JOAN LANE – DEVELOPMENT PRODUCER
Joan Lane has had over 30 years’ experience working in Arts Management and Production. Originally trained as a Speech and Language Therapist, with a background as a music scholar, she has arranged choral tours and produced and directed concerts and operas. Starting as a choral music coordinator, she has produced concerts at the Queen Elizabeth Hall, St. John’s Smith Square and St. James’s Piccadilly and assisted with Christmas concerts in St. James’s Palace. She was Production Coordinator for BBC Radio 3’s first fully staged Promenade Concert Opera (Britten’s Noye’s Fludde at the Royal Albert Hall), the Production Coordinator for that same opera for Crusaid’s Music for Life Day at the Royal Festival Hall and its Producer in St. George’s Chapel Windsor for the Windsor Festival. She was asked to take over as Director of the Windsor Festival, but declined when offered the chance to work for Major Sir Michael Parker on large-scale State events. She also produced an opera Double Bill at the Sadler’s Wells Theatre.
Since 1998 she has toured accessible and innovative productions of Shakespeare plays from her company Wild Thyme Productions and assisted on the production of numerous Christmas concerts in London as well as in Brussels, Italy (Alba, Piedmont) and Switzerland. She auditioned, cast and rehearsed child singers throughout the UK for the National Theatre’s touring production of Alan Bennett’s The Wind in the Willows and coordinated participation of boy trebles in the National Theatre’s productions of Tartuffe and Henry V and singers for The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (South Bank & UK tour). TV work includes 3 productions of the BBC’s annual Christmas gala Joy to the World. Youth choral work includes productions of La Boheme, Carmen, Madam Butterfly and Tosca at the Royal Albert Hall, and Madam Butterfly on tour. Joan was the Production Coordinator for a CD of music by Benjamin Britten which reached number 7 in the classical charts; and Co-Producer of the world premiere of Alexander the Great, an opera funded by the EEC, with an International cast of over 250 at the first Opera Festival on the island of Lesbos, Greece.
Following national acclaim with its inaugural production in London, Wild Thyme twice toured its 1960s adaptation of Shakespeare’s Richard III to Germany. Following the success of this production, the company was invited back to the International Shakespeare Festival in Germany with A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Romeo & Juliet (which she also toured for 10 weeks in the UK). Enjoying a sell-out season in London and excellent national reviews, the company again returned to Germany with its innovative all-female production of Hamlet, an all-male Vaudeville adaptation of The Comedy of Errors, and with a 1950s adaptation of The Merry Wives of Windsor.
Joan assisted in the planning of the Heads of State Ceremony for the official VE Day Celebrations and for the VJ Day Commemoration Event, ‘The Final Tribute’ on Horse Guards and at Buckingham Palace. In July 2000, Joan was a member of the production team and Assistant Director on the official celebrations for HM Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother’s 100th Birthday Tribute. In 2002, she assisted with the official celebrations for HM the Queen’s Golden Jubilee in Windsor Great Park, and as part of the BBC’s production team in 2006, worked on HM the Queen’s 80th Birthday Party event at Buckingham Palace “Party at the Palace”.
Primarily engaged as Consultant by the BBC, Joan’s casting and production coordination skills were employed for the recording, filming and Royal Opera House performance of a new opera, The Little Prince. She was a Director on BBC Radio Two and BBC Television’s New Talent UK-wide search for the Voice of Musical Theatre, worked on Michael Nyman’s music for the film The Actors, coordinated the participation of singing ‘Angels’ in Stephen Fry’s directorial film debut, Bright Young Things, and worked again for the BBC as a production coordinator on its semi-staged Promenade Concert Opera, The Water Diviner’s Tale.
Joan developed and packaged the iconic film, The King’s Speech, directed by Tom Hooper and starring Colin Firth, Geoffrey Rush and Helena Bonham Carter, adapted from the stage play by its author David Seidler, for whom she also acted as agent. In 2013 Wild Thyme was co-producer on a UK tour of MAURICE’S JUBILEE, a new play which, through Russian writer colleagues, was produced at the Moscow Arts Theatre in 2015. In 2019 and at the Producers’ request, she rewrote the screenplay for the historical movie, ‘1242 GATEWAY TO THE WEST’ (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt13542474).The film is expected to be released later this year. She regularly mentors potential screenwriters, editing and reshaping both film and stage-play scripts and from time to time, lectures online. Along with her LA co-producing partner, Wendy Kram, she has feature films and TV series in development. Joan is also the resident Judge on the annual Kenneth Branagh Award for New Drama Writing.
She has produced two Showcases of new musicals in London, one of which went on to be performed in New York; and alongside editing, she is the Development Producer on THE GOLDEN DOOR, a new ensemble musical written by Phil Lanzon and Brian Degas. Set in 1917, and taken from true accounts, it is a 24-hour snapshot of life on Ellis Island after Immigrants from war-torn Europe journey across the Atlantic to America. Here, they are examined before being given 25 dollars each and welcomed in to help develop the future of that great country. The musical is a mirror held up to show the USA at its finest as it opens its arms to ‘Strangers from Afar”.