Deborah Warner

Deborah Warner
Born	May 12, 1959 (1959-05-12) Oxfordshire, England
Occupation	Theatre director

Deborah Warner CBE (born 12 May 1959) is a British director of theatre and opera known for her interpretations of the works of Shakespeare, Bertolt Brecht, Georg Büchner, and Henrik Ibsen, and for her long-term working relationship with the Irish actress Fiona Shaw.

Biography

Early years

Warner was born in Oxfordshire, England to antiquarians, Roger Harold Metford Warner and Ruth Ernestine Hurcombe. She studied theatre and stage management at drama school, and then in 1980 founded the KICK theatre company for young talented amateur actors when she was 21.

Theatre work

In 1987 Warner joined the Royal Shakespeare Company, where she would later direct Titus Andronicus. At the RSC she began her long-time collaboration with Fiona Shaw. The two women have collaborated on plays including Electra (RSC); The Good Person of Sezuan (1989, National Theatre); Hedda Gabler (1991, The Abbey Theatre and BBC2); the controversial Richard II, with Shaw in the title role, also at the National Theatre (1995) and televised by BBC2; Footfalls, whose radical staging so enraged the Beckett estate that the production was pulled during its run; The PowerBook, at the National Theatre, a dramatisation of Jeanette Winterson's novel; Medea (2000–2001, Queen's Theatre and Broadway); and Shakespeare's Julius Caesar, in which Shaw played the small part of Portia. The production starred Ralph Fiennes and Simon Russell Beale; first staged at the Barbican Centre, it later toured Europe. Shaw and Warner toured the world with T. S. Eliot's The Waste Land, which began in Wilton's Music Hall in London's East End. Her work began to focus on the link of drama to places, a theme which was expanded upon in her Angel Project. In 2007, following negotiations with the Beckett estate, Warner directed Shaw in Happy Days at the National Theatre, followed in 2009 by Mother Courage and Her Children (with Shaw in the title role) at the same venue. She returned to the Barbican Centre in 2011 to direct The School for Scandal.

Other areas

She directed the 1999 film The Last September with Michael Gambon and Maggie Smith. She has also worked in opera and classical music, including Diary of One Who Vanished by Janáček starring Ian Bostridge; a staging of the St.John Passion; a controversial staging of Mozart's Don Giovanni at Glyndebourne; Wozzeck for Opera North; Death in Venice at English National Opera; and Henry Purcell's "Dido and Aeneas" with Les Arts Florissants in Vienna, Paris and Amsterdam.

Personal life

Warner was made a commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) on 17 Jun 2006. She was for several years in a relationship with the English novelist Jeanette Winterson.

Awards and nominations

Awards

• 1988 Laurence Olivier Award for Best Director – Titus Andronicus
• 1992 Laurence Olivier Award for Best Director of a Play – Hedda Gabler
• 1992 Chevalier of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres

Nominations

• 1997 Drama Desk Award Outstanding Direction of a Play – The Waste Land
• 2003 Drama Desk Award Outstanding Direction of a Play – Medea
• 2003 Tony Award Best Direction of a Play – Medea
• 2008 Drama Desk Award Outstanding Director of a Play – Happy Days

External links

• Deborah Warner at the Internet Broadway Database
• Deborah Warner at the Internet Movie Database