Why the Artistic Director Job is Harder — and More Vital — Than Ever A Role in Flux Let’s be honest: being an Artistic Director right now isn’t for the faint of heart. It’s exhilarating, yes. But it’s also exhausting, complicated, and at times, deeply lonely. The...
In the wake of the Supreme Court judgement on 16 April 2025, Stage Directors UK wants to make it clear that we stand shoulder to shoulder in support of our trans and nonbinary members, in a hostile environment where they are facing prejudice and potential...
We're delighted to announce that the SDUK podcast has been relaunched. Produced and presented by Fergus Morgan, in the first episode of the new series, Tamara Harvey, co-artistic director of the Royal Shakespeare Company, and Jemima Levick, artistic director of the Tron Theatre, discuss the process of...
We were delighted that Thomas Hescott was named on The Stage 100 list for his work with SDUK, especially his recent assistance with the transition to an official trade union. The work SDUK does is vital, both for individual members and for the industry as a...
SDUK is extremely concerned about the winding down of undergraduate courses at the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School. Like many drama schools in the U.K., the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School is an important employer for our members. We have made contact with those members...
We're starting 2025 with the publication of our new manifesto. This document represents multiple discussions we've had with members over the past year and will become the focus for our work going forward. Our manifesto covers all the work our members do across the UK, whether that...
Emma Callander is the director of one of the hit shows at this year’s Edinburgh Fringe: Julia Grogan’s Playfight, a compelling three-hander about adolescent female sexuality that is running in the Paines Plough Roundabout at Summerhall all August. It is a co-production from Grace Dickson...
Born in London in 1980, Blanche McIntyre fell in love with theatre as a teenager after seeing a Katie Mitchell production of Henry IV Part III at the Royal Shakespeare Company – “I know that sounds insanely geeky, but I found it electrically exciting,” she...
Born in 1989, Chelsea Walker grew up in a small village in the Cotswolds. She fell in love with theatre as a child and even directed two plays while still at high school. It was a student trip to perform at the Edinburgh Fringe after...
Gareth Nicholls has spent his career in Scotland. Born in Wakefield, he moved to Glasgow to study theatre, then found his feet as a director by collaborating with theatremakers at The Arches, the vibrant arts venue that was set up by Andy Arnold in 1991...
Rachel Kavanaugh has spent three decades staging shows. She started her career as an assistant director in the early 1990s after studying at Manchester University, then went on to work extensively as a director at the Royal Shakespeare Company, Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre, and...
Born in Leytonstone in 1990, Lynette Linton discovered a passion for theatre as a child, initially thinking that she wanted to become an actor. After she studied English at the University of Sussex then joined the National Youth Theatre, though, the theatremaker Rikki Beadle-Blair suggested...
Born and raised in Washington DC, writer and director Cheryl Martin fell in love with theatre through seeing shows in her home city – including Morgan Freeman in the musical Gospel At Colonus - in the 1980s. She went on to study at Williams College...
Dermot Daly does a bit of everything. The actor, director, lecturer and filmmaker grew up in Birmingham in the 1980s and fell in love with performing through attending a youth theatre group. He subsequently trained as an actor at the Central Junior Television Workshop –...
After two and a half years as Executive Director of Stage Directors UK, Harold Finley is stepping down to pursue his career as a freelance theatre director. In his time at SDUK he has overseen the initial transition to a trade union and has grown...
Amy Hodge grew up in North London in the 1980s and 1990s, falling in love with theatre through youth groups. She acted a lot as a child, even landing a recurring role in 1998 BBC One drama Berkeley Square, before deciding that professional performance was...
Director, writer and composer Andy McGregor was born in 1980 and grew up in Largs in Ayrshire. He made his first forays into performance as a teenager, then studied Music and Theatre at the University of Glasgow. He spent his twenties playing in a band...
Born in 1993, Emily Aboud grew up in Trinidad and fell in love with drama through attending Lilliput Theatre, the island’s only children’s theatre company. Acting in youth productions led to directing, which led to Aboud throwing herself into student drama when she moved to...
Sean Foley has taken an unusual route to becoming one of the country’s most influential directors. Born in 1964 in Cleethorpes, he moved around a lot as a child, and eventually got involved with drama while studying at Oxford University – not through the austere...
SDUK welcomes any pay increase for directors but the recently announced agreements for the West End, commercial and subsidised sectors are a disappointment on numerous fronts. West End directors in category A are now receiving a minimum of £6,347. The fee, though not irrelevant, is not the crucial issue when directing in...
These memories of Piers Haggard, SDUK's Founder, have been compiled by Thomas Hescott. Thank you to all who added their memories and good wishes. Thomas Hescott I first heard the name Piers Haggard in a coffee shop in soho. I was there with a fellow director and we...
Ben Occhipinti has a long commute. The 39-year-old director, composer and sound designer is an associate at Perthshire’s Pitlochry Festival Theatre but lives an eight-and-a-half-hour drive away in Wiltshire. “I have worked like that all my career,” he says. “I live down south with my...
Born in 1987, director Polina Kalinina spent the first ten years of her life in Russia, then the rest of her childhood in Bristol. She studied English at the University of Oxford, then completed a diploma in directing at LAMDA. After graduating, she worked as...
I was honoured to receive an invitation to join the SDUK board in June 2022. Over the past few months, I've been learning about the SDUK board's responsibilities, organisation, and the diverse group of members in the UK, in order to understand how best to...
Tom Littler fell in love with theatre – and with directing – as a teenager growing up in Devon in the late 1990s. He threw himself into student drama while studying English at Oxford University, then embarked on a prolific professional career – as founding...
[vc_row css_animation="" row_type="row" use_row_as_full_screen_section="no" type="full_width" angled_section="no" text_align="left" background_image_as_pattern="without_pattern"][vc_column][vc_column_text] Eighteen months ago, Stage Directors UK began a process which started with a question, should we become a Trade Union? Numerous meetings later, much research, discussions with you, our members, and others in the U.K. and abroad, lawyers,...
Raised on the outskirts of London and trained as an actor, director Katie Posner was in her late twenties when she discovered that she actually preferred directing to performing. She staged several student shows as a drama teacher, before directing her first professional production -...
We are delighted to announce the launch of From Stage to (small) Screen, a career-changing opportunity for two stage directors to train in TV directing and to then direct an episode each of Hollyoaks, for which they will be paid. One of the strengths of the UK...
Our friends at The Directors Charitable Foundation are re-launching their offer of low cost therapy and all SDUK members can benefit:DIRECTORS THERAPY SUPPORTThe Directors Charitable Foundation remains committed to providing low cost therapy to Stage Directors UK members at times of their choosing with qualified therapists familiar...
Born in 1945, director Nicolas Kent grew up in Hampstead, then studied English at Cambridge University in the mid-1960s, where got involved with student theatre and discovered directing. His subsequent six-decade career started with jobs at Liverpool Playhouse, Berkshire’s Watermill Theatre, Edinburgh’s Traverse Theatre and...
Luke Sheppard grew up in Sandhurst, Berkshire. He was a successful child actor but discovered directing as a student at the University of Bristol. After graduating, he worked as an assistant and associate director – including on Matilda The Musical – while simultaneously staging his...
We are deeply saddened by the news that our founder, Piers Haggard, passed away on 11th January. Piers was born in London in 1939. He started his career as an assistant director at the Royal Court, before going on to work across theatre, film and...
Downloadable PDF with the full census can be downloaded via the link below. SDUKDirectorsCensus2023 (We will be conducting a choreographer/movement director census later in the year)....
He has spent the last thirty-five years writing and staging them, but director Peter Rowe did not see a pantomime until he was in his early twenties. At first, he admits, he was snobbish about them. “Pantomime just wasn’t part of our family tradition when I...
An inside-out view of being a director Sometimes, I think being a director means there’s two versions of me: a director me and a real me. The director me appears calm, in control, and is always reading the room. She is focused on creating a nurturing environment...
Most days, when he is not in a rehearsal room or a television studio, Scott Penrose can be found in his workshop in Essex, surrounded by various theatrical tricks and illusion equipment, and the tools he uses to make them. “It is half workshop and...
Former Royal Shakespeare Company artistic director Adrian Noble will be in conversation discussing his career, approach to directing Shakespeare and his new book How to Direct Shakespeare. "Know this: by developing and sharpening your skills on a Shakespeare text, you will be preparing yourself for your next...
VIEWS MY OWN What am I going to write about? What is useful? What is sitting in my consciousness, right this minute, which constitutes me championing best practice, and care, for members and those who we work with. … Consider this… (Exit social media.) Or @ least, consider flying away from...
How do you lead a theatre – a production, or a building, or a company – through a crisis? In recent years, the Covid-19 pandemic and the cost-of-living crisis have made that a question that every director has had to answer. Paul Miller, outgoing artistic...
Directing a show at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe can be a brutal, bruising experience. It can also be a brilliant and beautiful one. Often, it is amazing and awful, all at the same time. Iceland-born, Scotland-based director Kolbrún Björt Sigfúsdóttir has experienced both sides of...
I want you to imagine you are a 24 year old doing your first assistant director job. The director is pretty formidable; perhaps they’re also the artistic director of the building. On the first day, the director read out the Equity safe space policy. But...
Every part of the performing arts industry suffered during the Covid-19 pandemic, but once the lockdowns had been lifted and limited freedoms restored, there was one form of in-person theatre that boomed like never: outdoor theatre. During the summers of 2020 and 2021, al fresco...
[vc_row css_animation="" row_type="row" use_row_as_full_screen_section="no" type="full_width" angled_section="no" text_align="left" background_image_as_pattern="without_pattern" css=".vc_custom_1658145510757{border-radius: 15px !important;}" z_index="" padding_top="50"][vc_column][vc_column_text]Dear Directors After ten months of consultation and discussions with the Stage Directors UK Board, membership, and industry partners, I am delighted to announce that the members of SDUK have voted in favour of becoming a Trade Union....
She was a second-year drama student at Bath Spa University, working part time at The Egg, Theatre Royal Bath’s studio space for younger audiences. He was a recent graduate of Bretton Hall, putting on a show with his friend. Their meeting was the start of...
Incredibly, the Norfolk and Norwich Festival is a quarter of a millennium old this year. The multi-arts event is celebrating its 250th anniversary in style, with seventeen days of music, performance, circus, literature, outdoor art, and outreach programmes, spread out across Norwich and the county...
In partnership with PiPA Session 2: Thu 9 June 2022, 12.00 - 13.30Zoom An action-oriented round table with invited panellists. These sessions are open to both members and non-members of SDUK. What can we do individually and together to support theatre directors who are parents and/or have other...
In partnership with PiPA Session 1: Thu, 19 May 2022, 12.00 to 13.30 on Zoom An action-oriented round table with invited panelists. These sessions are open to both members and non-members of SDUK. What can we do individually and together to support theatre directors who are mothers and/or have...
Samantha Lane remembers the moment she realised she wanted to work in the performing arts. She was thirteen – or around that age, she says – and a touring show visited her high school. “It was called Too Much Punch For Judy and it was about...
Tentatively peeking over the parapet of the Pandemic, I’m struck by how much has changed. Finances are tighter, priorities have changed, and things feel a lot more fragile than they did two years ago. Is it safe to come out yet? I’m also struck by how...
Careers in the arts do not come much more varied than that of Laila Diallo. The Canadian-born, Bristol-based dancer, choreographer and movement director has worked extensively both on stage and off, both in front of the camera and behind it, both across the UK and...