Deborah Warner Biography

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Deborah Warner CBE (born 12 May 1959) is a British theatre and opera director.

Early years

Warner was born in Oxfordshire, England. In 1980, she founded the KICK theatre company.

Collaboration with Fiona Shaw

For the Royal Shakespeare Company she directed Titus Andronicus, and it was while working there that she began her long-time collaboration with the Irish actress, Fiona Shaw. The pair have collaborated on plays including Electra (RSC), The Good Person of Sezuan (1989 - National Theatre), Hedda Gabler (1991 - The Abbey Theatre and BBC2), the controversial Richard II (with Shaw in the title role, also at the National Theatre (1995) and televised by BBC2), Footfalls (the radical staging of which so enraged the Beckett estate that the production was pulled during its run), The PowerBook (at the National Theatre: a dramatisation of Jeanette Winterson's novel, "Medea" (2000-2001 - Queen's Theatre and Broadway), and, most recently, with Shaw in the supporting role of Portia in Warner's return to Shakespeare with her production of Julius Caesar, starring Ralph Fiennes and Simon Russell Beale, which later toured Europe. They also conducted a world-tour of T. S. Eliot's The Waste Land, which began in Wilton's Music Hall in London's East End, and marked a new chapter in Warner's work that focused on the experience of drama and its link to places, which was expanded upon in her Angel Project.

Films and opera

She directed the 1999 film, The Last September, with Michael Gambon and Maggie Smith.

She has also done much work in opera and classical music, including Diary of One Who Vanished by JanáÄ?ek starring Ian Bostridge, a staging of the St.John Passion, a controversial staging of Mozart's Don Giovanni at Glyndebourne, and Wozzeck for Opera North.

Awards

In 1989 Deborah Warner was named Best Director in the Laurence Olivier Awards for Titus Andronicus, and has also won awards for her work on Hedda Gabler and Medea.

She was created a Commander of the British Empire (CBE) on 17 June 2006.

Personal life

Her partner is the novelist Jeanette Winterson.

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