ELLEN McDOUGALL
Ellen is an award-winning theatre director and maker. She has directed classic and new plays, devised work and adaptations, cabaret and opera, and productions for young audiences.
She was Artistic Director and Joint CEO of The Gate Theatre 2017-2022.
Most recent credits:
AS YOU LIKE IT (GLOBE)
★★★★
‘Exhuberant and inventive’
Telegraph
★★★★
‘Consistently delightful…a pleasure’
Evening Standard
★★★★
‘A joyous, queer extravaganza’
Time Out
★★★★
‘Vibrant, glittering, funny’
The Arts Desk
WATCH ON THE RHINE (DONMAR)
‘It’s hard to overpraise Ellen McDougall’s superb production…comes close to perfection’
The Spectator
★★★★
‘Impeccably directed’
The Guardian
★★★★
‘It’s rare to feel you are watching a plea from the frontline of history’
WhatsOnStage
★★★★
‘Bravura stuff’
Time Out
Other credits:
Insurrection: A Work in Progress (Royal Opera House); Purgatory in Ingolstadt (CSSD); Our Town (Open Air Theatre Regent’s Park); The Wolves (Stratford East); Othello (Globe); Aladdin, Cinderella (Lyric Hammersmith); The Rolling Stone (Royal Exchange, Manchester); The Remains of Maisie Duggan (Abbey Theatre, Dublin); The Glass Menagerie (Headlong); Anna Karenina (Royal Exchange, Manchester); Henry the Fifth (Unicorn); Ivan and the Dogs (Actors Touring Company/Soho).
For the Gate, Ellen directed sold out productions of Dear Elizabeth, Effigies of Wickedness (Songs banned by the Nazis), The Unknown Island, and Idomeneus.
Awards / Grants:
Inaugural recipient of the International Artists’ Development Award (Arts Council/British Council), 2013
Olivier Award Nomination, Outstanding Achievement in an Affiliate Theatre for Ivan and the Dogs, 2011
Ian Ritchie Foundation Award (JMK Runner Up), 2008
Press:
A glimpse behind the scenes…of the London theatre’s gender-bending production of As You Like It, directed by Ellen McDougall, 2023
First Person: Ellen McDougall on finding the commonality in the American classic ‘Our Town’, 2019
Ellen McDougall on running the Gate Theatre…, 2017
Theatre Radical Ellen McDougall, The Guardian, Lyn Gardner, 2015
https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2015/sep/16/ellen-mcdougall-the-glass-menagerie-tennessee-williams
Other work:
Ellen has taught at Royal Central School of Speech and Drama, Rose Bruford College, and Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama.
She is on the Advisory Panel for the Comparative Literature Department at Goldsmiths University London.
Ellen was part of the Secret Theatre Company at the Lyric Hammersmith (2013-14), and Director in Residence at the National Theatre Studio (2009).
Ellen trained as an assistant director to Katie Mitchell, Bijan Sheibani and Marianne Elliott at the National Theatre and Royal Court.
She has been a script reader/juror for the Bruntwood Prize, Susan Smith Blackburn Award, Windham Campbell Prize, and the National Theatre.