Deborah Warner is the current Artistic Director of the Ustinov Studio, Theatre Royal Bath following her appointment in 2020. Her inaugural season in 2022 includes productions of The Tempest and Benjamin Britten’s Phaedra.
Theatre credits include: King Lear (Old Vic); The Testament of Mary & The School For Scandal (Barbican); The Good Person of Szechuan, Woyzeck, The Tempest, Measure for Measure, King Lear and Coriolanus (Kick Theatre Company); Titus Andronicus (Olivier and Evening Standard Awards for Direction), King John, Electra (RSC); The Good Person of Szechuan, King Lear, Richard II (French Critics’ Best Foreign Production); Mother Courage and Her Children; The PowerBook (NT); Hedda Gabler (Olivier Awards for Direction and Production) (Abbey Theatre, Dublin / Playhouse Theatre, London); Beckett’s Footfalls (run foreshortened by Samuel Beckett’s Estate, Garrick Theatre, London); Coriolanus with Bruno Ganz (Salzburg Festival); Une Maison de Poupée (Odéon, Paris); Medea (Evening Standard Award for Direction, three Tony nominations and two Obies) (Abbey Theatre, Dublin / Queen’s Theatre, London / US tour and Broadway), and three devised installation pieces – The St Pancras Project, The Tower Project (LIFT) and The Angel Project (Perth International Arts Festival and Lincoln Center Festival).
Her production of The Waste Land with Fiona Shaw visited Brussels, Dublin, Paris, Montreal, Toronto, Brighton, Adelaide, Bergen, Perth London – at Wilton’s Music Hall (where it was the first live theatre event since the theatre closed in the nineteenth century) – and the Liberty Theatre, New York, where it won two New York Drama Desk Awards. Deborah directed Julius Caesar at the Barbican, starring Ralph Fiennes, Anton Lesser, Simon Russell Beale and Fiona Shaw, which toured to Paris, Madrid and Luxembourg; and Readings with Fiona Shaw was co-produced by Fitzroy Productions at the Theâtre Nationale de Chaillot. Her production of Beckett’s Happy Days with Fiona Shaw travelled from the National Theatre to Paris, Madrid and Epidavros and then on to Washington, New York, Amsterdam, Epidavros again and Dublin.
Opera credits include: Fidelio (La Scala, Milan); Messiah and Between Worlds (ENO); Wozzeck (Opera North); Don Giovanni, Fidelio conducted by Mark Elder (Glyndebourne); Jeanne d’Arc au Bûcher (BBC Proms); The Turn of the Screw (Evening Standard and South Bank Show Awards) (ROH); Diary of One Who Vanished (ENO at the Dublin Festival, Bobigny, Holland Festival, Lincoln Center New York and NT); St John Passion (ENO) and The Rape of Lucretia (Bayerische Opera, Munich). Future projects include Dido and Aeneas conducted by William Christie (Vienna Festival); La Voix Humaine (Opera North); and Death in Venice (ENO).
Film credits include: The Waste Land (Un Certain Regard, Cannes Film Festival) and The Last September (Official Selection Director’s Fortnight, Cannes, Toronto and Edinburgh Film Festivals).
Television credits include: Hedda Gabler (BBC); Richard II (Illuminations TV / BBC) and The St John Passion (BBC).
Deborah was awarded the Chevalier de l’Ordre des Artes et des Lettres by the French government in 1992 and L’Officier des Arts et des Lettres in 2000.