Sam Walters

Sam took a degree at Oxford University, trained as an actor at LAMDA and then turned to directing with the formation of the Worcester Repertory Company. He was invited to form Jamaica's first full-time theatre company and drama school, and on his return to England in 1971 he founded the Orange Tree Theatre.

Early in his career he directed in regional theatres, drama schools and on a couple of occasions overseas. He dipped a toe into television and in 1974 directed the second cast of Absurd Person Singular in the West End. Recently he has seldom ventured far from the Orange Tree, although it was while he was directing Private Lives at the Stephen Joseph Theatre in Scarborough that Alan Ayckbourn mooted the relationship between the two theatres. At the Orange Tree his productions have ranged from Shakespeare through Restoration comedy to Feydeau and Brecht, as well as new plays by Crimp, Cregan, Havel, Saunders, Weldon, Wymark and David Lewis.

He won a Time Out Award for 1987/88 season, being described as a "theatrical totter", and in 1989 was awarded a Winston Churchill Travelling Fellowship, the first part of which he spent in Prague during the 'velvet revolution', the second part in Moscow and Leningrad. In 1991, the year the new theatre opened, the Orange Tree was awarded the Charrington Fringe Award for Outstanding Achievement in Small Theatre.

Sam Walters received the Peter Brook Empty Space Award for the work of 1992/93 company season and in 1993/94 he took a year away from the Orange Tree, taught in America and visited all fellow theatres in the round. After directing the new theatre's opening production of All in the Wrong he seems to have directed about 50 productions in the new theatre and heaven knows how many before. Recently he directed The Marrying of Ann Leete, Myth Propaganda and Disaster in Nazi Germany and Contemporary America, Monkey's Uncle, A Journey to London, The Madras House, The Woman Hater, Leaving, Mountain Hotel and Private View in the recent Havel season, Greenwash, and Factors Unforeseen.

He is married to actress and director Auriol Smith and they have two daughters - Dorcas and Octavia.

He was awarded the MBE in 1999 and in January 2009 he was made an Honorary Doctor of Letters by Kingston University.