ABSTRACT
Having left Cambridge University in 1987, Sam Mendes began his theatrical career under the aegis of John Gale at the Chichester Festival Theatre, where in successive seasons he ran the Chichester Festival Theatre Tent, the venue at which he directed productions of Translations by Brian Friel and Heartlands by Tim Firth, as well as the newly built Minerva Studio, where he directed an acclaimed production of Gorky's Summerfolk and Shakespeare's Love's Labour Lost.
