[2] In February 1939, Coleman joined the Old Vic Company on a tour of Italy, Greece, Malta, Portugal, and Egypt, under the auspices of the British Council.
[3] Upon his return to England, Coleman was a conscientious objector during the Second World War, initially being sent to work on fruit farms in Sussex before being enlisted by Ruth Spalding's Pilgrim Players as an actor to tour churches and village halls performing morality plays.
[5] From 1954, Coleman began work at the Crest Theatre, Toronto, directing productions including Orson Welles' Marching Song and T.S Eliot's The Confidential Clerk.
Coleman continued his international directing work with productions of Britten's A Midsummer Night's Dream at the War Memorial Opera House, San Francisco in 1961 and at Teatro Colón, Buenos Aires, in 1962.
[10] Coleman also directed television films of Puccini's La Bohème in 1966,[11] Tchaikovsky's Eugene Onegin in 1967, Verdi's Otello in 1969 and Falstaff in 1972,[12] and Donizetti's Don Pasquale in 1973.
[citation needed] Coleman continued his work directing stage plays and operas, including Francis Durbridge's ...Suddenly at Home in 1971 and The Gentle Hook in 1975.
Coleman also directed the premiere of Alun Hoddinott's The Trumpet Major by the Welsh National Opera in 1981, and productions of Shakespeare's King Lear, Dale Wasserman's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, and Peter Stone's Woman of the Year in Ankara and Bulgaria in 1989–1990.