ADE BEAN

Ade is an award-winning television drama director with nearly forty years’ experience of working in theatre, radio and television, and has worked with actors such as Oliver Reed, Ian Holm, Diana Rigg, Samuel West, Richard E Grant, Susannah York, Bill Nighy, Micky Dolenz and David Jason.

He has directed the major soaps: Eastenders, Coronation Street, Emmerdale, Hollyoaks, Brookside and Doctors, as well as several continuing series such as Casualty, Heartbeat, Holby City, Murder in Mind, The Royal and Merseybeat. He is currently directing the Scottish BBC soap River City (under COVID restrictions!) His directing work has taken him to Los Angeles, Moscow, Bucharest and Dublin.

His early career was in Repertory and Community Theatre companies in Leicester, Coventry, London and the West End. He was also artistic director of the writing touring company Inner City in Hackney, and a producer at BBC Radio Drama before training as a television drama director with the BBC in the early nineties. He has also written for television (Heartbeat, Doctors) and has numerous commissions for BBC Radio Drama.

Ade regularly works with new directors, mentoring for DirectorsUK, as well as with actors, taking workshops and classes for The Guildhall School of Music and Drama (London), Mountview Theatre School, Stirling University and Act Up North. He also contributed a chapter on television acting to the recently-published Surviving Actors Manual (Nick Hern Books).