Charles Savage

Charles has over 300 production credits as a director for theatre and TV, ranging from dramas at the National Theatre and the RSC to new comedies in the West End (Coup de Soleil, Neither Here Nor There, Same Time Next Year) He has also been Artistic Director for five regional theatres. He was much involved in Children's animation for the BBC and pioneered the transformation of BBC TV Animation Characters into the first full scale stage musicals for young children. Postman Pat the Musical was the first, quickly followed by Fireman Sam Musicals and both regularly played the West End every Christmas and toured internationally. He wrote and directed 8 different versions. Charles set up and ran Paragraph International from Pinewood Studios for 10 years. The company successfully worked with the European Script Fund and independent producers on the development of projects and creating international co-productions. Charles was part of the writing team for Disney's Pebble and the Penguin and for Rapunzel (later released as Tangled). In 2002 he was appointed as Head of Script and International Co-Production for Film Development Cooperation London. He has run a chain of cinemas and also headed up performance, comedy writing and film at the University of Southhampton and was a visiting fellow in Screen Writing at University of Bournemouth. He was managing producer with Handmade Films, again working on script development. As a writer and director he wrote a 24 part series for BBC World Services on the history of world drama. He directed a play off Broadway (Waiter! Waiter!) and has frequently had shows at the Edinburgh festival as a director and in Australia for the Perth Festival. Since 2017 he has concentrated on developing a slate of projects with his business partner Sabine Jeleniowski in their company Cloud Nine Entertainment.