Jeremy Herrin | |
---|---|
Born | 19 January 1970 New York City USA |
Alma mater | Royal Conservatoire of Scotland |
Occupation | Theatre director |
Jeremy Herrin is an English theatre director. He is one of the founding directors of Second Half Productions.
Having trained at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama in Glasgow, Herrin was an assistant director under Stephen Daldry at the Royal Court Theatre from 1993 to 1995. He then was a staff director at the National Theatre from 1995 to 1999. In 2000 he became associate director at Live Theatre, Newcastle upon Tyne, where his credits included plays by Richard Bean and Joe Harbot.
His breakthrough show was the critically successful That Face by Polly Stenham at the Royal Court Upstairs in 2007, which subsequently transferred to the West End. He was nominated for the Evening Standard Award for Best Director for Stenham's Tusk Tusk in 2009. He became the deputy artistic director at the Royal Court to Dominic Cooke in 2009. He has directed a number of new plays at the Royal Court including Spur of the Moment by Anya Reiss, Richard Bean's The Heretic and No Quarter, also by Stenham, in 2013. [1]
Herrin made his Shakespearean debut at the Globe Theatre in 2011, directing Eve Best in Much Ado About Nothing . In 2011 Herrin directed several West End productions, including a well received revival of Alan Ayckbourn's Absent Friends . He also directed the UK premiere of David Hare's The Vertical Hour as well as the world premiere and West End transfer of Hare's South Downs . He has directed Roger Allam in Uncle Vanya and in The Tempest at Shakespeare's Globe. He was nominated as Best Director in the 2013 Olivier Awards for his work on This House by James Graham at the National Theatre.
In December 2013 he directed the world premiere of two plays adapted from Hilary Mantel's novels Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies for the RSC. [2] The plays subsequently transferred to The Aldwych Theatre. In 2021 he directed the stage adaptation of Mantel's third novel in the trilogy The Mirror and the Light , which played at the Gielgud Theatre.
In 2013, he succeeded Rupert Goold as the artistic director of Headlong, where he has directed a number of hit productions including Jennifer Haley's The Nether (at The Royal Court Theatre), People, Places and Things by Duncan Macmillan and Labour of Love by James Graham, featuring Martin Freeman and Tamsin Greig in the West End.
In 2022 he directed Amy Adams, who made her West End debut, in a production of Tennessee Williams' The Glass Menagerie , his inaugural production for Second Half Productions.
His production of Best of Enemies based on the acclaimed documentary by Robert Gordon and Morgan Neville transferred from the Young Vic theatre to the West End, winning the South Bank Show’s best Production award. The show was broadcast on NT Live.
Herrin describes himself as the archetypal Royal Court Theatre director, putting the writer before the director:
You never want anything onstage that the writer doesn’t like. You need them to be entirely proud. What you want is to give them the deluxe version of their play... I try to disappear into the work. I’d hate for someone to say, in the way they do about other directors, ‘That’s a very Jeremy Herrin production.’ Ego’s a really dangerous thing in theatre. It’s a collegiate enterprise. [3]
Herrin has been instrumental in the founding of Stage Directors UK, an organisation that aims to create better working conditions and terms for directors.
Blasted is the first play by the British author Sarah Kane. It was first performed in 1995 at the Royal Court Theatre Upstairs in London.
The Royal Court Theatre, at different times known as the Court Theatre, the New Chelsea Theatre, and the Belgravia Theatre, is a non-commercial West End theatre in Sloane Square, in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, London, England. In 1956 it was acquired by and remains the home of the English Stage Company, which is known for its contributions to contemporary theatre and won the Europe Prize Theatrical Realities in 1999.
Reece Dinsdale is an English actor and director of stage, film and television. He is a Huddersfield Town fan. In 2017 he became a patron of the Square Chapel, an arts centre in Halifax. He is also an honorary patron of The Old Courts multi-arts centre in Wigan
The Vertical Hour is a play by David Hare. The play addresses the relationship of characters with opposing views on the 2003 invasion of Iraq, and also explores psychological tension between public lives and private lives.
Polly Stenham is an English playwright known for her play That Face, which she wrote when she was 19 years old.
Rupert Goold is an English director who works primarily in theatre. He is the artistic director of the Almeida Theatre, and was the artistic director of Headlong Theatre Company (2005–2013).
That Face is a two-act play written by Polly Stenham. It premiered at the Royal Court Theatre in London on 26 April 2007, directed by Jeremy Herrin. The play was revived at the Duke of York's Theatre in the West End in 2008, opening on 1 May. It made its American premiere in May 2010, at the Manhattan Theatre Club, running through until 27 June.
Dominic Cooke is an English director and writer.
Headlong Theatre Limited is a British touring theatre company, formed in 1974 and named until 2006 as the Oxford Stage Company.
Sean Holmes is a British theatre director and former Artistic Director of Lyric Hammersmith.
Carrie Cracknell is a British theatre director. She was artistic director of the Gate Theatre, London from 2007 to 2012. She was associate director at both the Young Vic (2012–2013) and the Royal Court (2013–2014).
Jamie Lloyd is a British director, best known for his work with his eponymous theatre company. He is known for his modern minimalism and expressionist directorial style. He is a proponent of affordable theatre for young and diverse audiences, and has been praised as "redefining West End theatre". The Daily Telegraph critic Dominic Cavendish wrote of Lloyd, "Few directors have Lloyd’s ability to transport us to the upper echelons of theatrical pleasure."
Anya Reiss is a British playwright and screenwriter.
James Charles Dacre is a British theatre, opera and film director and producer. He was artistic director of Royal & Derngate Theatres in Northampton from 2013-2023 and prior to that held Associate Director roles at The New Vic Theatre, Theatre503 and The National Youth Theatre.
The Nether is a sci-fi crime drama written by American playwright Jennifer Haley. The play received its world premiere at the Kirk Douglas Theatre in California in March 2013, after being first developed at the Eugene O'Neill Theater Center as part of the 2011 National Playwrights Conference. Subsequent productions have been mounted at the Royal Court Theatre in 2013, MCC Theater in 2014 and in the West End at the Duke of York's Theatre in 2015. It won the 2012 Susan Smith Blackburn Prize, and was nominated for Best New Play at the 2015 Laurence Olivier Awards.
Nick Powell is a British musician, composer and sound designer. He has worked extensively in theatre on productions in the West End and on Broadway, and for companies including the Royal National Theatre, the Royal Shakespeare Company, the National Theatre of Scotland, the Royal Court Theatre, and the Donmar Warehouse.
Hangmen is a play by the British-Irish playwright Martin McDonagh. It received its world premiere at the Royal Court Theatre, London, in September 2015, before transferring to the West End's Wyndham's Theatre. The play was directed by Matthew Dunster, designed by Anna Fleischle, and featured David Morrissey and Reece Shearsmith among others. It was universally acclaimed by theatre critics, and was nominated for numerous awards including the Olivier Awards, Critics' Circle Theatre Awards and the Evening Standard Theatre Awards. For its U.S. premiere in 2018 at Off-Broadway's Atlantic Theater Company, Hangmen won the New York Drama Critics' Circle Award for Best Foreign Play.
People, Places and Things is a play by the British playwright Duncan Macmillan. The inaugural production was directed by Jeremy Herrin and staged at the National Theatre in London in 2015. The play was widely praised by critics for its depiction of addiction, and Denise Gough, in the central role, won the Critics Circle Theatre Award for Best Actress. The production transferred to Wyndham's Theatre in 2016. Denise Gough won the Olivier Award for Best Actress for her role.
Duncan Macmillan is an English playwright and director. He is most noted for his plays Lungs, People, Places and Things, Every Brilliant Thing, and the stage adaptation of the George Orwell novel Nineteen Eighty-Four, which he co-adapted and co-directed with Robert Icke.
Home, I'm Darling is a play by Laura Wade.