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John Caird (director)
Encyclopedia
John Newport Caird is a British stage director and writer of plays, musicals and operas. He is an Honorary Associate Director of the Royal Shakespeare Company
, a regular director with the Royal National Theatre
of Great Britain and the Principal Guest Director of the Royal Dramatic Theatre
, Stockholm (Dramaten).
, Alberta, Canada to British subjects George Bradford Caird, Oxford theologian and Principal of Mansfield College, Oxford
and Viola Mary Newport, poet and librarian.
He lived in Montreal
until 1959 where he attended Selwyn House School
. His family then moved to Oxford
where he attended Magdalen College School
from 1959-1967. He studied acting at the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School
from 1967 to 1969.
Caird worked as an actor and stage manager at various English repertory theatres and in London’s West End before embarking on his directorial career at Contact Theatre
in Manchester in 1973.
for two years from 1973-1975 where he directed plays by Shakespeare, Chris Bond, John Osborne
, James Saunders, Samuel Beckett
, wrote and acted in Theatre in Education programmes for Manchester’s schools and prisons, and was an actor and musician in plays by Brecht
, Goldoni and Jellicoe
.
He then worked as a freelance director for various fringe theatre companies. For Sidewalk Theatre he directed Last Resort by Peter Flannery
. For Avon Touring he directed Regina versus Stephens by the late David Illingworth.
Caird also taught for one semester at Ottawa University
Drama Department, Canada
, where he directed The Changeling
by Middleton and Rowley. In 1975, he founded, with Stephen Barlow and others, Circle of Muses - a touring music theatre troupe that took musical entertainments around classical music clubs in England and Wales.
In 1977 Caird joined the Royal Shakespeare Company
as Assistant Director, becoming a Resident Director in December 1977 and an Associate Director in 1980.
From 1977-1990 Caird directed over 20 productions for the RSC including Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night with Zoë Wanamaker
, John Thaw
, Daniel Massey
and Emrys James
, Romeo and Juliet
with Daniel Day-Lewis
, Amanda Root
and Roger Allam
, Midsummer Night’s Dream with John Carlisle
, Clare Higgins and Richard McCabe
, Merchant of Venice, As You Like It
and Antony and Cleopatra
.
At the RSC’s Swan Theatre
he directed Ben Jonson
’s comedies Every Man in His Humour
with Simon Russell Beale
, Henry Goodman
and Pete Postlethwaite
and the New Inn with John Carlisle
and Fiona Shaw
, the first night of this play being the second-ever professional performance since it first appeared in 1629. His last production at the Swan was his own new version of John Gay
’s The Beggar’s Opera with music composed by Ilona Sekacz
.
Caird’s other productions at the RSC included classic works by Farquhar
, Shaw
, Strindberg
, Gorky
and Brecht
and world premières of plays by Peter Flannery
, Jonathan Gems
, Mary O'Malley
, John Berger
, Nella Bielski, Charles Wood and Richard Nelson
.
At the RSC Caird also co-directed four productions with Trevor Nunn
. The first was Merry Wives of Windsor in 1978 with Ben Kingsley
, David Threlfall
, and Timothy Spall
. Next was Nicholas Nickleby in 1980, a nine-hour adaption from Dickens by David Edgar
that ran for three separate seasons at the Aldwych Theatre
and then transferred to the Plymouth Theatre on Broadway
. Caird and Nunn then collaborated on a new version of J.M.Barrie’s Peter Pan
, the first ever production of the play to use a male actor in the title role. The production ran for three consecutive seasons at the Barbican Theatre from 1982-1984 with Miles Anderson
, Mark Rylance
and John McAndrew all playing Peter. Lastly Les Misérables
in 1985, a musical by Claude-Michel Schönberg
and Alain Boublil
that was a co-production between the RSC
and Cameron Mackintosh
. It ran for eight weeks at the Barbican Theatre before transferring to the Palace Theatre
in the West End
, moving to the Queen’s Theatre in 2004 where it is still running. It opened at The Broadway Theatre
in New York
in 1987 and thereafter has played all over the world.
Caird started directing at London's Royal National Theatre
in 1993 under the Artistic Directorship of Richard Eyre
. His first production was Trelawney of the Wells with Helen McCrory
and Robin Bailey
. Chekhov
’s The Seagull
followed in 1994 in a new version by Pam Gems
with Judi Dench
, Helen McCrory
and Bill Nighy
. In 1996 he directed the world premiére of Pam Gems
’ play Stanley based on the life of the English painter Stanley Spencer
, with Anthony Sher in the title role. Stanley later transferred to the Circle in the Square Theatre
on Broadway
. He continued to direct plays at the National under the Artistic Directorship of Trevor Nunn
with Peter Pan
in 1997 starring Daniel Evans
as Pan and Ian McKellen
as Hook and, in the NT Ensemble season of 1999, Bulwer-Lytton’s Money and his own new version of the Voltaire/Bernstein Candide
, both with Simon Russell Beale
and the late Denis Quilley
. In 2000, he again directed Simon Russell Beale
, this time in Hamlet
, a production that toured the UK and Europe, going to Elsinore
, Stockholm and Belgrade, before transferring to the Brooklyn Academy (BAM) in New York. Caird’s last production at the National Theatre
was the world première of Humble Boy
by Charlotte Jones
, with Diana Rigg
and Simon Russell Beale
. The play transferred to the Gielgud Theatre
in the West End where Felicity Kendal
joined the cast and it opened in New York
in 2003 at Manhattan Theatre Club
.
Caird’s other productions in the West End
have included Macbeth
at the Almeida Theatre
with Simon Russell Beale
and Emma Fielding
, Anouilh’s Becket
at the Theatre Royal Haymarket with Jasper Britton
and Dougray Scott
, Charles Dyer’s Rattle of a Simple Man with Michelle Collins
and Stephen Tompkinson
and Michael Weller
’s What the Night Is For with Gillian Anderson
and Roger Allam
, both at the Comedy Theatre.
of Stockholm
(Dramaten). His first production in Sweden was As You Like It
(Som ni vill ha det) for Stadsteatern (Stockholm City Theatre
) in 1984, with Stina Ekblad and Mats Bergman. Since then he has directed exclusively for Dramaten with A Midsummer Night's Dream
(En midsommarnattsdröm) in 2000, Twelfth Night (Trettondagsafton) in 2002, Strindberg’s Dödsdansen (The Dance of Death) in 2007 with Stina Ekblad and Örjan Ramberg and The Merry Wives of Windsor
(Muntra fruarna i Windsor) with Börje Ahlstedt
as Falstaff in 2009.
Caird’s new production of Shakespeare's The Tempest
(Stormen) opened at Dramaten in October 2010 with Orjan Ramberg
, Stina Ekblad
and Jonas Karlsson
. He returned to Dramaten to direct Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet
(Romeo och Julia) starring Christoffer Svensson and Sophia Pekkari. This production opened in April 2011 and ran through the summer and autumn seasons.
, which opened at the Imperial Theatre (Teikoku Gekijo) in 1987 and has been running in repertoire with other works at the same location ever since, as well as touring extensively throughout Japan
.
In 2006, he directed his own version of The Beggar's Opera
for the Nissay Theatre
in Tokyo
, the production being revived in 2008. His 2007 production of A Midsummer Night's Dream
(Natsu no Yo no Yume) for the New National Theatre (Shinkokuritsu Gekijo) was revived in 2009. His play Kinshu adapted from Teru Miyamoto
's famous novel opened at the Galaxy Theatre in 2007 and was revived in 2009. He has also directed Coward’s Private Lives
(Shiseikatsu) at Theatre Crié in 2008 and Jane Eyre
at the Nissay Theatre
in 2009. In 2010 Caird directed his own version of Bernstein’s Candide
at the Imperial Theatre, starring Inoue Yoshio and Ichimura Masachika.
Caird will return to Tokyo in the summer of 2012 to direct the Japanese première of his musical Daddy Long Legs at Theatre Crié, and a revival of
the Shochiku production of Jane Eyre for the Nissay Theatre and the Hakata-za in Kyushu.
with a new libretto by Italo Calvino
at Musica nel Chiostro, the Batignano Opera Festival in Tuscany
, in 1991, conducted by Paul McGrath. In 2005 he directed Verdi's Don Carlos
at the Welsh National Opera
in Cardiff
, conducted by Carlo Rizzi. In the same year, he directed a staged reading of The Screams of Kitty Genovese, a new opera by Will Todd and David Simpatico at the Public Theater
in New York
.
He remounted Don Carlos
for the Canadian Opera Company
in Toronto
in October 2007 and directed a new production of Verdi’s Aida
for WNO in 2008.
In 2007-8 he wrote the libretto for Brief Encounter
, a new opera by André Previn
based on the play Still Life by Noël Coward
and the Brief Encounter
screenplay by Coward and David Lean
. The opera had its world première performance at Houston Grand Opera
in 2009 conducted by Patrick Summers and starring Elizabeth Futral
and Nathan Gunn
. Brief Encounter
is published by G. Schirmer
's in New York and a CD of the original live production was released by Deutsche Grammophon in April 2011. Caird has recently directed Puccini’s Tosca
for HGO for the 2010 season, with Patricia Racette as Tosca, Alexey Dolgov as Cavaradossi and Raymond Aceto as Scarpia.
Caird returned to WNO in the autumn of 2011 to direct a new production of Mozart's Don Giovanni
, conducted by Lothar Koenigs
with designs by John Napier (designer)
.
Caird will return to Houston Grand Opera in 2012 to direct his WNO co-production of Verdi's Don Carlos
and a new production of Puccini's La Bohème
, a co-production with Canadian Opera Company
.
’s Song and Dance which ran at the Palace Theatre
in London
from 1982-1984.
He has also written libretti for a number of new musicals, all of which he also directed. As well as adapting and co-directing Schönberg and Boublil’s Les Misérables
for the RSC
and Cameron Mackintosh
, he has written libretti for Children of Eden
with music by Stephen Schwartz
which ran in the West End
in 1991 and now enjoys numerous productions worldwide every year, Jane Eyre
with music by Paul Gordon which played in La Jolla, Toronto and at the Brooks Atkinson Theatre
on Broadway from 1998–2000, Bernstein
’s Candide
which he adapted from the original Voltaire
novel for the National Theatre
season of 1999 and Daddy Long Legs, an adaptation of Jean Webster
’s novel with music by Paul Gordon that had its world première at the Rubicon Theatre in Ventura, California in 2009, starring Megan McGinnis
and Robert Adelman Hancock before touring to Palo Alto, Cincinnati and other theatres in the US. Daddy Long Legs has recently won three LA Ovation Awards
.
The Japanese première of Caird's version of Candide
opened at the Imperial Theatre in Tokyo in June 2010, directed by Caird and designed by Yoon Bae, after the original designs by John Napier.
Caird also wrote and directed, with the designer John Napier, The Siegfried and Roy Spectacular, a magic show for the Mirage Hotel in Las Vegas
, starring Siegfried Fischbacher and Roy Horn and their menagerie of white tigers. The show opened in February 1991 and ran until October 2004, finally closing when Roy was injured by one of his beloved tigers.
and 2
for the BBC
’s performance series in 1995, starring David Calder
, Ronald Pickup
, Rufus Sewell
, Jonathan Firth
, Elizabeth Spriggs
, Simon McBurney
, Jane Horrocks
and Paul Eddington
amongst others.
Many of his theatrical productions have also been televised: Nicholas Nickleby directed by Jim Goddard for Primetime Television in 1982 won an Emmy Award
for outstanding limited series. Swedish TV have screend As You Like It
and Dödsdansen. WOWOW Television in Japan have screened both Jane Eyre
and The Beggar’s Opera while NHK have screened Kinshu.
in 2000.
Caird also devised and directed (with Paul Robertson, the leader of the Medici String Quartet
) Intimate Letters, a series of dramatised concerts based on the chamber-works and letters of Janacek, Smetana
, Mozart, Elgar and Beethoven.
In 2001 he set up the Caird Company with Holly Kendrick to encourage young playwrights and directors. The company produced a number of rehearsed play-reading festivals in fringe theatres and rehearsal spaces all around London
, organized writing and directing workshops and seminars and produced Theatre Café, a festival of European Theatre at the Arcola Theatre
, The Arab-Israeli Cookbook, a verbatim play by Robin Soans
at the Gate Theatre
and the Lemon Princess by Rachel McGill for West Yorkshire Playhouse
.
Caird directed a production of the melodrama, Murder in the Red Barn for marionette puppets, as a fund-raiser to save the Tiller-Clowes Marionettes for the nation at the Britten Theatre, Royal College of Music, starring Joanna Lumley
, Gary Kemp
, Bill Nighy
and others.
For the 25th anniversary of the National Theatre
, Caird directed the NT ‘Chain Play’, a drama written in 25 consecutive scenes by 25 NT dramatists, a mad and wonderful event.
Recently Caird has written and directed Twin Spirits a dramatised concert based on the music and letters of Robert and Clara Schumann
, in aid of the Royal Opera House
, Covent Garden’s educational outreach programme. It was produced by June Chichester and starred amongst others Sting, Trudie Styler
, Derek Jacobi
, Ian McKellen
, Simon Keenlyside
and Rebecca Evans
. The concert was televised by Opus Arte and is now available on DVD.
in March, 2010 in London
and New York
.
, London
in 1982. They have three children: Joanna (Jo) (born 29 January 1983), Benjamin (Ben) (born 10 October 1984) and Samuel (Sam) (born 8 July 1987). His third was to Frances Ruffelle
in 1990, in Westminster
, London
. They have two children: Eliza (born 18 April 1988), who has become successful as a singer under the stage name Eliza Doolittle, and Nathaniel (Nat) (born 17 June 1990). His fourth was to Maoko Imai in Argiano, Italy in 1998. They have three children: Yoji (born 19 October 1998), Miyako (Mimi) (born 18 January 2000 and Yayako (Yaya) (born 14 March 2002).
His elder brother James is an architect, town planner and heritage consultant. His younger brother George (Geordie) is an oboist and Principal Emeritus of the Birmingham Conservatoire. His sister Dr. Margaret (Meg) Laing is Research Fellow in Mediaeval Dialectology at the University of Edinburgh
.
Caird is an Honorary Fellow of Mansfield College, Oxford
, an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Welsh College of Music & Drama
(Coleg Brenhinol Cerdd a Drama Cymru) and has an Honorary D.Litt from the University of East Anglia
.
1978: Savage Amusement (Warehouse)
1978: Look Out! Here Comes Trouble (Warehouse)
1978: The Adventures of Awful Knawful (Warehouse)
1979: Merry Wives of Windsor (Stratford & Aldwych, 1980)
1979: Caucasian Chalk Circle (Touring & Warehouse Theatre)
1980: The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby
(Aldwych 1980-1)
1981: Naked Robots (Warehouse)
1981: The Twin Rivals (Other Place & The Pit Theatre, London, 1982)
1982: Nicholas Nickleby (Plymouth Theatre, Broadway
)
1982: Song and Dance (Palace Theatre, London
)
1982: Our Friends in the North
(Other Place, The Pit Theatre, London)
1982: Peter Pan
by JM Barrie (Barbican Theatre, London)
1983: Twelfth Night (Stratford)
1984: Romeo and Juliet
(Touring, The Other Place & The Pit 1985-6)
1984: The Merchant of Venice
(Stratford)
1984: Red Star (The Pit, London)
1984: As You Like It
(Som Ni Vill Ha Det) (Stadsteatern, Stockholm)
1984: Nicholas Nickleby (Stratford & Ahmanson Theatre LA & Broadway)
1985: Les Misérables
(Barbican, Palace Theatre & Broadway 1986)
1985: Philistines (Other Place & The Pit Theatre, London, 1986)
1986: Misalliance (Barbican)
1986: Every Man in His Humour
(The Swan Theatre, Stratford)
1987: The New Inn (The Swan)
1987: Les Misérables
(Imperial Theatre, Tokyo)
1988: A Question of Geography (Other Place & The Pit, London)
1989: A Midsummer Night’s Dream Stratford & Barbican & UK Tour ,1990)
1989: As You Like It
(Stratford & Barbican,1990).
1990: Siegfried and Roy Spectacular (Le Mirage, Las Vegas, USA)
1991: Zaïde
(Musica nel Chiostro, Batignano, Italy)
1991: Children of Eden
(Prince Edward Theatre, London)
1992: Anthony and Cleopatra (Stratford & Barbican, 1993)
1992: Columbus and the Discovery of Japan by Richard Nelson (Barbican)
1992: The Beggar’s Opera (Swan Theatre & Barbican,1993)
1993: Trelawny of the Wells (Olivier Theatre, RNT, London)
1993: Life Sentences (Second Stage Theatre, Broadway, NY)
1994: The Seagull
(Olivier Theatre, RNT, London)
1995 The Millionairess (UK Tour)
1996: Stanley (Cottesloe Theatre, RNT & Circle in the Square, Broadway
, 1997)
1997: Jane Eyre
(Royal Alexandra Theatre
, Toronto
)
1997: Peter Pan
(Olivier Theatre, RNT)
1998: Jane Eyre
(La Jolla Playhouse
, California)
1999: Candide
, (Olivier Theatre, RNT)
1999: Money (Olivier Theatre, RNT)
2000: Hamlet
(Olivier Theatre, RNT, Elsinore
, EuropeanTour & BAM, 2001)
2000: A Midsummer Night’s Dream (En midsommarnattsdröm) (Dramaten)
2000: Jane Eyre
(Broadway
)
2001: Humble Boy
(Cottesloe Theatre, RNT & Gielgud Theatre
, 2002)
2002: Twelfth Night (Trettondagsafton) (Dramaten, Stockholm
)
2002: What the Night is For (Comedy Theatre, London)
2003: Humble Boy
(Manhattan Theatre Club
, New York
)
2004: Rattle of a Simple Man (Comedy Theatre, London
)
2004: Becket (Theatre Royal Haymarket, London
)
2005: Macbeth
(Almeida Theatre
, London
)
2005: Twin Spirits (Royal Opera House
, Covent Garden)
2005: Don Carlos
(Welsh National Opera
, Cardiff & UK Tour)
2005: The Screams of Kitty Genovese (Public Theater
, New York
)
2006: The Beggar’s Opera (Nissay Theatre, Tokyo
)
2006: Twin Spirits (New Victory Theater, New York
)
2006: Les Misérables
(Broadhurst Theatre
, New York
)
2007: Dödsdansen (Dramaten, Stockholm
)
2007: A Midsummer Night’s Dream, (Natsu no Yo no Yume) (New National, Tokyo
)
2007: Kinshu (Galaxy Theatre,Tokyo)
2007: Don Carlos
(Canadian Opera Company
, Toronto
)
2008: The Beggar’s Opera (Nissay Theatre, Tokyo
& Osaka
)
2008: Aida
(Welsh National Opera
, Cardiff
and Birmingham
)
2008: Private Lives
(Shiseikatsu) (Theatre Crié, Tokyo)
2009: Merry Wives of Windsor (Muntra fruarna i Windsor) (Dramaten)
2009: Brief Encounter
(Houston Grand Opera
)
2009: Midsummer Night’s Dream (Natsu no Yo no Yume) (Tokyo
& Toyama)
2009: Jane Eyre
(Nissay Theatre, Tokyo
)
2009: Daddy Long Legs (Rubicon Theatre, Ventura, California)
2009: Kinshu (Galaxy Theatre, Tokyo
& Japanese tour)
2010: Tosca
(Houston Grand Opera
)
2010: Candide
(Imperial Theatre, Tokyo)
2010: Daddy Long Legs (US Tour)
2010: The Tempest
(Stormen) (Dramaten)
2011: Romeo and Juliet
(Romeo och Julia) (Dramaten)
2011: Don Giovanni
(Welsh National Opera
- Cardiff and UK Tour)
Dramatists Play Service
, NY (1987)
Children of Eden
Music Theatre International
, NY (1997)
The Beggar’s Opera Dramatists Play Service
, NY (1999)
Peter Pan
Methuen Publishing, UK (1999)
Candide
Music Theatre International
, NY (2002)
Jane Eyre
Music Theatre International
, NY (2003)
Theatre Craft Faber & Faber (2010)
, First Night Records, 1985 (& numerous further cast recordings worldwide.)
Children of Eden
, First Night Records, 1991 (& RCA Victor/BMG 1998).
The Beggar’s Opera, London Records, 1992.
Jane Eyre
, Angel Records, 1998 (& Sony Music Entertainment 2000).
Candide
, RNT & First Night Records, 2000.
Daddy Long Legs (Paul Gordon Music) 2010
Brief Encounter Deutsche Grammophon
(2011)
1981 Evening Standard Drama Award for Best Director for Nicholas Nickleby.
1982 Tony Award
for Best Director for Nicholas Nickleby.
1982 Outer Critics Circle Award
, Special Citation for Nicholas Nickleby.
1987 Outer Critics Circle Award
for Outstanding Director of a Musical for Les Misérables
.
1987 Tony Award
for Best Director for Les Misérables
.
1994 Laurence Olivier Award (Nomination) for Best Director of a Musical for The Beggar's Opera
1994 Laurence Olivier Award (Nomination) for Best Musical Revival for The Beggar's Opera
1997 Outer Critics Circle Award
for Outstanding Director of a Play for Stanley.
1997 Tony Award (Nomination) for Best Direction of a Play for Stanley
1999 Laurence Olivier Award for Best Musical Revival for Candide
.
2001 Outer Critics Circle Award (Nomination) Outstanding Broadway Musical for Jane Eyre
2001 Tony Award
(Nomination) for Best Musical for Jane Eyre
2001 Tony Award
(Nomination) for Best Original Score for Jane Eyre
2001 Tony Award
(Nomination) for Best Book of a Musical for Jane Eyre
2006 Nippon Engeki Kogyo Kyukai Award for Kinshu, Midsummer Night's Dream and Beggar's Opera.
2007 Kikuta Kazuo Theatre Award for Special Achievement in Japanese Theatre
2010 LA Ovation Award (Nomination) for Director of a Musical for Daddy Long Legs
2010 LA Ovation Award for Book of a Musical for Daddy Long Legs
Royal Shakespeare Company
The Royal Shakespeare Company is a major British theatre company, based in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England. The company employs 700 staff and produces around 20 productions a year from its home in Stratford-upon-Avon and plays regularly in London, Newcastle-upon-Tyne and on tour across...
, a regular director with the Royal National Theatre
Royal National Theatre
The Royal National Theatre in London is one of the United Kingdom's two most prominent publicly funded theatre companies, alongside the Royal Shakespeare Company...
of Great Britain and the Principal Guest Director of the Royal Dramatic Theatre
Royal Dramatic Theatre
The Royal Dramatic Theatre is Sweden's national stage for "spoken drama", founded in 1788. Around one thousand shows are put on annually on the theatre's eight running stages....
, Stockholm (Dramaten).
Early years
Caird was born in EdmontonEdmonton
Edmonton is the capital of the Canadian province of Alberta and is the province's second-largest city. Edmonton is located on the North Saskatchewan River and is the centre of the Edmonton Capital Region, which is surrounded by the central region of the province.The city and its census...
, Alberta, Canada to British subjects George Bradford Caird, Oxford theologian and Principal of Mansfield College, Oxford
Oxford
The city of Oxford is the county town of Oxfordshire, England. The city, made prominent by its medieval university, has a population of just under 165,000, with 153,900 living within the district boundary. It lies about 50 miles north-west of London. The rivers Cherwell and Thames run through...
and Viola Mary Newport, poet and librarian.
He lived in Montreal
Montreal
Montreal is a city in Canada. It is the largest city in the province of Quebec, the second-largest city in Canada and the seventh largest in North America...
until 1959 where he attended Selwyn House School
Selwyn House School
Selwyn House School is a private independent boys' school located in Westmount, Quebec. Boys can attend from Kindergarten through to Grade 11. The school was founded in 1908 by Englishman Captain Algernon Lucas...
. His family then moved to Oxford
Oxford
The city of Oxford is the county town of Oxfordshire, England. The city, made prominent by its medieval university, has a population of just under 165,000, with 153,900 living within the district boundary. It lies about 50 miles north-west of London. The rivers Cherwell and Thames run through...
where he attended Magdalen College School
Magdalen College School, Oxford
Magdalen College School is an independent school for boys aged 7 to 18 and girls in the sixth form, located on The Plain in Oxford, England. It was founded as part of Magdalen College, Oxford by William Waynflete in 1480....
from 1959-1967. He studied acting at the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School
Bristol Old Vic Theatre School
The Bristol Old Vic Theatre School, opened by Laurence Olivier in 1946, is an affiliate of the Conservatoire for Dance and Drama, an organisation securing the highest standards of training in the performing arts, and is an associate school of the Faculty of Creative Arts of the University of the...
from 1967 to 1969.
Caird worked as an actor and stage manager at various English repertory theatres and in London’s West End before embarking on his directorial career at Contact Theatre
Contact Theatre
-Contact:Contact is a multi-disciplinary arts venue in Manchester. Originally a traditional theatre Contact was rebranded in 1999 as a space specialising in producing work and providing opportunities for young people.-History:...
in Manchester in 1973.
Theatre
Caird was an Associate Director of Contact TheatreContact Theatre
-Contact:Contact is a multi-disciplinary arts venue in Manchester. Originally a traditional theatre Contact was rebranded in 1999 as a space specialising in producing work and providing opportunities for young people.-History:...
for two years from 1973-1975 where he directed plays by Shakespeare, Chris Bond, John Osborne
John Osborne
John James Osborne was an English playwright, screenwriter, actor and critic of the Establishment. The success of his 1956 play Look Back in Anger transformed English theatre....
, James Saunders, Samuel Beckett
Samuel Beckett
Samuel Barclay Beckett was an Irish avant-garde novelist, playwright, theatre director, and poet. He wrote both in English and French. His work offers a bleak, tragicomic outlook on human nature, often coupled with black comedy and gallows humour.Beckett is widely regarded as among the most...
, wrote and acted in Theatre in Education programmes for Manchester’s schools and prisons, and was an actor and musician in plays by Brecht
Brecht
Brecht is a municipality located in the Belgian province of Antwerp. The municipality comprises the towns of Brecht proper, Sint-Job-in't-Goor and Sint-Lenaarts. On January 1, 2006 Brecht had a total population of 26,464...
, Goldoni and Jellicoe
Ann Jellicoe
Ann Jellicoe is a British actor, theatre director and playwright. Although her work has covered many areas of theatre and film, she is best known for "pushing the envelope" of the stage play, devising new forms which challenge and delight unconventional audiences...
.
He then worked as a freelance director for various fringe theatre companies. For Sidewalk Theatre he directed Last Resort by Peter Flannery
Peter Flannery
Peter Flannery is a British playwright and screenwriter. He was educated at Bath Spa University and is best known for his work while a resident playwright at the Royal Shakespeare Company in the late 1970s and early 1980s...
. For Avon Touring he directed Regina versus Stephens by the late David Illingworth.
Caird also taught for one semester at Ottawa University
Ottawa University
Ottawa University is a private, non-profit, faith-based liberal arts college located in Ottawa, Kansas. It was founded in 1865 and is affiliated with the American Baptist Churches USA...
Drama Department, Canada
Canada
Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...
, where he directed The Changeling
The Changeling (play)
The Changeling is a Jacobean tragedy written by Thomas Middleton and William Rowley. Widely regarded as "among the best" tragedies of the English Renaissance, the play has accumulated a significant body of critical commentary....
by Middleton and Rowley. In 1975, he founded, with Stephen Barlow and others, Circle of Muses - a touring music theatre troupe that took musical entertainments around classical music clubs in England and Wales.
In 1977 Caird joined the Royal Shakespeare Company
Royal Shakespeare Company
The Royal Shakespeare Company is a major British theatre company, based in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England. The company employs 700 staff and produces around 20 productions a year from its home in Stratford-upon-Avon and plays regularly in London, Newcastle-upon-Tyne and on tour across...
as Assistant Director, becoming a Resident Director in December 1977 and an Associate Director in 1980.
From 1977-1990 Caird directed over 20 productions for the RSC including Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night with Zoë Wanamaker
Zoe Wanamaker
Zoë Wanamaker, CBE is an American-British actress. She has performed with the Royal Shakespeare Company; in films, including the Harry Potter series; and in a number of television productions, including a long-time role as Susan Harper in the sitcom My Family.-Early life and family:Wanamaker was...
, John Thaw
John Thaw
John Edward Thaw, CBE was an English actor, who appeared in a range of television, stage and cinema roles, his most popular being police and legal dramas such as Redcap, The Sweeney, Inspector Morse and Kavanagh QC.-Early life:Thaw came from a working class background, having been born in Gorton,...
, Daniel Massey
Daniel Massey (actor)
Daniel Raymond Massey was an English actor and performer. He is possibly best known for his starring role in the British TV drama The Roads to Freedom, as Daniel, alongside Michael Bryant...
and Emrys James
Emrys James
Emrys James , was a Welsh Shakespearean actor. He also performed in many theatre and TV parts between 1960 and 1989, and was an Associate Artist of the Royal Shakespeare Company...
, Romeo and Juliet
Romeo and Juliet
Romeo and Juliet is a tragedy written early in the career of playwright William Shakespeare about two young star-crossed lovers whose deaths ultimately unite their feuding families. It was among Shakespeare's most popular archetypal stories of young, teenage lovers.Romeo and Juliet belongs to a...
with Daniel Day-Lewis
Daniel Day-Lewis
Daniel Michael Blake Day-Lewis is an English actor with both British and Irish citizenship. His portrayals of Christy Brown in My Left Foot and Daniel Plainview in There Will Be Blood won Academy and BAFTA Awards for Best Actor, and Screen Actors Guild as well as Golden Globe Awards for the latter...
, Amanda Root
Amanda Root
Amanda Root is an English stage and screen actor and a former voice actor for children's programmes.Root known for her starring role in the 1995 BBC film adaptation of Jane Austen's Persuasion and the British TV comedy All About Me, as Miranda, alongside Richard Lumsden in 2004 and when she was a...
and Roger Allam
Roger Allam
Roger Allam is an English actor, known primarily for his stage career, although he has performed in film and television. He played Inspector Javert in the original London production of the stage musical Les Misérables....
, Midsummer Night’s Dream with John Carlisle
John Carlisle (actor)
John Carlisle is a British television and stage actor.John Carlisle had regular roles in Emergency - Ward 10, Scotland Yard on ABC, 1957–1958, and the London Weekend Television series New Scotland Yard as Detective Sergeant Ward.He also appeared in the BBC series The Omega Factor as the morally...
, Clare Higgins and Richard McCabe
Richard McCabe
Richard McCabe is a Scottish actor.-Biography:Richard McCabe was born in Glasgow to a Scottish father and French mother . He studied at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art , where he won several awards. Following the early death of his father and his mother's re-marriage, he grew up in Sussex where...
, Merchant of Venice, As You Like It
As You Like It
As You Like It is a pastoral comedy by William Shakespeare believed to have been written in 1599 or early 1600 and first published in the folio of 1623. The play's first performance is uncertain, though a performance at Wilton House in 1603 has been suggested as a possibility...
and Antony and Cleopatra
Antony and Cleopatra
Antony and Cleopatra is a tragedy by William Shakespeare, believed to have been written sometime between 1603 and 1607. It was first printed in the First Folio of 1623. The plot is based on Thomas North's translation of Plutarch's Lives and follows the relationship between Cleopatra and Mark Antony...
.
At the RSC’s Swan Theatre
Swan Theatre (Stratford)
The Swan Theatre is a theatre belonging to the Royal Shakespeare Company in Stratford-upon-Avon, England. It is built on to the side of the larger Royal Shakespeare Theatre, occupying the Victorian Gothic structure that formerly housed the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre that preceded the RST but was...
he directed Ben Jonson
Ben Jonson
Benjamin Jonson was an English Renaissance dramatist, poet and actor. A contemporary of William Shakespeare, he is best known for his satirical plays, particularly Volpone, The Alchemist, and Bartholomew Fair, which are considered his best, and his lyric poems...
’s comedies Every Man in His Humour
Every Man in His Humour
Every Man in His Humour is a 1598 play by the English playwright Ben Jonson. The play belongs to the subgenre of the "humours comedy," in which each major character is dominated by an overriding humour or obsession.-Performance and Publication:...
with Simon Russell Beale
Simon Russell Beale
Simon Russell Beale, CBE is an English actor. He has been described by The Independent as "the greatest stage actor of his generation."-Early years:...
, Henry Goodman
Henry Goodman
Henry Goodman is a British theatre actor. He trained at RADA in London alongside Jonathan Pryce.In 1988, he played George Green's brother-in-law Cyril in London's Burning. He played character roles in episodes of the popular UK police drama The Bill...
and Pete Postlethwaite
Pete Postlethwaite
Peter William "Pete" Postlethwaite, OBE, was an English stage, film and television actor.After minor television appearances including in The Professionals, Postlethwaite's first success came with the film Distant Voices, Still Lives in 1988. He played a mysterious lawyer, Mr...
and the New Inn with John Carlisle
John Carlisle (actor)
John Carlisle is a British television and stage actor.John Carlisle had regular roles in Emergency - Ward 10, Scotland Yard on ABC, 1957–1958, and the London Weekend Television series New Scotland Yard as Detective Sergeant Ward.He also appeared in the BBC series The Omega Factor as the morally...
and Fiona Shaw
Fiona Shaw
Fiona Shaw, CBE is an Irish actress and theatre director. Although to international audiences she is probably most familiar for her minor role as Petunia Dursley in the Harry Potter films, she is an accomplished classical actress...
, the first night of this play being the second-ever professional performance since it first appeared in 1629. His last production at the Swan was his own new version of John Gay
John Gay
John Gay was an English poet and dramatist and member of the Scriblerus Club. He is best remembered for The Beggar's Opera , set to music by Johann Christoph Pepusch...
’s The Beggar’s Opera with music composed by Ilona Sekacz
Ilona Sekacz
Ilona Sekacz is a British composer of concert, film, television and theatre music.- About :Sekacz was born to a Polish mother and an English father. She studied violin and was a member of the National Youth Orchestra of Great Britain...
.
Caird’s other productions at the RSC included classic works by Farquhar
George Farquhar
George Farquhar was an Irish dramatist. He is noted for his contributions to late Restoration comedy, particularly for his plays The Recruiting Officer and The Beaux' Stratagem .-Early life:...
, Shaw
George Bernard Shaw
George Bernard Shaw was an Irish playwright and a co-founder of the London School of Economics. Although his first profitable writing was music and literary criticism, in which capacity he wrote many highly articulate pieces of journalism, his main talent was for drama, and he wrote more than 60...
, Strindberg
Strindberg
Strindberg may refer to:People* August Strindberg , Swedish dramatist and painter* Nils Strindberg , Swedish photographer* Anita Strindberg , Swedish actor* Henrik Strindberg , Swedish composerOther...
, Gorky
Maxim Gorky
Alexei Maximovich Peshkov , primarily known as Maxim Gorky , was a Russian and Soviet author, a founder of the Socialist Realism literary method and a political activist.-Early years:...
and Brecht
Brecht
Brecht is a municipality located in the Belgian province of Antwerp. The municipality comprises the towns of Brecht proper, Sint-Job-in't-Goor and Sint-Lenaarts. On January 1, 2006 Brecht had a total population of 26,464...
and world premières of plays by Peter Flannery
Peter Flannery
Peter Flannery is a British playwright and screenwriter. He was educated at Bath Spa University and is best known for his work while a resident playwright at the Royal Shakespeare Company in the late 1970s and early 1980s...
, Jonathan Gems
Jonathan Gems
Jonathan Gems is a British playwright and screenwriter mostly known for his work on Mars Attacks!, directed by Tim Burton. He also wrote the film's novelization....
, Mary O'Malley
Mary O'Malley (playwright)
Mary Josephine O'Malley is an English playwright of Irish-Lithuanian descent.-Early years:In the 1960s Mary O'Malley studied drama at the City Literary Institute, and 'Improvisation and Playmaking' with Dorothea Alexander. In the mid 1970s, while working in fringe theatre, she joined The Writers'...
, John Berger
John Berger
John Peter Berger is an English art critic, novelist, painter and author. His novel G. won the 1972 Booker Prize, and his essay on art criticism Ways of Seeing, written as an accompaniment to a BBC series, is often used as a university text.-Education:Born in Hackney, London, England, Berger was...
, Nella Bielski, Charles Wood and Richard Nelson
Richard Nelson (playwright)
Richard Nelson is an American playwright and librettist. He wrote the books for the musicals James Joyce's The Dead and the Broadway version of Chess.-Personal life:Nelson was born in Chicago, Illinois....
.
At the RSC Caird also co-directed four productions with Trevor Nunn
Trevor Nunn
Sir Trevor Robert Nunn, CBE is an English theatre, film and television director. Nunn has been the Artistic Director for the Royal Shakespeare Company, the Royal National Theatre, and, currently, the Theatre Royal, Haymarket. He has directed musicals and dramas for the stage, as well as opera...
. The first was Merry Wives of Windsor in 1978 with Ben Kingsley
Ben Kingsley
Sir Ben Kingsley, CBE is a British actor. He has won an Oscar, BAFTA, Golden Globe and Screen Actors Guild awards in his career. He is known for starring as Mohandas Gandhi in the film Gandhi in 1982, for which he won the Academy Award for Best Actor...
, David Threlfall
David Threlfall
David Threlfall is an English stage, film and television actor and director best known for playing Frank Gallagher in Channel 4's Manchester-based drama series Shameless. He has also directed several episodes of the show.-Early life:...
, and Timothy Spall
Timothy Spall
Timothy Leonard Spall, OBE is an English character actor and occasional presenter.-Early life:Spall, the third of four sons, was born in Battersea, London. His mother, Sylvia R. , was a hairdresser, and his father, Joseph L. Spall, was a postal worker...
. Next was Nicholas Nickleby in 1980, a nine-hour adaption from Dickens by David Edgar
David Edgar (playwright)
David Edgar is a British playwright and author who has had more than sixty of his plays published and performed on stage, radio and television around the world, making him one of the most prolific dramatists of the post-1960s generation in Great Britain.He was resident playwright at the Birmingham...
that ran for three separate seasons at the Aldwych Theatre
Aldwych Theatre
The Aldwych Theatre is a West End theatre, located on Aldwych in the City of Westminster. The theatre was listed Grade II on 20 July 1971. Its seating capacity is 1,200.-Origins:...
and then transferred to the Plymouth Theatre on Broadway
Broadway theatre
Broadway theatre, commonly called simply Broadway, refers to theatrical performances presented in one of the 40 professional theatres with 500 or more seats located in the Theatre District centered along Broadway, and in Lincoln Center, in Manhattan in New York City...
. Caird and Nunn then collaborated on a new version of J.M.Barrie’s Peter Pan
Peter Pan
Peter Pan is a character created by Scottish novelist and playwright J. M. Barrie . A mischievous boy who can fly and magically refuses to grow up, Peter Pan spends his never-ending childhood adventuring on the small island of Neverland as the leader of his gang the Lost Boys, interacting with...
, the first ever production of the play to use a male actor in the title role. The production ran for three consecutive seasons at the Barbican Theatre from 1982-1984 with Miles Anderson
Miles Anderson
Miles Anderson is a Zimbabwean actor. He has lived in England and America for the last 40 years.He was born in 1947 in Rhodesia, now Zimbabwe. Educated at Prince Edward school, his father commanded the Rhodesian Army until dismissed by Premier Ian Smith for his stance against racism and a...
, Mark Rylance
Mark Rylance
Mark Rylance is an English actor, theatre director and playwright.As an actor, Rylance found success on stage and screen. For his work in theatre he has won Olivier and Tony Awards among others, and a BAFTA TV Award...
and John McAndrew all playing Peter. Lastly Les Misérables
Les Misérables (musical)
Les Misérables , colloquially known as Les Mis or Les Miz , is a musical by Claude-Michel Schönberg, based on the novel of the same name by Victor Hugo....
in 1985, a musical by Claude-Michel Schönberg
Claude-Michel Schönberg
Claude-Michel Schönberg is a French record producer, actor, singer, songwriter, and musical theatre composer, best known for his collaborations with the lyricist Alain Boublil.These include the musicals:...
and Alain Boublil
Alain Boublil
Alain Boublil is a musical theatre lyricist and librettist, best known for his collaborations with the composer Claude-Michel Schönberg for musicals on Broadway and London's West End...
that was a co-production between the RSC
Royal Shakespeare Company
The Royal Shakespeare Company is a major British theatre company, based in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England. The company employs 700 staff and produces around 20 productions a year from its home in Stratford-upon-Avon and plays regularly in London, Newcastle-upon-Tyne and on tour across...
and Cameron Mackintosh
Cameron Mackintosh
Sir Cameron Anthony Mackintosh is a British theatrical producer notable for his association with many commercially successful musicals. At the height of his success in 1990, he was described as being "the most successful, influential and powerful theatrical producer in the world" by the New York...
. It ran for eight weeks at the Barbican Theatre before transferring to the Palace Theatre
Palace Theatre, London
The Palace Theatre is a West End theatre in the City of Westminster in London. It is an imposing red-brick building that dominates the west side of Cambridge Circus and is located near the intersection of Shaftesbury Avenue and Charing Cross Road...
in the West End
West End theatre
West End theatre is a popular term for mainstream professional theatre staged in the large theatres of London's 'Theatreland', the West End. Along with New York's Broadway theatre, West End theatre is usually considered to represent the highest level of commercial theatre in the English speaking...
, moving to the Queen’s Theatre in 2004 where it is still running. It opened at The Broadway Theatre
The Broadway Theatre
The Broadway Theatre is a Broadway theatre located at 1681 Broadway in midtown-Manhattan....
in New York
New York
New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...
in 1987 and thereafter has played all over the world.
Caird started directing at London's Royal National Theatre
Royal National Theatre
The Royal National Theatre in London is one of the United Kingdom's two most prominent publicly funded theatre companies, alongside the Royal Shakespeare Company...
in 1993 under the Artistic Directorship of Richard Eyre
Richard Eyre
Sir Richard Charles Hastings Eyre CBE is an English director of film, theatre, television, and opera.-Biography:Eyre was educated at Sherborne School, an independent school for boys in the market town of Sherborne in north-west Dorset in south-west England, followed by Peterhouse at the University...
. His first production was Trelawney of the Wells with Helen McCrory
Helen McCrory
Helen Elizabeth McCrory is a British actress. She portrayed Cherie Blair in both the 2006 film The Queen and the 2010 film The Special Relationship. She also portrayed Narcissa Malfoy in the final three Harry Potter films....
and Robin Bailey
Robin Bailey
Robin Bailey was an English actor. He was born in Hucknall, Nottinghamshire.Although often chosen for upper class and tradition-bound roles such as Judge Graves in Thames Television's Rumpole Of The Bailey, Bailey is perhaps most fondly remembered for his portrayal of Uncle Mort in I Didn't Know...
. Chekhov
Anton Chekhov
Anton Pavlovich Chekhov was a Russian physician, dramatist and author who is considered to be among the greatest writers of short stories in history. His career as a dramatist produced four classics and his best short stories are held in high esteem by writers and critics...
’s The Seagull
The Seagull
The Seagull is the first of what are generally considered to be the four major plays by the Russian dramatist Anton Chekhov. The Seagull was written in 1895 and first produced in 1896...
followed in 1994 in a new version by Pam Gems
Pam Gems
Pam Gems was a British playwright. The author of numerous original plays, as well as of adaptations of works by major European playwrights of the past, Gems is best known for the 1978 musical play Piaf.-Personal life:...
with Judi Dench
Judi Dench
Dame Judith Olivia "Judi" Dench, CH, DBE, FRSA is an English film, stage and television actress.Dench made her professional debut in 1957 with the Old Vic Company. Over the following few years she played in several of William Shakespeare's plays in such roles as Ophelia in Hamlet, Juliet in Romeo...
, Helen McCrory
Helen McCrory
Helen Elizabeth McCrory is a British actress. She portrayed Cherie Blair in both the 2006 film The Queen and the 2010 film The Special Relationship. She also portrayed Narcissa Malfoy in the final three Harry Potter films....
and Bill Nighy
Bill Nighy
William Francis "Bill" Nighy is an English actor and comedian. He worked in theatre and television before his first cinema role in 1981, and made his name in television with The Men's Room in 1991, in which he played the womanizer Prof...
. In 1996 he directed the world premiére of Pam Gems
Pam Gems
Pam Gems was a British playwright. The author of numerous original plays, as well as of adaptations of works by major European playwrights of the past, Gems is best known for the 1978 musical play Piaf.-Personal life:...
’ play Stanley based on the life of the English painter Stanley Spencer
Stanley Spencer
Sir Stanley Spencer was an English painter. Much of his work depicts Biblical scenes, from miracles to Crucifixion, happening not in the Holy Land but in the small Thames-side village where he was born and spent most of his life...
, with Anthony Sher in the title role. Stanley later transferred to the Circle in the Square Theatre
Circle in the Square Theatre
The Circle in the Square Theatre is a legitimate Broadway theatre in midtown Manhattan on 50th Street in the Paramount Plaza building.The original Circle in the Square was founded by Paul Libin, Theodore Mann and Jose Quintero in 1951 and was located at 5 Sheridan Square in Greenwich Village...
on Broadway
Broadway theatre
Broadway theatre, commonly called simply Broadway, refers to theatrical performances presented in one of the 40 professional theatres with 500 or more seats located in the Theatre District centered along Broadway, and in Lincoln Center, in Manhattan in New York City...
. He continued to direct plays at the National under the Artistic Directorship of Trevor Nunn
Trevor Nunn
Sir Trevor Robert Nunn, CBE is an English theatre, film and television director. Nunn has been the Artistic Director for the Royal Shakespeare Company, the Royal National Theatre, and, currently, the Theatre Royal, Haymarket. He has directed musicals and dramas for the stage, as well as opera...
with Peter Pan
Peter Pan
Peter Pan is a character created by Scottish novelist and playwright J. M. Barrie . A mischievous boy who can fly and magically refuses to grow up, Peter Pan spends his never-ending childhood adventuring on the small island of Neverland as the leader of his gang the Lost Boys, interacting with...
in 1997 starring Daniel Evans
Daniel Evans (actor)
-Background:Evans started acting early in life, going to the Urdd Eisteddfod, and beginning to compete there from the age of 5 or 6, as well as going to many amateur productions. He realised it was what he wanted to do aged 8, and aged 17, he won the Richard Burton Memorial Prize at the National...
as Pan and Ian McKellen
Ian McKellen
Sir Ian Murray McKellen, CH, CBE is an English actor. He has received a Tony Award, two Academy Award nominations, and five Emmy Award nominations. His work has spanned genres from Shakespearean and modern theatre to popular fantasy and science fiction...
as Hook and, in the NT Ensemble season of 1999, Bulwer-Lytton’s Money and his own new version of the Voltaire/Bernstein Candide
Candide
Candide, ou l'Optimisme is a French satire first published in 1759 by Voltaire, a philosopher of the Age of Enlightenment. The novella has been widely translated, with English versions titled Candide: or, All for the Best ; Candide: or, The Optimist ; and Candide: or, Optimism...
, both with Simon Russell Beale
Simon Russell Beale
Simon Russell Beale, CBE is an English actor. He has been described by The Independent as "the greatest stage actor of his generation."-Early years:...
and the late Denis Quilley
Denis Quilley
Denis Clifford Quilley OBE was an English theatre, television and film actor who was long associated with the Royal National Theatre....
. In 2000, he again directed Simon Russell Beale
Simon Russell Beale
Simon Russell Beale, CBE is an English actor. He has been described by The Independent as "the greatest stage actor of his generation."-Early years:...
, this time in Hamlet
Hamlet
The Tragical History of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, or more simply Hamlet, is a tragedy by William Shakespeare, believed to have been written between 1599 and 1601...
, a production that toured the UK and Europe, going to Elsinore
Elsinore
Helsingør is a city and the municipal seat of Helsingør municipality on the northeast coast of the island of Zealand in eastern Denmark. Helsingør has a population of 46,279 including the southern suburbs of Snekkersten and Espergærde...
, Stockholm and Belgrade, before transferring to the Brooklyn Academy (BAM) in New York. Caird’s last production at the National Theatre
Royal National Theatre
The Royal National Theatre in London is one of the United Kingdom's two most prominent publicly funded theatre companies, alongside the Royal Shakespeare Company...
was the world première of Humble Boy
Humble Boy
Humble Boy is a 2001 English play by Charlotte Jones. The play was presented in association with Matthew Byam Shaw and Anna Mackmin, and was first performed on the Cottesloe stage of the Royal National Theatre on August 9, 2001. [1]-Background:...
by Charlotte Jones
Charlotte Jones (writer)
Charlotte Jones is a British actress and playwright.Her first play Airswimming debuted in 1997 at the Battersea Arts Centre in London. Her other plays include In Flame, The Dark, The Lightning Play, and Humble Boy...
, with Diana Rigg
Diana Rigg
Dame Enid Diana Elizabeth Rigg, DBE is an English actress. She is probably best known for her portrayals of Emma Peel in The Avengers and Countess Teresa di Vicenzo in the 1969 James Bond film On Her Majesty's Secret Service....
and Simon Russell Beale
Simon Russell Beale
Simon Russell Beale, CBE is an English actor. He has been described by The Independent as "the greatest stage actor of his generation."-Early years:...
. The play transferred to the Gielgud Theatre
Gielgud Theatre
The Gielgud Theatre is a West End theatre, located on Shaftesbury Avenue in the City of Westminster, London, at the corner of Rupert Street. The house currently has 889 seats on three levels.-History:...
in the West End where Felicity Kendal
Felicity Kendal
Felicity Ann Kendal, CBE is an English actor known for her television and stage work.Born in 1946, Kendal spent much of her childhood in India, where her father managed a touring repertory company. First appearing on stage at the age of nine months, Kendal appeared in her first film, Shakespeare...
joined the cast and it opened in New York
New York
New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...
in 2003 at Manhattan Theatre Club
Manhattan Theatre Club
Manhattan Theatre Club is a theater company located in New York City. Under the leadership of Artistic Director Lynne Meadow and Executive Producer Barry Grove, Manhattan Theatre Club has grown since its founding in 1970 from an Off-Off Broadway showcase into one of the country’s most acclaimed...
.
Caird’s other productions in the West End
West End theatre
West End theatre is a popular term for mainstream professional theatre staged in the large theatres of London's 'Theatreland', the West End. Along with New York's Broadway theatre, West End theatre is usually considered to represent the highest level of commercial theatre in the English speaking...
have included Macbeth
Macbeth
The Tragedy of Macbeth is a play by William Shakespeare about a regicide and its aftermath. It is Shakespeare's shortest tragedy and is believed to have been written sometime between 1603 and 1607...
at the Almeida Theatre
Almeida Theatre
The Almeida Theatre, opened in 1980, is a 325 seat studio theatre with an international reputation which takes its name from the street in which it is located, off Upper Street, in the London Borough of Islington. The theatre produces a diverse range of drama and holds an annual summer festival of...
with Simon Russell Beale
Simon Russell Beale
Simon Russell Beale, CBE is an English actor. He has been described by The Independent as "the greatest stage actor of his generation."-Early years:...
and Emma Fielding
Emma Fielding
Emma Georgina Annalies Fielding is an English actress.-Biography:The lapsed Roman Catholic daughter of a British Army soldier, Fielding spent much of her childhood in Malaysia and Nigeria, and a period in Malvern above her grandparents' betting shop...
, Anouilh’s Becket
Becket
Becket or The Honor of God is a play written in French by Jean Anouilh. It is a depiction of the conflict between Thomas Becket and King Henry II of England leading to Becket's murder in 1170. It contains many historical inaccuracies, which the author acknowledged.-Background:Anouilh's...
at the Theatre Royal Haymarket with Jasper Britton
Jasper Britton
Jasper Britton, in is an actor.Britton is the son of veteran actor Tony Britton, and Danish sculptor and member of the World War II Danish Resistance Eva Castle Britton...
and Dougray Scott
Dougray Scott
-Early life:The son of Elma, a nurse, and Alan Scott, an actor and salesperson, Stephen Dougray Scott was born in Glenrothes, Fife and attended Auchmuty High School...
, Charles Dyer’s Rattle of a Simple Man with Michelle Collins
Michelle Collins
Michelle Danielle Collins is a British actress best known for her roles on television in the BBC soap opera EastEnders, as Cindy Beale, Coronation Street as Stella Price, and BBC dramas Sunburn and Two Thousand Acres of Sky...
and Stephen Tompkinson
Stephen Tompkinson
Stephen Tompkinson is a British actor. He is best known for his work in comedy and drama productions such as Drop the Dead Donkey, Ballykissangel, Grafters, In Deep, Wild at Heart and DCI Banks....
and Michael Weller
Michael Weller
Michael Weller is a Brooklyn-based playwright who is best known for his plays Moonchildren and Loose Ends. Weller is one of the founders of the Cherry Lane Theatre's acclaimed Mentor Project, which pairs pre-eminent playwrights with emerging playwrights for a season-long mentorship...
’s What the Night Is For with Gillian Anderson
Gillian Anderson
Gillian Leigh Anderson is an American actress.After beginning her career in theatre, Anderson achieved international recognition for her role as Special Agent Dana Scully on the American television series The X-Files. During the show's nine seasons, Anderson won Emmy, Golden Globe, and Screen...
and Roger Allam
Roger Allam
Roger Allam is an English actor, known primarily for his stage career, although he has performed in film and television. He played Inspector Javert in the original London production of the stage musical Les Misérables....
, both at the Comedy Theatre.
Sweden
In 2009, Caird was made Principal Guest Director at Sweden’s national stage, the Royal Dramatic TheatreRoyal Dramatic Theatre
The Royal Dramatic Theatre is Sweden's national stage for "spoken drama", founded in 1788. Around one thousand shows are put on annually on the theatre's eight running stages....
of Stockholm
Stockholm
Stockholm is the capital and the largest city of Sweden and constitutes the most populated urban area in Scandinavia. Stockholm is the most populous city in Sweden, with a population of 851,155 in the municipality , 1.37 million in the urban area , and around 2.1 million in the metropolitan area...
(Dramaten). His first production in Sweden was As You Like It
As You Like It
As You Like It is a pastoral comedy by William Shakespeare believed to have been written in 1599 or early 1600 and first published in the folio of 1623. The play's first performance is uncertain, though a performance at Wilton House in 1603 has been suggested as a possibility...
(Som ni vill ha det) for Stadsteatern (Stockholm City Theatre
Stockholm City Theatre
Stockholm City Theatre is Sweden's most popular theatre stage. It was created in 1956 but the first performance was delayed until 1960. It had not yet been decided at that point where in the city the theatre would lie so the Folkets hus building at Norra Bantorget, with a temporary stage, became...
) in 1984, with Stina Ekblad and Mats Bergman. Since then he has directed exclusively for Dramaten with A Midsummer Night's Dream
A Midsummer Night's Dream
A Midsummer Night's Dream is a play that was written by William Shakespeare. It is believed to have been written between 1590 and 1596. It portrays the events surrounding the marriage of the Duke of Athens, Theseus, and the Queen of the Amazons, Hippolyta...
(En midsommarnattsdröm) in 2000, Twelfth Night (Trettondagsafton) in 2002, Strindberg’s Dödsdansen (The Dance of Death) in 2007 with Stina Ekblad and Örjan Ramberg and The Merry Wives of Windsor
The Merry Wives of Windsor
The Merry Wives of Windsor is a comedy by William Shakespeare, first published in 1602, though believed to have been written prior to 1597. It features the fat knight Sir John Falstaff, and is Shakespeare's only play to deal exclusively with contemporary Elizabethan era English middle class life...
(Muntra fruarna i Windsor) with Börje Ahlstedt
Börje Ahlstedt
Nils Börje Ahlstedt is a Swedish actor who has worked extensively with the world famous director Ingmar Bergman in films like Fanny and Alexander , The Best Intentions , Sunday's Children and Saraband . Ahlstedt has also worked with the directors Bo Widerberg and Kay Pollak.Börje Ahlstedt was...
as Falstaff in 2009.
Caird’s new production of Shakespeare's The Tempest
The Tempest
The Tempest is a play by William Shakespeare, believed to have been written in 1610–11, and thought by many critics to be the last play that Shakespeare wrote alone. It is set on a remote island, where Prospero, the exiled Duke of Milan, plots to restore his daughter Miranda to her rightful place,...
(Stormen) opened at Dramaten in October 2010 with Orjan Ramberg
Örjan Ramberg
Ralf Örjan Valter Ramberg, né Rahmberg , is a Swedish actor, born in Örgryte, Gothenburg.-Biography:Örjan Ramberg started his acting career in musicals with successful leading parts in the original Swedish stagings of Hair and Jesus Christ Superstar...
, Stina Ekblad
Stina Ekblad
Stina Ekblad ) is a Swedish-speaking Finnish actress. She received a Guldbagge Award for Best Actress in 1987 for her performances in Amorosa and Ormens väg på hälleberget and was nominated again in 1996 for her performance in Pensionat Oskar.Ekblad was born in the Ostrobothnian village of Solf in...
and Jonas Karlsson
Jonas Karlsson
Sven Bert Jonas Karlsson is an Swedish actor and author.Karlsson was born in Södertälje. He won a Guldbagge-Award for Best Actor in 2004 for the movie Details. He published his first book, a collection of short stories, in 2007....
. He returned to Dramaten to direct Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet
Romeo and Juliet
Romeo and Juliet is a tragedy written early in the career of playwright William Shakespeare about two young star-crossed lovers whose deaths ultimately unite their feuding families. It was among Shakespeare's most popular archetypal stories of young, teenage lovers.Romeo and Juliet belongs to a...
(Romeo och Julia) starring Christoffer Svensson and Sophia Pekkari. This production opened in April 2011 and ran through the summer and autumn seasons.
Japan
Caird’s Japanese productions started with Les MisérablesLes Misérables (musical)
Les Misérables , colloquially known as Les Mis or Les Miz , is a musical by Claude-Michel Schönberg, based on the novel of the same name by Victor Hugo....
, which opened at the Imperial Theatre (Teikoku Gekijo) in 1987 and has been running in repertoire with other works at the same location ever since, as well as touring extensively throughout Japan
Japan
Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...
.
In 2006, he directed his own version of The Beggar's Opera
The Beggar's Opera
The Beggar's Opera is a ballad opera in three acts written in 1728 by John Gay with music arranged by Johann Christoph Pepusch. It is one of the watershed plays in Augustan drama and is the only example of the once thriving genre of satirical ballad opera to remain popular today...
for the Nissay Theatre
Nissay Theatre
The is a theatre in Chiyoda, Tokyo, Japan. Originally constructed in 1963, it has staged various program of musicals and operas....
in Tokyo
Tokyo
, ; officially , is one of the 47 prefectures of Japan. Tokyo is the capital of Japan, the center of the Greater Tokyo Area, and the largest metropolitan area of Japan. It is the seat of the Japanese government and the Imperial Palace, and the home of the Japanese Imperial Family...
, the production being revived in 2008. His 2007 production of A Midsummer Night's Dream
A Midsummer Night's Dream
A Midsummer Night's Dream is a play that was written by William Shakespeare. It is believed to have been written between 1590 and 1596. It portrays the events surrounding the marriage of the Duke of Athens, Theseus, and the Queen of the Amazons, Hippolyta...
(Natsu no Yo no Yume) for the New National Theatre (Shinkokuritsu Gekijo) was revived in 2009. His play Kinshu adapted from Teru Miyamoto
Teru Miyamoto
is a Japanese author.-Biography:Miyamoto was born in Kobe, Hyōgo Prefecture, Japan and graduated from the faculty of letters at Otemon Gakuin University after which he became a copywriter. In 1970, he began to write his first novel and quit his job...
's famous novel opened at the Galaxy Theatre in 2007 and was revived in 2009. He has also directed Coward’s Private Lives
Private Lives
Private Lives is a 1930 comedy of manners in three acts by Noël Coward. It focuses on a divorced couple who discover that they are honeymooning with their new spouses in neighbouring rooms at the same hotel. Despite a perpetually stormy relationship, they realise that they still have feelings for...
(Shiseikatsu) at Theatre Crié in 2008 and Jane Eyre
Jane Eyre
Jane Eyre is a novel by English writer Charlotte Brontë. It was published in London, England, in 1847 by Smith, Elder & Co. with the title Jane Eyre. An Autobiography under the pen name "Currer Bell." The first American edition was released the following year by Harper & Brothers of New York...
at the Nissay Theatre
Nissay Theatre
The is a theatre in Chiyoda, Tokyo, Japan. Originally constructed in 1963, it has staged various program of musicals and operas....
in 2009. In 2010 Caird directed his own version of Bernstein’s Candide
Candide
Candide, ou l'Optimisme is a French satire first published in 1759 by Voltaire, a philosopher of the Age of Enlightenment. The novella has been widely translated, with English versions titled Candide: or, All for the Best ; Candide: or, The Optimist ; and Candide: or, Optimism...
at the Imperial Theatre, starring Inoue Yoshio and Ichimura Masachika.
Caird will return to Tokyo in the summer of 2012 to direct the Japanese première of his musical Daddy Long Legs at Theatre Crié, and a revival of
the Shochiku production of Jane Eyre for the Nissay Theatre and the Hakata-za in Kyushu.
Opera
In opera, Caird has directed Mozart's ZaideZaide
Zaide is an unfinished opera, K. 344, written by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart in 1780. Emperor Joseph II, in 1778, was in the process of setting up an opera company for the purpose of performing German opera. One condition required of the composer to join this company was that he should write a...
with a new libretto by Italo Calvino
Italo Calvino
Italo Calvino was an Italian journalist and writer of short stories and novels. His best known works include the Our Ancestors trilogy , the Cosmicomics collection of short stories , and the novels Invisible Cities and If on a winter's night a traveler .Lionised in Britain and the United States,...
at Musica nel Chiostro, the Batignano Opera Festival in Tuscany
Tuscany
Tuscany is a region in Italy. It has an area of about 23,000 square kilometres and a population of about 3.75 million inhabitants. The regional capital is Florence ....
, in 1991, conducted by Paul McGrath. In 2005 he directed Verdi's Don Carlos
Don Carlos
Don Carlos is a five-act grand opera composed by Giuseppe Verdi to a French language libretto by Camille du Locle and Joseph Méry, based on the dramatic play Don Carlos, Infant von Spanien by Friedrich Schiller...
at the Welsh National Opera
Welsh National Opera
Welsh National Opera is an opera company founded in Cardiff, Wales in 1943. The WNO tours Wales, the United Kingdom and the rest of the world extensively. Annually, it gives more than 120 performances of eight main stage operas to a combined audience of around 150,000 people...
in Cardiff
Cardiff
Cardiff is the capital, largest city and most populous county of Wales and the 10th largest city in the United Kingdom. The city is Wales' chief commercial centre, the base for most national cultural and sporting institutions, the Welsh national media, and the seat of the National Assembly for...
, conducted by Carlo Rizzi. In the same year, he directed a staged reading of The Screams of Kitty Genovese, a new opera by Will Todd and David Simpatico at the Public Theater
Public Theater
The Public Theater is a New York City arts organization founded as The Shakespeare Workshop in 1954 by Joseph Papp, with the intention of showcasing the works of up-and-coming playwrights and performers. It is headquartered at 425 Lafayette Street in the former Astor Library in the East Village...
in New York
New York
New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...
.
He remounted Don Carlos
Don Carlos
Don Carlos is a five-act grand opera composed by Giuseppe Verdi to a French language libretto by Camille du Locle and Joseph Méry, based on the dramatic play Don Carlos, Infant von Spanien by Friedrich Schiller...
for the Canadian Opera Company
Canadian Opera Company
The Canadian Opera Company is an opera company in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. It is the largest opera company in Canada and the third largest producer of opera in North America. The COC performs in its own opera house, the Four Seasons Centre for the Performing Arts.-History:For 40 years until...
in Toronto
Toronto
Toronto is the provincial capital of Ontario and the largest city in Canada. It is located in Southern Ontario on the northwestern shore of Lake Ontario. A relatively modern city, Toronto's history dates back to the late-18th century, when its land was first purchased by the British monarchy from...
in October 2007 and directed a new production of Verdi’s Aida
Aida
Aida sometimes spelled Aïda, is an opera in four acts by Giuseppe Verdi to an Italian libretto by Antonio Ghislanzoni, based on a scenario written by French Egyptologist Auguste Mariette...
for WNO in 2008.
In 2007-8 he wrote the libretto for Brief Encounter
Brief Encounter
Brief Encounter is a 1945 British film directed by David Lean about the conventions of British suburban life, centring on a housewife for whom real love brings unexpectedly violent emotions. The film stars Celia Johnson, Trevor Howard, Stanley Holloway and Joyce Carey...
, a new opera by André Previn
André Previn
André George Previn, KBE is an American pianist, conductor, and composer. He is considered one of the most versatile musicians in the world, and is the winner of four Academy Awards for his film work and ten Grammy Awards for his recordings. -Early Life:Previn was born in...
based on the play Still Life by Noël Coward
Noël Coward
Sir Noël Peirce Coward was an English playwright, composer, director, actor and singer, known for his wit, flamboyance, and what Time magazine called "a sense of personal style, a combination of cheek and chic, pose and poise".Born in Teddington, a suburb of London, Coward attended a dance academy...
and the Brief Encounter
Brief Encounter
Brief Encounter is a 1945 British film directed by David Lean about the conventions of British suburban life, centring on a housewife for whom real love brings unexpectedly violent emotions. The film stars Celia Johnson, Trevor Howard, Stanley Holloway and Joyce Carey...
screenplay by Coward and David Lean
David Lean
Sir David Lean CBE was an English film director, producer, screenwriter, and editor best remembered for big-screen epics such as The Bridge on the River Kwai , Lawrence of Arabia ,...
. The opera had its world première performance at Houston Grand Opera
Houston Grand Opera
Houston Grand Opera Houston Grand Opera was founded in 1955 through the joint efforts of Maestro Walter Herbert and cultural leaders Mrs. Louis G. Lobit, Edward Bing and Charles Cockrell...
in 2009 conducted by Patrick Summers and starring Elizabeth Futral
Elizabeth Futral
Elizabeth Futral is an American coloratura soprano who has won acclaim throughout the United States as well as in Europe, South America, and Japan....
and Nathan Gunn
Nathan Gunn
Nathan Gunn is an operatic baritone from the United States.He has appeared in many of world's well-known opera houses, including the Metropolitan Opera, San Francisco Opera, Lyric Opera of Chicago, Houston Grand Opera, Seattle Opera, Dallas Opera, Opera Company of Philadelphia, Pittsburgh Opera,...
. Brief Encounter
Brief Encounter
Brief Encounter is a 1945 British film directed by David Lean about the conventions of British suburban life, centring on a housewife for whom real love brings unexpectedly violent emotions. The film stars Celia Johnson, Trevor Howard, Stanley Holloway and Joyce Carey...
is published by G. Schirmer
G. Schirmer
G. Schirmer Inc. is an American classical music publishing company based in New York City, founded in 1861. It publishes sheet music for sale and rental, and represents some well-known European music publishers in North America, such as the Italian Ricordi, Music Sales Affiliates ChesterNovello,...
's in New York and a CD of the original live production was released by Deutsche Grammophon in April 2011. Caird has recently directed Puccini’s Tosca
Tosca
Tosca is an opera in three acts by Giacomo Puccini to an Italian libretto by Luigi Illica and Giuseppe Giacosa. It premiered at the Teatro Costanzi in Rome on 14 January 1900...
for HGO for the 2010 season, with Patricia Racette as Tosca, Alexey Dolgov as Cavaradossi and Raymond Aceto as Scarpia.
Caird returned to WNO in the autumn of 2011 to direct a new production of Mozart's Don Giovanni
Don Giovanni
Don Giovanni is an opera in two acts with music by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and with an Italian libretto by Lorenzo Da Ponte. It was premiered by the Prague Italian opera at the Teatro di Praga on October 29, 1787...
, conducted by Lothar Koenigs
Lothar Koenigs
Lothar Koenigs is a German conductor.Koenigs received his general secondary education at Aachen's Kaiser-Karls-Gymnasium, while studying piano and conducting at the Cologne Conservatory. After his studies he held appointments in Hagen, Münster and Bonn. From 2000 to 2003, he was...
with designs by John Napier (designer)
John Napier
John Napier of Merchiston – also signed as Neper, Nepair – named Marvellous Merchiston, was a Scottish mathematician, physicist, astronomer & astrologer, and also the 8th Laird of Merchistoun. He was the son of Sir Archibald Napier of Merchiston. John Napier is most renowned as the discoverer...
.
Caird will return to Houston Grand Opera in 2012 to direct his WNO co-production of Verdi's Don Carlos
Don Carlos
Don Carlos is a five-act grand opera composed by Giuseppe Verdi to a French language libretto by Camille du Locle and Joseph Méry, based on the dramatic play Don Carlos, Infant von Spanien by Friedrich Schiller...
and a new production of Puccini's La Bohème
La bohème
La bohème is an opera in four acts,Puccini called the divisions quadro, a tableau or "image", rather than atto . by Giacomo Puccini to an Italian libretto by Luigi Illica and Giuseppe Giacosa, based on Scènes de la vie de bohème by Henri Murger...
, a co-production with Canadian Opera Company
Canadian Opera Company
The Canadian Opera Company is an opera company in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. It is the largest opera company in Canada and the third largest producer of opera in North America. The COC performs in its own opera house, the Four Seasons Centre for the Performing Arts.-History:For 40 years until...
.
Musical Theatre
Caird’s introduction to musical theatre was directing the world première production of Andrew Lloyd WebberAndrew Lloyd Webber
Andrew Lloyd Webber, Baron Lloyd-Webber is an English composer of musical theatre.Lloyd Webber has achieved great popular success in musical theatre. Several of his musicals have run for more than a decade both in the West End and on Broadway. He has composed 13 musicals, a song cycle, a set of...
’s Song and Dance which ran at the Palace Theatre
Palace Theatre, London
The Palace Theatre is a West End theatre in the City of Westminster in London. It is an imposing red-brick building that dominates the west side of Cambridge Circus and is located near the intersection of Shaftesbury Avenue and Charing Cross Road...
in London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
from 1982-1984.
He has also written libretti for a number of new musicals, all of which he also directed. As well as adapting and co-directing Schönberg and Boublil’s Les Misérables
Les Misérables (musical)
Les Misérables , colloquially known as Les Mis or Les Miz , is a musical by Claude-Michel Schönberg, based on the novel of the same name by Victor Hugo....
for the RSC
Royal Shakespeare Company
The Royal Shakespeare Company is a major British theatre company, based in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England. The company employs 700 staff and produces around 20 productions a year from its home in Stratford-upon-Avon and plays regularly in London, Newcastle-upon-Tyne and on tour across...
and Cameron Mackintosh
Cameron Mackintosh
Sir Cameron Anthony Mackintosh is a British theatrical producer notable for his association with many commercially successful musicals. At the height of his success in 1990, he was described as being "the most successful, influential and powerful theatrical producer in the world" by the New York...
, he has written libretti for Children of Eden
Children of Eden
Children of Eden is a two-act musical play with music and lyrics by Stephen Schwartz and a book by John Caird. The musical is based on the Book of Genesis. Act I tells the story of Adam and Eve, Cain, and Abel, and Act II deals with Noah and the Flood...
with music by Stephen Schwartz
Stephen Schwartz (composer)
Stephen Lawrence Schwartz is an American musical theatre lyricist and composer. In a career spanning over four decades, Schwartz has written such hit musicals as Godspell , Pippin and Wicked...
which ran in the West End
West End theatre
West End theatre is a popular term for mainstream professional theatre staged in the large theatres of London's 'Theatreland', the West End. Along with New York's Broadway theatre, West End theatre is usually considered to represent the highest level of commercial theatre in the English speaking...
in 1991 and now enjoys numerous productions worldwide every year, Jane Eyre
Jane Eyre
Jane Eyre is a novel by English writer Charlotte Brontë. It was published in London, England, in 1847 by Smith, Elder & Co. with the title Jane Eyre. An Autobiography under the pen name "Currer Bell." The first American edition was released the following year by Harper & Brothers of New York...
with music by Paul Gordon which played in La Jolla, Toronto and at the Brooks Atkinson Theatre
Brooks Atkinson Theatre
The Brooks Atkinson Theatre is a Broadway theater located at 256 West 47th Street in Manhattan.Designed by architect Herbert J. Krapp, it was constructed as the Mansfield Theatre by the Chanin brothers in 1926. After 1933, the theatre fell into relative disuse until 1945, when Michael Myerberg...
on Broadway from 1998–2000, Bernstein
Bernstein
Bernstein is a German and Jewish surname meaning "amber". The German pronunciation is , but in English it is often . It may refer to:-People:* Dan Bern , American musician who previously performed under the name Bernstein...
’s Candide
Candide
Candide, ou l'Optimisme is a French satire first published in 1759 by Voltaire, a philosopher of the Age of Enlightenment. The novella has been widely translated, with English versions titled Candide: or, All for the Best ; Candide: or, The Optimist ; and Candide: or, Optimism...
which he adapted from the original Voltaire
Voltaire
François-Marie Arouet , better known by the pen name Voltaire , was a French Enlightenment writer, historian and philosopher famous for his wit and for his advocacy of civil liberties, including freedom of religion, free trade and separation of church and state...
novel for the National Theatre
Royal National Theatre
The Royal National Theatre in London is one of the United Kingdom's two most prominent publicly funded theatre companies, alongside the Royal Shakespeare Company...
season of 1999 and Daddy Long Legs, an adaptation of Jean Webster
Jean Webster
Jean Webster was an American writer and author of many books including Daddy-Long-Legs and Dear Enemy...
’s novel with music by Paul Gordon that had its world première at the Rubicon Theatre in Ventura, California in 2009, starring Megan McGinnis
Megan McGinnis
Megan McGinnis is an American Broadway Actress, who recently performed in the role of Éponine, in the revival of Les Misérables .- Broadway career :...
and Robert Adelman Hancock before touring to Palo Alto, Cincinnati and other theatres in the US. Daddy Long Legs has recently won three LA Ovation Awards
Ovation Awards
The Ovation Awards are a Southern California award for excellence in theatre, established in 1989. They are given out by the Los Angeles Stage Alliance and are the only peer-judged theatre awards in Los Angeles. They have been called the "...highest-profile contest for local theatre..." by the Los...
.
The Japanese première of Caird's version of Candide
Candide
Candide, ou l'Optimisme is a French satire first published in 1759 by Voltaire, a philosopher of the Age of Enlightenment. The novella has been widely translated, with English versions titled Candide: or, All for the Best ; Candide: or, The Optimist ; and Candide: or, Optimism...
opened at the Imperial Theatre in Tokyo in June 2010, directed by Caird and designed by Yoon Bae, after the original designs by John Napier.
Caird also wrote and directed, with the designer John Napier, The Siegfried and Roy Spectacular, a magic show for the Mirage Hotel in Las Vegas
Las Vegas Strip
The Las Vegas Strip is an approximately stretch of Las Vegas Boulevard in Clark County, Nevada; adjacent to, but outside the city limits of Las Vegas proper. The Strip lies within the unincorporated townships of Paradise and Winchester...
, starring Siegfried Fischbacher and Roy Horn and their menagerie of white tigers. The show opened in February 1991 and ran until October 2004, finally closing when Roy was injured by one of his beloved tigers.
Television
Caird’s television work includes his own adaptation of Shakespeare’s plays Henry IV, Parts 1Henry IV, Part 1
Henry IV, Part 1 is a history play by William Shakespeare, believed to have been written no later than 1597. It is the second play in Shakespeare's tetralogy dealing with the successive reigns of Richard II, Henry IV , and Henry V...
and 2
Henry IV, Part 2
Henry IV, Part 2 is a history play by William Shakespeare, believed written between 1596 and 1599. It is the third part of a tetralogy, preceded by Richard II and Henry IV, Part 1 and succeeded by Henry V.-Sources:...
for the BBC
BBC
The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...
’s performance series in 1995, starring David Calder
David Calder (actor)
David Calder is a British actor.Calder was born in Portsmouth, England, and trained at the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School. His most high profile TV roles include Det. Insp...
, Ronald Pickup
Ronald Pickup
-Life and career:Pickup was born in Chester, England, the son of Daisy and Eric Pickup, who was a lecturer. Pickup was educated at The King's School, Chester, trained at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London, and became an Associate Member of RADA.His television work began with an episode...
, Rufus Sewell
Rufus Sewell
Rufus Frederik Sewell is an English actor. In film, he has appeared in The Woodlanders, Dangerous Beauty, Dark City, A Knight's Tale, The Illusionist, Tristan and Isolde, and Martha, Meet Frank, Daniel and Laurence. On television, he starred in the 2010 mini-series The Pillars of the Earth...
, Jonathan Firth
Jonathan Firth
Jonathan Firth is a British actor best known for his roles in such noted British television productions as Middlemarch, Far from the Madding Crowd, and Victoria & Albert.-Early life:Jonathan Firth was born in Essex, England...
, Elizabeth Spriggs
Elizabeth Spriggs
-Early life and career:Born in Buxton, Derbyshire as Elizabeth Jean Williams, Spriggs had an unhappy childhood and grew up entirely without affection, particularly from her distant, domineering father, a master builder and farmer. She studied at the Royal College of Music and taught speech and...
, Simon McBurney
Simon McBurney
Simon Montagu McBurney, OBE is an English actor, writer and director. He is the founder and artistic director of Théâtre de Complicité in England, now called Complicite.-Early life:...
, Jane Horrocks
Jane Horrocks
Barbara Jane Horrocks is an English voice, stage, screen and television actress, voice artist, musician, and singer. She is best known for her role as "Bubble" in the TV series Absolutely Fabulous as well as her distinctive voice....
and Paul Eddington
Paul Eddington
Paul Eddington CBE was an English actor best known for his appearances in popular television sitcoms of the 1970s and 80s: The Good Life, Yes Minister and Yes, Prime Minister.-Early life:...
amongst others.
Many of his theatrical productions have also been televised: Nicholas Nickleby directed by Jim Goddard for Primetime Television in 1982 won an Emmy Award
Emmy Award
An Emmy Award, often referred to simply as the Emmy, is a television production award, similar in nature to the Peabody Awards but more focused on entertainment, and is considered the television equivalent to the Academy Awards and the Grammy Awards .A majority of Emmys are presented in various...
for outstanding limited series. Swedish TV have screend As You Like It
As You Like It
As You Like It is a pastoral comedy by William Shakespeare believed to have been written in 1599 or early 1600 and first published in the folio of 1623. The play's first performance is uncertain, though a performance at Wilton House in 1603 has been suggested as a possibility...
and Dödsdansen. WOWOW Television in Japan have screened both Jane Eyre
Jane Eyre
Jane Eyre is a novel by English writer Charlotte Brontë. It was published in London, England, in 1847 by Smith, Elder & Co. with the title Jane Eyre. An Autobiography under the pen name "Currer Bell." The first American edition was released the following year by Harper & Brothers of New York...
and The Beggar’s Opera while NHK have screened Kinshu.
Other work
Caird has devised and staged two celebrations for WWF, the Worldwide Fund for Nature: the Religion and Inter-faith Ceremony at Assisi in 1986 and Gifts for Living Planet at Bakhtapur, NepalNepal
Nepal , officially the Federal Democratic Republic of Nepal, is a landlocked sovereign state located in South Asia. It is located in the Himalayas and bordered to the north by the People's Republic of China, and to the south, east, and west by the Republic of India...
in 2000.
Caird also devised and directed (with Paul Robertson, the leader of the Medici String Quartet
Medici String Quartet
The Medici String Quartet is widely regarded as one of Britain's leading international ensembles, having appeared to critical acclaim in over thirty countries across five continents...
) Intimate Letters, a series of dramatised concerts based on the chamber-works and letters of Janacek, Smetana
Smetana
Smetana is a Slavic loanword in English for a dairy product that is produced by souring heavy cream. Smetana is from Central and Eastern Europe, sometimes perceived to be specifically of Russian origin. It is a soured cream product like crème fraîche , but nowadays mainly sold with 15% to 30%...
, Mozart, Elgar and Beethoven.
In 2001 he set up the Caird Company with Holly Kendrick to encourage young playwrights and directors. The company produced a number of rehearsed play-reading festivals in fringe theatres and rehearsal spaces all around London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
, organized writing and directing workshops and seminars and produced Theatre Café, a festival of European Theatre at the Arcola Theatre
Arcola Theatre
Arcola Theatre is a studio theatre in Dalston, in the London Borough of Hackney. The theatre's ambition is to create and present high-quality theatre with a social and political relevance to its multicultural local community as well as a wider audience....
, The Arab-Israeli Cookbook, a verbatim play by Robin Soans
Robin Soans
Robin Soans is an actor, and a playwright specialising in verbatim and documentary plays. These plays include Across the Divide ; A State Affair which looked at life on a Bradford estate, produced by Out of Joint theatre company; The Arab Israeli Cookbook ; Talking to Terrorists Robin Soans (born...
at the Gate Theatre
Gate Theatre
The Gate Theatre, in Dublin, was founded in 1928 by Hilton Edwards and Micheál Mac Liammóir, initially using the Abbey Theatre's Peacock studio theatre space to stage important works by European and American dramatists...
and the Lemon Princess by Rachel McGill for West Yorkshire Playhouse
West Yorkshire Playhouse
The West Yorkshire Playhouse in Leeds, England is a theatre which opened in March 1990 as part of the regeneration of the Quarry Hill area of the city...
.
Caird directed a production of the melodrama, Murder in the Red Barn for marionette puppets, as a fund-raiser to save the Tiller-Clowes Marionettes for the nation at the Britten Theatre, Royal College of Music, starring Joanna Lumley
Joanna Lumley
Joanna Lamond Lumley, OBE, FRGS is a British actress, voice-over artist, former-model and author, best known for her roles in British television series Absolutely Fabulous portraying Edina Monsoon's best friend, Patsy Stone, as well as parts in The New Avengers, Sapphire & Steel, and Sensitive...
, Gary Kemp
Gary Kemp
Gary Kemp is an English pop musician and actor who is the guitar player and chief songwriter for the 1980s Synthpop band Spandau Ballet. His brother, Martin Kemp, plays bass guitar in the band...
, Bill Nighy
Bill Nighy
William Francis "Bill" Nighy is an English actor and comedian. He worked in theatre and television before his first cinema role in 1981, and made his name in television with The Men's Room in 1991, in which he played the womanizer Prof...
and others.
For the 25th anniversary of the National Theatre
Royal National Theatre
The Royal National Theatre in London is one of the United Kingdom's two most prominent publicly funded theatre companies, alongside the Royal Shakespeare Company...
, Caird directed the NT ‘Chain Play’, a drama written in 25 consecutive scenes by 25 NT dramatists, a mad and wonderful event.
Recently Caird has written and directed Twin Spirits a dramatised concert based on the music and letters of Robert and Clara Schumann
Clara Schumann
Clara Schumann was a German musician and composer, considered one of the most distinguished pianists of the Romantic era...
, in aid of the Royal Opera House
Royal Opera House
The Royal Opera House is an opera house and major performing arts venue in Covent Garden, central London. The large building is often referred to as simply "Covent Garden", after a previous use of the site of the opera house's original construction in 1732. It is the home of The Royal Opera, The...
, Covent Garden’s educational outreach programme. It was produced by June Chichester and starred amongst others Sting, Trudie Styler
Trudie Styler
Trudie Styler is an English actress and producer. She is the second wife of the musician Sting.-Life and career:Styler was born in Bromsgrove, Worcestershire, England. She attended North Bromsgrove High School, where one of her teachers was Clifford T. Ward...
, Derek Jacobi
Derek Jacobi
Sir Derek George Jacobi, CBE is an English actor and film director.A "forceful, commanding stage presence", Jacobi has enjoyed a highly successful stage career, appearing in such stage productions as Hamlet, Uncle Vanya, and Oedipus the King. He received a Tony Award for his performance in...
, Ian McKellen
Ian McKellen
Sir Ian Murray McKellen, CH, CBE is an English actor. He has received a Tony Award, two Academy Award nominations, and five Emmy Award nominations. His work has spanned genres from Shakespearean and modern theatre to popular fantasy and science fiction...
, Simon Keenlyside
Simon Keenlyside
Simon Keenlyside CBE is a British baritone who has had an active international career performing in operas and concerts since the mid 1980s.-Early life and education:...
and Rebecca Evans
Rebecca Evans
Rebecca Evans is a Welsh operatic soprano.-Personal life:Born in the village of Pontrhydyfen near Neath, the same village as Hollywood actor Richard Burton....
. The concert was televised by Opus Arte and is now available on DVD.
Writing
Caird’s book about directing for the stage – THEATRE CRAFT – was published by Faber and FaberFaber and Faber
Faber and Faber Limited, often abbreviated to Faber, is an independent publishing house in the UK, notable in particular for publishing a great deal of poetry and for its former editor T. S. Eliot. Faber has a rich tradition of publishing a wide range of fiction, non fiction, drama, film and music...
in March, 2010 in London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
and New York
New York
New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...
.
Personal life
Caird has been married four times and has four sons and four daughters. His first marriage was to Helen Brammer in Oxford in 1970. His second was to Ann Dorszynski (Annie Caird) in FinsburyFinsbury
Finsbury is a district of central London, England. It lies immediately north of the City of London and Clerkenwell, west of Shoreditch, and south of Islington and City Road. It is in the south of the London Borough of Islington. The Finsbury Estate is in the western part of the district...
, London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
in 1982. They have three children: Joanna (Jo) (born 29 January 1983), Benjamin (Ben) (born 10 October 1984) and Samuel (Sam) (born 8 July 1987). His third was to Frances Ruffelle
Frances Ruffelle
Frances Ruffelle is an English musical theatre actress and recording artist. Her mother is Sylvia Young, the founder of the famous theatre school at which Frances trained, and her daughter is recording artist Eliza Doolittle. Her younger sister is actress Alison Ruffelle...
in 1990, in Westminster
Westminster
Westminster is an area of central London, within the City of Westminster, England. It lies on the north bank of the River Thames, southwest of the City of London and southwest of Charing Cross...
, London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
. They have two children: Eliza (born 18 April 1988), who has become successful as a singer under the stage name Eliza Doolittle, and Nathaniel (Nat) (born 17 June 1990). His fourth was to Maoko Imai in Argiano, Italy in 1998. They have three children: Yoji (born 19 October 1998), Miyako (Mimi) (born 18 January 2000 and Yayako (Yaya) (born 14 March 2002).
His elder brother James is an architect, town planner and heritage consultant. His younger brother George (Geordie) is an oboist and Principal Emeritus of the Birmingham Conservatoire. His sister Dr. Margaret (Meg) Laing is Research Fellow in Mediaeval Dialectology at the University of Edinburgh
University of Edinburgh
The University of Edinburgh, founded in 1583, is a public research university located in Edinburgh, the capital of Scotland, and a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The university is deeply embedded in the fabric of the city, with many of the buildings in the historic Old Town belonging to the university...
.
Caird is an Honorary Fellow of Mansfield College, Oxford
Oxford
The city of Oxford is the county town of Oxfordshire, England. The city, made prominent by its medieval university, has a population of just under 165,000, with 153,900 living within the district boundary. It lies about 50 miles north-west of London. The rivers Cherwell and Thames run through...
, an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Welsh College of Music & Drama
Royal Welsh College of Music & Drama
The Royal Welsh College of Music & Drama is a conservatoire within the University of Glamorgan Group located in Cardiff, Wales....
(Coleg Brenhinol Cerdd a Drama Cymru) and has an Honorary D.Litt from the University of East Anglia
University of East Anglia
The University of East Anglia is a public research university based in Norwich, United Kingdom. It was established in 1963, and is a founder-member of the 1994 Group of research-intensive universities.-History:...
.
Stage Productions
1977: Dance of Death (Other Place, Warehouse & Aldwych, London 1978)1978: Savage Amusement (Warehouse)
1978: Look Out! Here Comes Trouble (Warehouse)
1978: The Adventures of Awful Knawful (Warehouse)
1979: Merry Wives of Windsor (Stratford & Aldwych, 1980)
1979: Caucasian Chalk Circle (Touring & Warehouse Theatre)
1980: The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby
The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby
Nicholas Nickleby; or, The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby is a novel by Charles Dickens. Originally published as a serial from 1838 to 1839, it was Dickens' third novel....
(Aldwych 1980-1)
1981: Naked Robots (Warehouse)
1981: The Twin Rivals (Other Place & The Pit Theatre, London, 1982)
1982: Nicholas Nickleby (Plymouth Theatre, Broadway
Broadway theatre
Broadway theatre, commonly called simply Broadway, refers to theatrical performances presented in one of the 40 professional theatres with 500 or more seats located in the Theatre District centered along Broadway, and in Lincoln Center, in Manhattan in New York City...
)
1982: Song and Dance (Palace Theatre, London
Palace Theatre, London
The Palace Theatre is a West End theatre in the City of Westminster in London. It is an imposing red-brick building that dominates the west side of Cambridge Circus and is located near the intersection of Shaftesbury Avenue and Charing Cross Road...
)
1982: Our Friends in the North
Our Friends in the North
Our Friends in the North is a British television drama serial, produced by the BBC and originally broadcast in nine episodes on BBC Two in early 1996...
(Other Place, The Pit Theatre, London)
1982: Peter Pan
Peter Pan
Peter Pan is a character created by Scottish novelist and playwright J. M. Barrie . A mischievous boy who can fly and magically refuses to grow up, Peter Pan spends his never-ending childhood adventuring on the small island of Neverland as the leader of his gang the Lost Boys, interacting with...
by JM Barrie (Barbican Theatre, London)
1983: Twelfth Night (Stratford)
1984: Romeo and Juliet
Romeo and Juliet
Romeo and Juliet is a tragedy written early in the career of playwright William Shakespeare about two young star-crossed lovers whose deaths ultimately unite their feuding families. It was among Shakespeare's most popular archetypal stories of young, teenage lovers.Romeo and Juliet belongs to a...
(Touring, The Other Place & The Pit 1985-6)
1984: The Merchant of Venice
The Merchant of Venice
The Merchant of Venice is a tragic comedy by William Shakespeare, believed to have been written between 1596 and 1598. Though classified as a comedy in the First Folio and sharing certain aspects with Shakespeare's other romantic comedies, the play is perhaps most remembered for its dramatic...
(Stratford)
1984: Red Star (The Pit, London)
1984: As You Like It
As You Like It
As You Like It is a pastoral comedy by William Shakespeare believed to have been written in 1599 or early 1600 and first published in the folio of 1623. The play's first performance is uncertain, though a performance at Wilton House in 1603 has been suggested as a possibility...
(Som Ni Vill Ha Det) (Stadsteatern, Stockholm)
1984: Nicholas Nickleby (Stratford & Ahmanson Theatre LA & Broadway)
1985: Les Misérables
Les Misérables (musical)
Les Misérables , colloquially known as Les Mis or Les Miz , is a musical by Claude-Michel Schönberg, based on the novel of the same name by Victor Hugo....
(Barbican, Palace Theatre & Broadway 1986)
1985: Philistines (Other Place & The Pit Theatre, London, 1986)
1986: Misalliance (Barbican)
1986: Every Man in His Humour
Every Man in His Humour
Every Man in His Humour is a 1598 play by the English playwright Ben Jonson. The play belongs to the subgenre of the "humours comedy," in which each major character is dominated by an overriding humour or obsession.-Performance and Publication:...
(The Swan Theatre, Stratford)
1987: The New Inn (The Swan)
1987: Les Misérables
Les Misérables (musical)
Les Misérables , colloquially known as Les Mis or Les Miz , is a musical by Claude-Michel Schönberg, based on the novel of the same name by Victor Hugo....
(Imperial Theatre, Tokyo)
1988: A Question of Geography (Other Place & The Pit, London)
1989: A Midsummer Night’s Dream Stratford & Barbican & UK Tour ,1990)
1989: As You Like It
As You Like It
As You Like It is a pastoral comedy by William Shakespeare believed to have been written in 1599 or early 1600 and first published in the folio of 1623. The play's first performance is uncertain, though a performance at Wilton House in 1603 has been suggested as a possibility...
(Stratford & Barbican,1990).
1990: Siegfried and Roy Spectacular (Le Mirage, Las Vegas, USA)
1991: Zaïde
Zaide
Zaide is an unfinished opera, K. 344, written by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart in 1780. Emperor Joseph II, in 1778, was in the process of setting up an opera company for the purpose of performing German opera. One condition required of the composer to join this company was that he should write a...
(Musica nel Chiostro, Batignano, Italy)
1991: Children of Eden
Children of Eden
Children of Eden is a two-act musical play with music and lyrics by Stephen Schwartz and a book by John Caird. The musical is based on the Book of Genesis. Act I tells the story of Adam and Eve, Cain, and Abel, and Act II deals with Noah and the Flood...
(Prince Edward Theatre, London)
1992: Anthony and Cleopatra (Stratford & Barbican, 1993)
1992: Columbus and the Discovery of Japan by Richard Nelson (Barbican)
1992: The Beggar’s Opera (Swan Theatre & Barbican,1993)
1993: Trelawny of the Wells (Olivier Theatre, RNT, London)
1993: Life Sentences (Second Stage Theatre, Broadway, NY)
1994: The Seagull
The Seagull
The Seagull is the first of what are generally considered to be the four major plays by the Russian dramatist Anton Chekhov. The Seagull was written in 1895 and first produced in 1896...
(Olivier Theatre, RNT, London)
1995 The Millionairess (UK Tour)
1996: Stanley (Cottesloe Theatre, RNT & Circle in the Square, Broadway
Broadway theatre
Broadway theatre, commonly called simply Broadway, refers to theatrical performances presented in one of the 40 professional theatres with 500 or more seats located in the Theatre District centered along Broadway, and in Lincoln Center, in Manhattan in New York City...
, 1997)
1997: Jane Eyre
Jane Eyre
Jane Eyre is a novel by English writer Charlotte Brontë. It was published in London, England, in 1847 by Smith, Elder & Co. with the title Jane Eyre. An Autobiography under the pen name "Currer Bell." The first American edition was released the following year by Harper & Brothers of New York...
(Royal Alexandra Theatre
Royal Alexandra Theatre
The Royal Alexandra Theatre is a theatre in Toronto, Ontario, Canada located near King and Simcoe Streets. Built in 1907, the Royal Alex is the oldest continuously operating legitimate theatre in North America.-History:...
, Toronto
Toronto
Toronto is the provincial capital of Ontario and the largest city in Canada. It is located in Southern Ontario on the northwestern shore of Lake Ontario. A relatively modern city, Toronto's history dates back to the late-18th century, when its land was first purchased by the British monarchy from...
)
1997: Peter Pan
Peter Pan
Peter Pan is a character created by Scottish novelist and playwright J. M. Barrie . A mischievous boy who can fly and magically refuses to grow up, Peter Pan spends his never-ending childhood adventuring on the small island of Neverland as the leader of his gang the Lost Boys, interacting with...
(Olivier Theatre, RNT)
1998: Jane Eyre
Jane Eyre
Jane Eyre is a novel by English writer Charlotte Brontë. It was published in London, England, in 1847 by Smith, Elder & Co. with the title Jane Eyre. An Autobiography under the pen name "Currer Bell." The first American edition was released the following year by Harper & Brothers of New York...
(La Jolla Playhouse
La Jolla Playhouse
La Jolla Playhouse is a not-for-profit, professional theatre-in-residence on the campus of the University of California, San Diego. -Background:...
, California)
1999: Candide
Candide
Candide, ou l'Optimisme is a French satire first published in 1759 by Voltaire, a philosopher of the Age of Enlightenment. The novella has been widely translated, with English versions titled Candide: or, All for the Best ; Candide: or, The Optimist ; and Candide: or, Optimism...
, (Olivier Theatre, RNT)
1999: Money (Olivier Theatre, RNT)
2000: Hamlet
Hamlet
The Tragical History of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, or more simply Hamlet, is a tragedy by William Shakespeare, believed to have been written between 1599 and 1601...
(Olivier Theatre, RNT, Elsinore
Elsinore
Helsingør is a city and the municipal seat of Helsingør municipality on the northeast coast of the island of Zealand in eastern Denmark. Helsingør has a population of 46,279 including the southern suburbs of Snekkersten and Espergærde...
, EuropeanTour & BAM, 2001)
2000: A Midsummer Night’s Dream (En midsommarnattsdröm) (Dramaten)
2000: Jane Eyre
Jane Eyre
Jane Eyre is a novel by English writer Charlotte Brontë. It was published in London, England, in 1847 by Smith, Elder & Co. with the title Jane Eyre. An Autobiography under the pen name "Currer Bell." The first American edition was released the following year by Harper & Brothers of New York...
(Broadway
Broadway theatre
Broadway theatre, commonly called simply Broadway, refers to theatrical performances presented in one of the 40 professional theatres with 500 or more seats located in the Theatre District centered along Broadway, and in Lincoln Center, in Manhattan in New York City...
)
2001: Humble Boy
Humble Boy
Humble Boy is a 2001 English play by Charlotte Jones. The play was presented in association with Matthew Byam Shaw and Anna Mackmin, and was first performed on the Cottesloe stage of the Royal National Theatre on August 9, 2001. [1]-Background:...
(Cottesloe Theatre, RNT & Gielgud Theatre
Gielgud Theatre
The Gielgud Theatre is a West End theatre, located on Shaftesbury Avenue in the City of Westminster, London, at the corner of Rupert Street. The house currently has 889 seats on three levels.-History:...
, 2002)
2002: Twelfth Night (Trettondagsafton) (Dramaten, Stockholm
Stockholm
Stockholm is the capital and the largest city of Sweden and constitutes the most populated urban area in Scandinavia. Stockholm is the most populous city in Sweden, with a population of 851,155 in the municipality , 1.37 million in the urban area , and around 2.1 million in the metropolitan area...
)
2002: What the Night is For (Comedy Theatre, London)
2003: Humble Boy
Humble Boy
Humble Boy is a 2001 English play by Charlotte Jones. The play was presented in association with Matthew Byam Shaw and Anna Mackmin, and was first performed on the Cottesloe stage of the Royal National Theatre on August 9, 2001. [1]-Background:...
(Manhattan Theatre Club
Manhattan Theatre Club
Manhattan Theatre Club is a theater company located in New York City. Under the leadership of Artistic Director Lynne Meadow and Executive Producer Barry Grove, Manhattan Theatre Club has grown since its founding in 1970 from an Off-Off Broadway showcase into one of the country’s most acclaimed...
, New York
New York
New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...
)
2004: Rattle of a Simple Man (Comedy Theatre, London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
)
2004: Becket (Theatre Royal Haymarket, London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
)
2005: Macbeth
Macbeth
The Tragedy of Macbeth is a play by William Shakespeare about a regicide and its aftermath. It is Shakespeare's shortest tragedy and is believed to have been written sometime between 1603 and 1607...
(Almeida Theatre
Almeida Theatre
The Almeida Theatre, opened in 1980, is a 325 seat studio theatre with an international reputation which takes its name from the street in which it is located, off Upper Street, in the London Borough of Islington. The theatre produces a diverse range of drama and holds an annual summer festival of...
, London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
)
2005: Twin Spirits (Royal Opera House
Royal Opera House
The Royal Opera House is an opera house and major performing arts venue in Covent Garden, central London. The large building is often referred to as simply "Covent Garden", after a previous use of the site of the opera house's original construction in 1732. It is the home of The Royal Opera, The...
, Covent Garden)
2005: Don Carlos
Don Carlos
Don Carlos is a five-act grand opera composed by Giuseppe Verdi to a French language libretto by Camille du Locle and Joseph Méry, based on the dramatic play Don Carlos, Infant von Spanien by Friedrich Schiller...
(Welsh National Opera
Welsh National Opera
Welsh National Opera is an opera company founded in Cardiff, Wales in 1943. The WNO tours Wales, the United Kingdom and the rest of the world extensively. Annually, it gives more than 120 performances of eight main stage operas to a combined audience of around 150,000 people...
, Cardiff & UK Tour)
2005: The Screams of Kitty Genovese (Public Theater
Public Theater
The Public Theater is a New York City arts organization founded as The Shakespeare Workshop in 1954 by Joseph Papp, with the intention of showcasing the works of up-and-coming playwrights and performers. It is headquartered at 425 Lafayette Street in the former Astor Library in the East Village...
, New York
New York
New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...
)
2006: The Beggar’s Opera (Nissay Theatre, Tokyo
Tokyo
, ; officially , is one of the 47 prefectures of Japan. Tokyo is the capital of Japan, the center of the Greater Tokyo Area, and the largest metropolitan area of Japan. It is the seat of the Japanese government and the Imperial Palace, and the home of the Japanese Imperial Family...
)
2006: Twin Spirits (New Victory Theater, New York
New York
New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...
)
2006: Les Misérables
Les Misérables (musical)
Les Misérables , colloquially known as Les Mis or Les Miz , is a musical by Claude-Michel Schönberg, based on the novel of the same name by Victor Hugo....
(Broadhurst Theatre
Broadhurst Theatre
The Broadhurst Theatre is a legitimate Broadway theatre located at 235 West 44th Street in midtown Manhattan.It was designed by architect Herbert J. Krapp, a well-known theatre designer who had been working directly with the Shubert brothers; the Broadhurst opened 27 September 1917...
, New York
New York
New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...
)
2007: Dödsdansen (Dramaten, Stockholm
Stockholm
Stockholm is the capital and the largest city of Sweden and constitutes the most populated urban area in Scandinavia. Stockholm is the most populous city in Sweden, with a population of 851,155 in the municipality , 1.37 million in the urban area , and around 2.1 million in the metropolitan area...
)
2007: A Midsummer Night’s Dream, (Natsu no Yo no Yume) (New National, Tokyo
Tokyo
, ; officially , is one of the 47 prefectures of Japan. Tokyo is the capital of Japan, the center of the Greater Tokyo Area, and the largest metropolitan area of Japan. It is the seat of the Japanese government and the Imperial Palace, and the home of the Japanese Imperial Family...
)
2007: Kinshu (Galaxy Theatre,Tokyo)
2007: Don Carlos
Don Carlos
Don Carlos is a five-act grand opera composed by Giuseppe Verdi to a French language libretto by Camille du Locle and Joseph Méry, based on the dramatic play Don Carlos, Infant von Spanien by Friedrich Schiller...
(Canadian Opera Company
Canadian Opera Company
The Canadian Opera Company is an opera company in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. It is the largest opera company in Canada and the third largest producer of opera in North America. The COC performs in its own opera house, the Four Seasons Centre for the Performing Arts.-History:For 40 years until...
, Toronto
Toronto
Toronto is the provincial capital of Ontario and the largest city in Canada. It is located in Southern Ontario on the northwestern shore of Lake Ontario. A relatively modern city, Toronto's history dates back to the late-18th century, when its land was first purchased by the British monarchy from...
)
2008: The Beggar’s Opera (Nissay Theatre, Tokyo
Tokyo
, ; officially , is one of the 47 prefectures of Japan. Tokyo is the capital of Japan, the center of the Greater Tokyo Area, and the largest metropolitan area of Japan. It is the seat of the Japanese government and the Imperial Palace, and the home of the Japanese Imperial Family...
& Osaka
Osaka
is a city in the Kansai region of Japan's main island of Honshu, a designated city under the Local Autonomy Law, the capital city of Osaka Prefecture and also the biggest part of Keihanshin area, which is represented by three major cities of Japan, Kyoto, Osaka and Kobe...
)
2008: Aida
Aida
Aida sometimes spelled Aïda, is an opera in four acts by Giuseppe Verdi to an Italian libretto by Antonio Ghislanzoni, based on a scenario written by French Egyptologist Auguste Mariette...
(Welsh National Opera
Welsh National Opera
Welsh National Opera is an opera company founded in Cardiff, Wales in 1943. The WNO tours Wales, the United Kingdom and the rest of the world extensively. Annually, it gives more than 120 performances of eight main stage operas to a combined audience of around 150,000 people...
, Cardiff
Cardiff
Cardiff is the capital, largest city and most populous county of Wales and the 10th largest city in the United Kingdom. The city is Wales' chief commercial centre, the base for most national cultural and sporting institutions, the Welsh national media, and the seat of the National Assembly for...
and Birmingham
Birmingham
Birmingham is a city and metropolitan borough in the West Midlands of England. It is the most populous British city outside the capital London, with a population of 1,036,900 , and lies at the heart of the West Midlands conurbation, the second most populous urban area in the United Kingdom with a...
)
2008: Private Lives
Private Lives
Private Lives is a 1930 comedy of manners in three acts by Noël Coward. It focuses on a divorced couple who discover that they are honeymooning with their new spouses in neighbouring rooms at the same hotel. Despite a perpetually stormy relationship, they realise that they still have feelings for...
(Shiseikatsu) (Theatre Crié, Tokyo)
2009: Merry Wives of Windsor (Muntra fruarna i Windsor) (Dramaten)
2009: Brief Encounter
Brief Encounter
Brief Encounter is a 1945 British film directed by David Lean about the conventions of British suburban life, centring on a housewife for whom real love brings unexpectedly violent emotions. The film stars Celia Johnson, Trevor Howard, Stanley Holloway and Joyce Carey...
(Houston Grand Opera
Houston Grand Opera
Houston Grand Opera Houston Grand Opera was founded in 1955 through the joint efforts of Maestro Walter Herbert and cultural leaders Mrs. Louis G. Lobit, Edward Bing and Charles Cockrell...
)
2009: Midsummer Night’s Dream (Natsu no Yo no Yume) (Tokyo
Tokyo
, ; officially , is one of the 47 prefectures of Japan. Tokyo is the capital of Japan, the center of the Greater Tokyo Area, and the largest metropolitan area of Japan. It is the seat of the Japanese government and the Imperial Palace, and the home of the Japanese Imperial Family...
& Toyama)
2009: Jane Eyre
Jane Eyre
Jane Eyre is a novel by English writer Charlotte Brontë. It was published in London, England, in 1847 by Smith, Elder & Co. with the title Jane Eyre. An Autobiography under the pen name "Currer Bell." The first American edition was released the following year by Harper & Brothers of New York...
(Nissay Theatre, Tokyo
Tokyo
, ; officially , is one of the 47 prefectures of Japan. Tokyo is the capital of Japan, the center of the Greater Tokyo Area, and the largest metropolitan area of Japan. It is the seat of the Japanese government and the Imperial Palace, and the home of the Japanese Imperial Family...
)
2009: Daddy Long Legs (Rubicon Theatre, Ventura, California)
2009: Kinshu (Galaxy Theatre, Tokyo
Tokyo
, ; officially , is one of the 47 prefectures of Japan. Tokyo is the capital of Japan, the center of the Greater Tokyo Area, and the largest metropolitan area of Japan. It is the seat of the Japanese government and the Imperial Palace, and the home of the Japanese Imperial Family...
& Japanese tour)
2010: Tosca
Tosca
Tosca is an opera in three acts by Giacomo Puccini to an Italian libretto by Luigi Illica and Giuseppe Giacosa. It premiered at the Teatro Costanzi in Rome on 14 January 1900...
(Houston Grand Opera
Houston Grand Opera
Houston Grand Opera Houston Grand Opera was founded in 1955 through the joint efforts of Maestro Walter Herbert and cultural leaders Mrs. Louis G. Lobit, Edward Bing and Charles Cockrell...
)
2010: Candide
Candide
Candide, ou l'Optimisme is a French satire first published in 1759 by Voltaire, a philosopher of the Age of Enlightenment. The novella has been widely translated, with English versions titled Candide: or, All for the Best ; Candide: or, The Optimist ; and Candide: or, Optimism...
(Imperial Theatre, Tokyo)
2010: Daddy Long Legs (US Tour)
2010: The Tempest
The Tempest
The Tempest is a play by William Shakespeare, believed to have been written in 1610–11, and thought by many critics to be the last play that Shakespeare wrote alone. It is set on a remote island, where Prospero, the exiled Duke of Milan, plots to restore his daughter Miranda to her rightful place,...
(Stormen) (Dramaten)
2011: Romeo and Juliet
Romeo and Juliet
Romeo and Juliet is a tragedy written early in the career of playwright William Shakespeare about two young star-crossed lovers whose deaths ultimately unite their feuding families. It was among Shakespeare's most popular archetypal stories of young, teenage lovers.Romeo and Juliet belongs to a...
(Romeo och Julia) (Dramaten)
2011: Don Giovanni
Don Giovanni
Don Giovanni is an opera in two acts with music by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and with an Italian libretto by Lorenzo Da Ponte. It was premiered by the Prague Italian opera at the Teatro di Praga on October 29, 1787...
(Welsh National Opera
Welsh National Opera
Welsh National Opera is an opera company founded in Cardiff, Wales in 1943. The WNO tours Wales, the United Kingdom and the rest of the world extensively. Annually, it gives more than 120 performances of eight main stage operas to a combined audience of around 150,000 people...
- Cardiff and UK Tour)
Publications
Peter PanPeter Pan
Peter Pan is a character created by Scottish novelist and playwright J. M. Barrie . A mischievous boy who can fly and magically refuses to grow up, Peter Pan spends his never-ending childhood adventuring on the small island of Neverland as the leader of his gang the Lost Boys, interacting with...
Dramatists Play Service
Dramatists Play Service
Established in 1936 by members of the Dramatists Guild and the Society for Authors' Representatives, Dramatists Play Service, Inc. is a theatrical publishing and licensing house...
, NY (1987)
Children of Eden
Children of Eden
Children of Eden is a two-act musical play with music and lyrics by Stephen Schwartz and a book by John Caird. The musical is based on the Book of Genesis. Act I tells the story of Adam and Eve, Cain, and Abel, and Act II deals with Noah and the Flood...
Music Theatre International
Music Theatre International
Music Theatre International, often abbreviated MTI, is a theatrical licensing agency based in New York City. The League of American Theatres and Producers calls MTI "A leader in the theatrical licensing industry."-Description:...
, NY (1997)
The Beggar’s Opera Dramatists Play Service
Dramatists Play Service
Established in 1936 by members of the Dramatists Guild and the Society for Authors' Representatives, Dramatists Play Service, Inc. is a theatrical publishing and licensing house...
, NY (1999)
Peter Pan
Peter Pan
Peter Pan is a character created by Scottish novelist and playwright J. M. Barrie . A mischievous boy who can fly and magically refuses to grow up, Peter Pan spends his never-ending childhood adventuring on the small island of Neverland as the leader of his gang the Lost Boys, interacting with...
Methuen Publishing, UK (1999)
Candide
Candide
Candide, ou l'Optimisme is a French satire first published in 1759 by Voltaire, a philosopher of the Age of Enlightenment. The novella has been widely translated, with English versions titled Candide: or, All for the Best ; Candide: or, The Optimist ; and Candide: or, Optimism...
Music Theatre International
Music Theatre International
Music Theatre International, often abbreviated MTI, is a theatrical licensing agency based in New York City. The League of American Theatres and Producers calls MTI "A leader in the theatrical licensing industry."-Description:...
, NY (2002)
Jane Eyre
Jane Eyre
Jane Eyre is a novel by English writer Charlotte Brontë. It was published in London, England, in 1847 by Smith, Elder & Co. with the title Jane Eyre. An Autobiography under the pen name "Currer Bell." The first American edition was released the following year by Harper & Brothers of New York...
Music Theatre International
Music Theatre International
Music Theatre International, often abbreviated MTI, is a theatrical licensing agency based in New York City. The League of American Theatres and Producers calls MTI "A leader in the theatrical licensing industry."-Description:...
, NY (2003)
Theatre Craft Faber & Faber (2010)
Recordings
Les MisérablesLes Misérables (musical)
Les Misérables , colloquially known as Les Mis or Les Miz , is a musical by Claude-Michel Schönberg, based on the novel of the same name by Victor Hugo....
, First Night Records, 1985 (& numerous further cast recordings worldwide.)
Children of Eden
Children of Eden
Children of Eden is a two-act musical play with music and lyrics by Stephen Schwartz and a book by John Caird. The musical is based on the Book of Genesis. Act I tells the story of Adam and Eve, Cain, and Abel, and Act II deals with Noah and the Flood...
, First Night Records, 1991 (& RCA Victor/BMG 1998).
The Beggar’s Opera, London Records, 1992.
Jane Eyre
Jane Eyre
Jane Eyre is a novel by English writer Charlotte Brontë. It was published in London, England, in 1847 by Smith, Elder & Co. with the title Jane Eyre. An Autobiography under the pen name "Currer Bell." The first American edition was released the following year by Harper & Brothers of New York...
, Angel Records, 1998 (& Sony Music Entertainment 2000).
Candide
Candide
Candide, ou l'Optimisme is a French satire first published in 1759 by Voltaire, a philosopher of the Age of Enlightenment. The novella has been widely translated, with English versions titled Candide: or, All for the Best ; Candide: or, The Optimist ; and Candide: or, Optimism...
, RNT & First Night Records, 2000.
Daddy Long Legs (Paul Gordon Music) 2010
Brief Encounter Deutsche Grammophon
Deutsche Grammophon
Deutsche Grammophon is a German classical record label which was the foundation of the future corporation to be known as PolyGram. It is now part of Universal Music Group since its acquisition and absorption of PolyGram in 1999, and it is also UMG's oldest active label...
(2011)
Awards
1980 Laurence Olivier Award for Best Director for Nicholas Nickleby.1981 Evening Standard Drama Award for Best Director for Nicholas Nickleby.
1982 Tony Award
Tony Award
The Antoinette Perry Award for Excellence in Theatre, more commonly known as a Tony Award, recognizes achievement in live Broadway theatre. The awards are presented by the American Theatre Wing and The Broadway League at an annual ceremony in New York City. The awards are given for Broadway...
for Best Director for Nicholas Nickleby.
1982 Outer Critics Circle Award
Outer Critics Circle Award
The Outer Critics Circle Awards are presented annually for theatrical achievements both on and Off-Broadway and were begun during the 1949-1950 theater season. The awards are decided upon by theater critics who review for out-of-town newspapers, national publications, and other media outlets...
, Special Citation for Nicholas Nickleby.
1987 Outer Critics Circle Award
Outer Critics Circle Award
The Outer Critics Circle Awards are presented annually for theatrical achievements both on and Off-Broadway and were begun during the 1949-1950 theater season. The awards are decided upon by theater critics who review for out-of-town newspapers, national publications, and other media outlets...
for Outstanding Director of a Musical for Les Misérables
Les Misérables (musical)
Les Misérables , colloquially known as Les Mis or Les Miz , is a musical by Claude-Michel Schönberg, based on the novel of the same name by Victor Hugo....
.
1987 Tony Award
Tony Award
The Antoinette Perry Award for Excellence in Theatre, more commonly known as a Tony Award, recognizes achievement in live Broadway theatre. The awards are presented by the American Theatre Wing and The Broadway League at an annual ceremony in New York City. The awards are given for Broadway...
for Best Director for Les Misérables
Les Misérables (musical)
Les Misérables , colloquially known as Les Mis or Les Miz , is a musical by Claude-Michel Schönberg, based on the novel of the same name by Victor Hugo....
.
1994 Laurence Olivier Award (Nomination) for Best Director of a Musical for The Beggar's Opera
1994 Laurence Olivier Award (Nomination) for Best Musical Revival for The Beggar's Opera
1997 Outer Critics Circle Award
Outer Critics Circle Award
The Outer Critics Circle Awards are presented annually for theatrical achievements both on and Off-Broadway and were begun during the 1949-1950 theater season. The awards are decided upon by theater critics who review for out-of-town newspapers, national publications, and other media outlets...
for Outstanding Director of a Play for Stanley.
1997 Tony Award (Nomination) for Best Direction of a Play for Stanley
1999 Laurence Olivier Award for Best Musical Revival for Candide
Candide
Candide, ou l'Optimisme is a French satire first published in 1759 by Voltaire, a philosopher of the Age of Enlightenment. The novella has been widely translated, with English versions titled Candide: or, All for the Best ; Candide: or, The Optimist ; and Candide: or, Optimism...
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2001 Outer Critics Circle Award (Nomination) Outstanding Broadway Musical for Jane Eyre
2001 Tony Award
Tony Award
The Antoinette Perry Award for Excellence in Theatre, more commonly known as a Tony Award, recognizes achievement in live Broadway theatre. The awards are presented by the American Theatre Wing and The Broadway League at an annual ceremony in New York City. The awards are given for Broadway...
(Nomination) for Best Musical for Jane Eyre
2001 Tony Award
Tony Award
The Antoinette Perry Award for Excellence in Theatre, more commonly known as a Tony Award, recognizes achievement in live Broadway theatre. The awards are presented by the American Theatre Wing and The Broadway League at an annual ceremony in New York City. The awards are given for Broadway...
(Nomination) for Best Original Score for Jane Eyre
2001 Tony Award
Tony Award
The Antoinette Perry Award for Excellence in Theatre, more commonly known as a Tony Award, recognizes achievement in live Broadway theatre. The awards are presented by the American Theatre Wing and The Broadway League at an annual ceremony in New York City. The awards are given for Broadway...
(Nomination) for Best Book of a Musical for Jane Eyre
2006 Nippon Engeki Kogyo Kyukai Award for Kinshu, Midsummer Night's Dream and Beggar's Opera.
2007 Kikuta Kazuo Theatre Award for Special Achievement in Japanese Theatre
2010 LA Ovation Award (Nomination) for Director of a Musical for Daddy Long Legs
2010 LA Ovation Award for Book of a Musical for Daddy Long Legs