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Deborah Warner CBE
Order of the British Empire

The Most Excellent Order of the British Empire is a United Kingdom order of chivalry established on 4 June 1917 by George V of the United Kingdom....
 (born 12 May 1959) is a British director of theatre
Theatre

Theatre is the branch of the performing arts defined by Bernard Beckerman as what "occurs when one or more actor, isolated in time and/or Theater , present themselves to Audience." By this broad definition, theatre has existed since the dawn of man, as a result of human tendency for story telling....
 and opera
Opera

Opera is an Performing arts in which singers and musicians perform a dramatic work which combines a text and a musical score. Opera is part of the Western classical music tradition....
 known for her interpretations of the works of Shakespeare
List of Shakespeare's works

William Shakespeare was an England poet and playwright. He wrote approximately 38 Shakespeare's plays and 154 Shakespeare's Sonnets, as well as a variety of other poems....
, Bertolt Brecht
Bertolt Brecht

was a Germany poet, playwright, and theatre director. An influential theatre practitioner of the Twentieth-century theatre, Brecht made equally significant contributions to dramaturgy and Theatre, the latter particularly through the seismic impact of the tours undertaken by the Berliner Ensemble?the post-war theatre company operated by Brec...
, Georg Büchner
Georg Büchner

Karl Georg B?chner was a German people dramatist and writer of prose. He was the brother of physician and philosopher Ludwig B?chner. B?chner's talent is generally held in great esteem in Germany....
, and Henrik Ibsen
Henrik Ibsen

Henrik Johan Ibsen was a major Nineteenth-century theatre Norway playwright of realism drama and poet. He is often referred to as the "father of modern drama" and is one of the founders of modernism in the theatre....
, and for her long-term working relationship with the actress Fiona Shaw
Fiona Shaw

Fiona Shaw, Order of the British Empire is a leading Ireland actor 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 regarded as one of the finest classical actresses of her generation....
.

er was born in Oxfordshire
Oxfordshire

Oxfordshire is a county in the South East England region, bordering on Northamptonshire, Buckinghamshire, Berkshire, Wiltshire, Gloucestershire, and Warwickshire....
, England
England

native_name =|conventional_long_name = England|common_name = England|image_flag = Flag of England.svg|image_coat = England COA.svg|symbol_type = Royal Coat of Arms...
 to antiquarians, Roger Harold Metford and Ruth Ernestine Hurcombe. She is a granddaughter of the cricketer Sir Pelham Warner
Plum Warner

Sir Pelham Francis Warner , affectionately and better known as Plum Warner, or the Grand Old Man of English cricket team cricket was a Test cricketer....
. She studied theatre and stage management at drama school, and later founded the KICK theatre company in 1980 when she was twenty-one for young talented amateur actors.

er was invited to the join the Royal Shakespeare Company
Royal Shakespeare Company

The Royal Shakespeare Company is a British theatre company. Located primarily at Stratford-upon-Avon, with bases also in London and Theatre Royal, Newcastle, it is one of the United Kingdom's two most prominent publicly-funded theatre companies, alongside the Royal National Theatre....
 in 1987 where she would later direct Titus Andronicus
Titus Andronicus

Titus Andronicus may be William Shakespeare earliest tragedy; it is believed to have been written sometime between 1584 and the early 1590s....
, and it was while working there that she began her long-time collaboration with the Irish actress Fiona Shaw
Fiona Shaw

Fiona Shaw, Order of the British Empire is a leading Ireland actor 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 regarded as one of the finest classical actresses of her generation....
.






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Deborah Warner CBE
Order of the British Empire

The Most Excellent Order of the British Empire is a United Kingdom order of chivalry established on 4 June 1917 by George V of the United Kingdom....
 (born 12 May 1959) is a British director of theatre
Theatre

Theatre is the branch of the performing arts defined by Bernard Beckerman as what "occurs when one or more actor, isolated in time and/or Theater , present themselves to Audience." By this broad definition, theatre has existed since the dawn of man, as a result of human tendency for story telling....
 and opera
Opera

Opera is an Performing arts in which singers and musicians perform a dramatic work which combines a text and a musical score. Opera is part of the Western classical music tradition....
 known for her interpretations of the works of Shakespeare
List of Shakespeare's works

William Shakespeare was an England poet and playwright. He wrote approximately 38 Shakespeare's plays and 154 Shakespeare's Sonnets, as well as a variety of other poems....
, Bertolt Brecht
Bertolt Brecht

was a Germany poet, playwright, and theatre director. An influential theatre practitioner of the Twentieth-century theatre, Brecht made equally significant contributions to dramaturgy and Theatre, the latter particularly through the seismic impact of the tours undertaken by the Berliner Ensemble?the post-war theatre company operated by Brec...
, Georg Büchner
Georg Büchner

Karl Georg B?chner was a German people dramatist and writer of prose. He was the brother of physician and philosopher Ludwig B?chner. B?chner's talent is generally held in great esteem in Germany....
, and Henrik Ibsen
Henrik Ibsen

Henrik Johan Ibsen was a major Nineteenth-century theatre Norway playwright of realism drama and poet. He is often referred to as the "father of modern drama" and is one of the founders of modernism in the theatre....
, and for her long-term working relationship with the actress Fiona Shaw
Fiona Shaw

Fiona Shaw, Order of the British Empire is a leading Ireland actor 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 regarded as one of the finest classical actresses of her generation....
.

Biography


Early years

Warner was born in Oxfordshire
Oxfordshire

Oxfordshire is a county in the South East England region, bordering on Northamptonshire, Buckinghamshire, Berkshire, Wiltshire, Gloucestershire, and Warwickshire....
, England
England

native_name =|conventional_long_name = England|common_name = England|image_flag = Flag of England.svg|image_coat = England COA.svg|symbol_type = Royal Coat of Arms...
 to antiquarians, Roger Harold Metford and Ruth Ernestine Hurcombe. She is a granddaughter of the cricketer Sir Pelham Warner
Plum Warner

Sir Pelham Francis Warner , affectionately and better known as Plum Warner, or the Grand Old Man of English cricket team cricket was a Test cricketer....
. She studied theatre and stage management at drama school, and later founded the KICK theatre company in 1980 when she was twenty-one for young talented amateur actors.

Career

Warner was invited to the join the Royal Shakespeare Company
Royal Shakespeare Company

The Royal Shakespeare Company is a British theatre company. Located primarily at Stratford-upon-Avon, with bases also in London and Theatre Royal, Newcastle, it is one of the United Kingdom's two most prominent publicly-funded theatre companies, alongside the Royal National Theatre....
 in 1987 where she would later direct Titus Andronicus
Titus Andronicus

Titus Andronicus may be William Shakespeare earliest tragedy; it is believed to have been written sometime between 1584 and the early 1590s....
, and it was while working there that she began her long-time collaboration with the Irish actress Fiona Shaw
Fiona Shaw

Fiona Shaw, Order of the British Empire is a leading Ireland actor 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 regarded as one of the finest classical actresses of her generation....
. The pair have collaborated on plays including Electra
Electra (Sophocles)

Electra or Elektra is a Ancient Greece tragedy Play by Sophocles. Its date is not known, but various stylistic similarities with the Philoctetes and the Oedipus at Colonus lead scholars to suppose that it was written towards the end of Sophocles' career....
 (RSC), The Good Person of Sezuan (1989 - National Theatre
Royal National Theatre

The Royal National Theatre, London, England, is generally known as the National Theatre and commonly as The National. It is located on the The South Bank in the London Borough of Lambeth, England, immediately east of the southern end of Waterloo Bridge....
), Hedda Gabler
Hedda Gabler

Hedda Gabler is a Play first published in 1890 by Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen. The play premiered in 1891 in Germany to negative reviews, but has subsequently gained recognition as a classic of Realism , nineteenth century theatre, and Drama ....
 (1991 - The Abbey Theatre
Abbey Theatre

The Abbey Theatre , also known as the National Theatre of Ireland , is a theatre located in Dublin, Republic of Ireland. The Abbey first opened its doors to the public on 27 December 1904, and despite losing its original building to a fire in 1951, has remained active to the present day....
 and BBC2
BBC Two

BBC Two is the second major terrestrial television channel of the BBC, aimed at a wide range of subject matter and interests, and specialising in intelligent yet popular programme genres....
), the controversial Richard II
Richard II (play)

'King Richard the Second' is a history play by William Shakespeare believed to be written in approximately 1595. It is based on the life of King Richard II of England and is the first part of a tetralogy, referred to by scholars as the Henriad, followed by three plays concerning Richard's successors: Henry IV, part 1, Henry IV, part...
 (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
Samuel Beckett

Samuel Barclay Beckett was an Irish people writer, dramatist and poet. Beckett's work offers a bleak outlook on human culture and both formally and philosophically became increasingly minimalism....
 estate that the production was pulled during its run), The PowerBook (at the National Theatre: a dramatisation of Jeanette Winterson
Jeanette Winterson

Jeanette Winterson Order of the British Empire is a British novelist....
's novel, "Medea" (2000-2001 - Queen's Theatre and Broadway
Broadway theatre

Broadway theatre, commonly called simply Broadway, refers to theatrical performances presented in one of the 39 large professional theaters with 500 seats or more located in the Theatre District, New York in Manhattan, New York City....
), and, most recently, with Shaw in the supporting role of Portia in Warner's return to Shakespeare
William Shakespeare

William Shakespeare was an English people poet and playwright, widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's preeminent dramatist....
 with her production of Julius Caesar
Julius Caesar

'Gaius Julius Caesar' , July 13, 100 BC ? March 15, 44 BC,) was a Roman Republic military and political leader. He played a critical role in the transformation of the Roman Republic into the Roman Empire....
, starring Ralph Fiennes
Ralph Fiennes

Ralph Nathaniel Twisleton-Wykeham-Fiennes is an England actor. He has appeared in films such as Schindler's List, Quiz Show , The English Patient, Oscar and Lucinda, Red Dragon , The Constant Gardener , Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit, the Harry Potter , and In Bruges....
 and Simon Russell Beale
Simon Russell Beale

Simon Russell Beale Commander of the British Empire is a English actor. He has been described as "the greatest stage actor of his generation."...
, which later toured Europe. They also conducted a world-tour of T. S. Eliot
T. S. Eliot

'Thomas Stearns Eliot', Order of Merit , was a poet, dramatist, and literary critic. He received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1948. Among his most famous writings are the poems The Love Song of J....
's The Waste Land
The Waste Land

The Waste Land is a revolutionary, highly influential 434-line Modernist poetry in English by T. S. Eliot. Despite the alleged obscurity of the poem ? its shifts between satire and prophecy, its abrupt and unannounced changes of Narrator, Setting , its elegiac but intimidating summoning up of a vast and dissonant range of cultures and li...
, which began in Wilton's Music Hall
Wilton's Music Hall

Wilton's Music Hall is a grade II* listed building, built as a music hall and now a more general-purpose performance space in Grace's Alley, off Cable Street in the London Borough of Tower Hamlets....
 in London
London

London is the capital of both England and the United Kingdom, and the most populous municipality in the European Union. An important settlement for two millennia, History of London goes back to its founding by the Roman Empire....
'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. In 2007, following negotiations with the Beckett estate, Warner directed Shaw in Happy Days
Happy Days (play)

Happy Days is a play in two acts, written in English language, by Samuel Beckett. He began the play on 8 October 1960 and it was completed on 14 May 1961....
 at the National Theatre.

She directed the 1999 film, The Last September, with Michael Gambon
Michael Gambon

Michael John Gambon, Order of the British Empire is a British Academy Television Awards-winning Irish people-born United Kingdom actor who has worked in theatre, television and film....
 and Maggie Smith
Maggie Smith

Dame Margaret Natalie Smith, Order of the British Empire , better known as Maggie Smith, is a pre-eminent English film, Stage , and television actor who made her stage debut in 1952 and is still performing after 56 years....
.

She has worked in opera and classical music, including Diary of One Who Vanished by Janácek starring Ian Bostridge
Ian Bostridge

Ian Bostridge Order of the British Empire is an acclaimed England tenor, well known for his performances as an opera singer and as a song recitalist....
, a staging of the St.John Passion
Johannes Passion

The 'Johannes Passion' is a musical composition by Johann Sebastian Bach. During the first winter that Bach worked at Leipzig he composed the St....
, a controversial staging of Mozart
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart Mozart showed prodigious ability from his earliest childhood in Salzburg. Already competent on keyboard and violin, he composed from the age of five and performed before European royalty; at seventeen he was engaged as a court musician in Salzburg, but grew restless and traveled in search of a better position, always...
's Don Giovanni
Don Giovanni

Don Giovanni is an opera in two acts with music by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and with Italian language libretto by Lorenzo Da Ponte. It was premiered in the Estates Theatre in Prague on October 29, 1787 in music....
 at Glyndebourne
Glyndebourne Festival Opera

Glyndebourne Festival Opera is an list of opera festivals held at Glyndebourne, a country house near Lewes, in East Sussex, England.Under the supervision of the Christie family, the festival has been held annually since 1934, except in 1993, when the theatre was being rebuilt....
, Wozzeck
Wozzeck

Wozzeck is the first opera by the Austrian composer Alban Berg. It was composed between 1914 and 1922 and first performed in 1925. Since then it has established a solid place for itself in the mainstream operatic tradition, and modern productions are consistently sold out....
 for Opera North
Opera North

Opera North is a United Kingdom opera company. Based in Leeds, England the Company's home theatre is the Grand Theatre Leeds, but it also presents regular seasons in several other cities, at the Theatre Royal, Nottingham, the Lowry Centre, Salford Quays and the Theatre Royal, Newcastle....
, and recently Death in Venice
Death in Venice

The novella Death in Venice was written by the German author Thomas Mann, and was first published in 1912 as Der Tod in Venedig.. It was first published in English in 1925 as Death in Venice and Other Stories, translated by Kenneth Burke....
 at English National Opera
English National Opera

English National Opera is the national opera company of England, and one of two opera companies in London, along with the Royal Opera House at Covent Garden....
.

Personal life

Warner was made a commander of the Order of the British Empire
Order of the British Empire

The Most Excellent Order of the British Empire is a United Kingdom order of chivalry established on 4 June 1917 by George V of the United Kingdom....
 (CBE) on 17 Jun 2006. She is openly gay, and ranked in the top 100 on the IoS Pink List of most influential gays of 2008. Her partner of several years is English novelist Jeanette Winterson
Jeanette Winterson

Jeanette Winterson Order of the British Empire is a British novelist....
.

Awards and nominations

Awards
  • 1988 Laurence Olivier Award for Best Director – Titus Andronicus
    Titus Andronicus

    Titus Andronicus may be William Shakespeare earliest tragedy; it is believed to have been written sometime between 1584 and the early 1590s....
  • 1992 Laurence Olivier Award for Best Director of a Play – Hedda Gabler
    Hedda Gabler

    Hedda Gabler is a Play first published in 1890 by Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen. The play premiered in 1891 in Germany to negative reviews, but has subsequently gained recognition as a classic of Realism , nineteenth century theatre, and Drama ....
Nominations
  • 1997 Drama Desk Award Outstanding Direction of a Play – The Waste Land
    The Waste Land

    The Waste Land is a revolutionary, highly influential 434-line Modernist poetry in English by T. S. Eliot. Despite the alleged obscurity of the poem ? its shifts between satire and prophecy, its abrupt and unannounced changes of Narrator, Setting , its elegiac but intimidating summoning up of a vast and dissonant range of cultures and li...
  • 2003 Drama Desk Award Outstanding Direction of a Play – Medea
    Medea

    Medea is a woman in Greek mythology. She was the daughter of Aeetes of Colchis, niece of Circe, granddaughter of the sun god Helios, and later wife to the hero Jason, with whom she had two children: Mermeros and Pheres....
  • 2003 Tony Award Best Direction of a Play – Medea
    Medea

    Medea is a woman in Greek mythology. She was the daughter of Aeetes of Colchis, niece of Circe, granddaughter of the sun god Helios, and later wife to the hero Jason, with whom she had two children: Mermeros and Pheres....
  • 2008 Drama Desk Award Outstanding Director of a Play – Happy Days
    Happy Days (play)

    Happy Days is a play in two acts, written in English language, by Samuel Beckett. He began the play on 8 October 1960 and it was completed on 14 May 1961....


External links