John Heilpern

John Heilpern, a contributing editor to Vanity Fair (where he writes the "Out To Lunch" feature) and longtime drama critic for the New York Observer,

Heilpern, the son of a bookmaker, was born in Manchester, England, and educated at Oxford University. He began his career at The Observer of London, where his interviews with numerous cultural figures (including Graham Greene, Rudolf Nureyev, Henry Moore, Artur Rubinstein, John Gielgud and Ralph Richardson) received a British Press Award.

He has also worked as Peter Hall’s assistant director on Tamburlaine at the National Theatre of Great Britain in 1976, and when he went to live in New York in 1980, he subsequently worked on Broadway as a librettist for Michael Bennett (of A Chorus Line).

Heilpern is perhaps best known for his classic book, Conference of the Birds – The Story of Peter Brook in Africa. First published in 1977 by Faber & Faber in England, it tells the story of a historic journey made by Peter Brook and an international troupe of actors (including the young Helen Mirren) across the Sahara Desert through North West Africa in search of a new form of theatre. The current paperback edition of Conference of the Birds, re-issued in America by Routledge, was described by The Sunday Telegraph as “one of the best books about theatre ever written”.