John Heilpern
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John Heilpern is an author, best known for his book Conference of the Birds, in which he details a journey by theatrical director Peter Brook and a group of actors across the desert of Northwest Africa in an attempt to develop a form of theatre not dependent on cultural assumptions.
Born in Manchester, England, he studied law at Oxford University and joined The Observer newspaper as a journalist. There, his profiles of Ralph Richardson and John Gielgud, Rudolf Nureyev, and Graham Greene set a new standard for the form. He joined the National Theatre, working as dramaturge on Peter Hall's 1976 production of Tamburlaine. Conference of the Birds came out the same year. In 1980 he moved to New York, where he currently lives and where he is the theatre critic for the New York Observer. His biography of the playwright John Osborne is expected in 2006.