Sir Samuel Alexander Mendes CBE (born 1 August 1965) is an English film and stage director, producer and screenwriter. In theatre, he is known for his dark re-inventions of the stage musicals Cabaret (1994), Oliver! (1994), Company (1995), and Gypsy (2003). He directed an original West End stage musical for the first time with Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (2013).
For directing the play The Ferryman, Mendes was awarded the Tony Award for Best Direction of a Play in 2019.
Sam Mendes is an award-winning filmmaker and clearly has a love of all forms of live entertainment. As someone that writes and directs films, working with actors of all types, he’s also very much a fan of live theater and stage plays.
But COVID-19 has effectively closed all forms of live entertainment for the near future, putting the long term health of live theater in jeopardy.
In an op-ed released by Financial Times, the filmmaker has an idea for how to help live theater survive the pandemic, and it’s going to require some support from Netflix, Amazon, and other streaming services.
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