadare's novel 'The H File' and most recently 'Scenes of Seduction' on Radio 4 on March 7, 2005.
Her most recent play, 'Galileo's Daughter', adapted from the Dava Sobell novel, premiered by the Peter Hall Company in Bath in July 2004. Timberlake Wertenbaker currently resides in England.
