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)....

04 January, 2023

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...

23 August, 2024

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...

02 August, 2024

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...

20 June, 2024

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...

23 May, 2024

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...

04 April, 2024

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...

05 March, 2024

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...

19 January, 2024

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 –...

29 November, 2023

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...

08 November, 2023

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...

06 November, 2023

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...

02 October, 2023

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...

23 August, 2023

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...

14 August, 2023

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...

09 August, 2023

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...

02 August, 2023

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...

21 July, 2023

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...

13 June, 2023

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...

05 May, 2023

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...

03 May, 2023

[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,...

24 April, 2023

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 -...

28 March, 2023

  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...

13 March, 2023

 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...

09 March, 2023

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...

23 February, 2023

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...

23 January, 2023

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...

18 January, 2023

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...

16 December, 2022

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...

31 October, 2022

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...

24 October, 2022

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...

19 October, 2022

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...

03 October, 2022

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...

26 September, 2022

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...

23 August, 2022

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...

04 August, 2022

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...

22 July, 2022

[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....

18 July, 2022

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...

28 June, 2022

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...

13 May, 2022

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...

11 May, 2022

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...

28 April, 2022

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...

19 April, 2022

  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...

01 April, 2022

  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...

17 March, 2022

On March 23rd 2020 - my birthday and the day the country shut down - I sat down to a take away dinner with my housemate. Like so many working in the creative industries our worlds had shrunk to the square footage of our flat,...

01 March, 2022

  We know that we have some Choreographers and Movement Directors already in SDUK membership, and are grateful to those who have helped us to understand your place in the theatre ecology. We want to promise Choreographers and Movement Directors a stronger voice within the industry, and...

21 February, 2022

For Naomi Alexander, setting up a theatre company was not about having a stage to showcase work, or providing a platform to other artists, or achieving commercial success. When Alexander founded Brighton People’s Theatre in 2015, it was, she says, an attempt to solve a...

17 February, 2022

  THE CENSUS IS NOW CLOSED.  A HUGE THANK YOU TO EVERYONE WHO COMPLETED IT!     We are delighted to launch the UK Stage Directors Census 2022.  We encourage all UK based stage directors, both members and non-members, of SDUK to complete the census and to spread the word...

03 February, 2022

SDUK Resilience     SDUK Resilience was research funded by Arts Council England to explore what a freelance career would look like post-Covid.     You can read the full research alongside supporting articles and advice at https://sdukresilience.com ...

31 January, 2022

  Hello from Edinburgh. Having lived and worked in Scotland for over 20 years, I joined the SDUK board because I felt that the perspective of directors living and working here needed to be represented. However, working as a freelance director, as AD of a tiny, independent...

31 January, 2022