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Ramin Gray (born 11 October 1963) is a theatre director of Iranian (Muslim) and British (Jewish) heritage.
Born in London in 1963, Ramin grew up in Oxford, Tehran, New York and Paris before graduating from Christ Church, Oxford with a BA (Hons, 2:1) in Oriental Studies (Persian and Arabic) in 1987.
He speaks French, Persian and German and has travelled extensively, especially in the Middle East. He is divorced, has five children, and lives mainly in London.
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Ramin began directing professionally in 1988 with a production of John Marston's The Malcontent at the Latchmere Theatre in London. In 1990 he was awarded a Regional Theatre Young Director Scheme bursary to Liverpool Playhouse where he directed Wedekind's Spring Awakening and Arthur Miller's A View from the Bridge .[ citation needed ]
He re-opened the Liverpool Playhouse Studio as a dedicated space for new plays from 1992–95, where he directed Gregory Motton's A Message for the Broken-Hearted. In Paris at Odéon Théâtre National de l'Europe and Théâtre National de Gennevilliers he directed Cat And Mouse (Sheep) by Gregory Motton. At London's Gate Theatre he directed Jon Fosse's The Child and Paul Godfrey's The Invisible Woman.[ citation needed ]
From 2000–09 Ramin was at the Royal Court Theatre, first as International Associate (2000–05), then as Associate Director (2005–09) where he directed over fifteen world or British premieres. In the Theatre Upstairs these included: Push Up by Roland Schimmelpfennig, Terrorism by the Presnyakov Brothers, Ladybird by Vassily Sigarev, Way To Heaven by Juan Mayorga, Woman and Scarecrow by Marina Carr, Just a Bloke by David Watson, and Scenes from the Back of Beyond by Meredith Oakes.[ citation needed ]
In the Theatre Downstairs he directed Simon Stephens' Motortown, Max Frisch's The Arsonists, Martin Crimp's Advice to Iraqi Women, two plays by Marius von Mayenburg, The Ugly One, and The Stone, and Over There by Mark Ravenhill (also Schaubűhne, Berlin). Gray's freelance theatre work in the UK includes two plays for the Royal Shakespeare Company, David Greig's The American Pilot and Leo Butler's I'll Be The Devil, and Alistair Beaton's King of Hearts, which he co-directed with Max Stafford-Clark for Hampstead Theatre and Out of Joint.[ citation needed ]
Internationally, Ramin has directed two plays by Simon Stephens, the German language premiere of Harper Regan at the Salzburg Festival in a co-production with the Schauspielhaus Hamburg and On The Shore of the Wide World at Volkstheater Wien (Karl-Skraup Prize). His 2010 Viennese production of Dennis Kelly's Orphans was nominated for the Nestroy Prize. His Russian production of The Ugly One won Best Director at the Textura Festival, Perm in 2010.[ citation needed ]
From 2011 to 2018 Ramin was Artistic Director of ATC Theatre for whom he directed The Golden Dragon by Roland Schimmelpfennig, which saw 110 performances worldwide including India and Northern Iraq, the first major revival of Crave by Sarah Kane and a new Russian play, Illusions by Ivan Vyrypaev, and the British premiere of Marius von Mayenburg's Martyr.[ citation needed ]
Ramin commissioned and directed David Greig's The Events, with music by John Browne, which was voted by critics in The Guardian as the 'Best Play of 2013'. Co-produced with the Young Vic, Schauspielhaus Wien and Brageteatret Norway, Gray also directed the Norwegian and Austrian productions of The Events.[ citation needed ]
In 2016/7 Ramin's critically acclaimed production of Aeschylus' The Suppliant Women opened at the Royal Lyceum in Edinburgh and toured the UK, Ireland and Hong Kong.
Ramin directed the British premiere of Roland Schimmelpfennig's Winter Solstice at the Orange Tree in January 2016.
In 2009 Ramin directed Benjamin Britten's Death in Venice at the Hamburgische Staatsoper, conducted by Simone Young. The production then transferred to Theater an der Wien, conducted by Donald Runnicles. At Hamburg he also directed the European premiere of Brett Dean's Bliss and, in 2015, the world premiere of Beat Furrer's La Bianca Notte. For the Royal Opera House, he directed the British premiere of Gerald Barry's The Importance of Being Earnest in 2013. In 2016 the production was revived at the Barbican Centre and Lincoln Center, New York.
Les Misérables, colloquially known as Les Mis or Les Miz, is a sung-through musical adaptation of Victor Hugo's 1862 novel of the same name, by Claude-Michel Schönberg (music), Alain Boublil and Jean-Marc Natel, and Herbert Kretzmer. The original French musical premiered in Paris in 1980 with direction by Robert Hossein. Its English-language adaptation by producer Cameron Mackintosh has been running in London since October 1985, making it the longest-running musical in the West End and the second longest-running musical in the world after the original Off-Broadway run of The Fantasticks.
Sir Peter Reginald Frederick Hall, CBE, was an English theatre, opera and film director. His obituary in The Times declared him "the most important figure in British theatre for half a century" and on his death, a Royal National Theatre statement declared that Hall's "influence on the artistic life of Britain in the 20th century was unparalleled".
Marius von Mayenburg is a German playwright and dramaturg.
Simon Stephens is an English playwright. Having taught on the Young Writers' Programme at the Royal Court Theatre for many years, he is now an Artistic Associate at the Lyric Hammersmith. He is the inaugural Associate Playwright of Steep Theatre Company, Chicago, where four of his plays, Harper Regan,Motortown, Wastwater, and Birdland had their U.S. premieres. His writing is widely performed throughout Europe and, along with Dennis Kelly and Martin Crimp, he is one of the most performed English-language writers in Germany.
The History Boys is a play by British playwright Alan Bennett. The play premiered at the Royal National Theatre in London on 18 May 2004. Its Broadway debut was on 23 April 2006 at the Broadhurst Theatre where 185 performances were staged before it closed on 1 October 2006.
Bibiana Beglau is a German actress.
Phil Willmott is a British director, playwright, arts journalist, teacher, and founder of London based theatre production company The Steam Industry.
Fireface is a play by Marius von Mayenburg, written in 1997 and first performed in 1998 at the Munich Kammerspiele. This play was the breakthrough of von Mayenburg as a new dramatist.
Rupert Goold, is an English theatre director. He is the artistic director of the Almeida Theatre. Goold was the artistic director of Headlong Theatre Company (2005–2013).
Simon Dormandy is an English theatre director, teacher and actor. As an actor, he worked with Cheek by Jowl and the Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC), as well as at The Donmar Warehouse, The Old Vic, Chichester Festival Theatre and The Royal Exchange, amongst many others. He is perhaps best known on screen for his performances in Little Dorrit (film) and Vanity Fair. Between 1997 and 2012 he taught drama at Eton College, Berkshire, and held the posts of Director of Drama and Head of Theatre Studies. . He is currently working as a freelance theatre director. His directing credits include Julius Caesar at the Bristol Old Vic and Much Ado About Nothing at the Rose Theatre, Kingston, and his own adaptations of A Passage to India and the Coen Brothers' film The Hudsucker Proxy.
God of Carnage is a play by Yasmina Reza and was first published in 2008. It is about two sets of parents, one of whose child has hurt the other at a public park. They agree to meet to discuss the matter in a civilized manner. However, as the evening goes on, the parents become increasingly childish, resulting in the evening devolving into chaos. Originally written in French, the play was a success. It has since been translated into English by translator Christopher Hampton, and has enjoyed equal acclaim in productions in both London and New York.
Mel Raido is a Jamaican-born English actor. Raido moved to London at three years old. After taking elocution lessons, he started to become hooked by the acting bug at school and studied at the Webber Douglas Academy of Dramatic Art.
Barrie Kosky is an Australian theatre and opera director.
Actors Touring Company (ATC) is a touring theatre company based in London, founded in 1978 by Artistic Director John Retallack. Previous Artistic Directors have included Mark Brickman, Ceri Sherlock, Nick Philippou, Gordon Anderson, Bijan Sheibani and Ramin Gray.
Dieter Dorn is a German theatre director, also for the opera, the manager of the Münchner Kammerspiele from 1983 to 2001 and now manager of the Bavarian Staatsschauspiel.
Irina Brown is a theatre and opera director in the United Kingdom, where she has lived and worked for over thirty years. Brown was the Artistic Director of the Tron Theatre in Glasgow from 1996 to 2000, and Natural Perspective Theatre Company, London from 2006 to 2011. She is noted for directing the production of Further Than the Furthest Thing by Zinnie Harris for the Royal National Theatre, The Sound of Music for the West Yorkshire Playhouse, Racine's Britannicus at Wilton's Music Hall and The Importance of Being Earnest at Open Air Theatre, Regents Park as well as Bird of Night by Dominique Le Gendre at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden and War and Peace for the Scottish Opera/ RSAMD. Brown was the Granada Artist-in-Residence at the University of California, Davis in 2004 and 2008.
Gregory Motton is a British playwright and author. Best known for the originality of his formally demanding, largely a-political theatre plays at the Royal Court in the 1980s and 1990s, state of the nation satires in the 1990s, and later for his polemics about working class politics, A Working Class Alternative To Labour and Helping Themselves – The Left Wing Middle Classes In Theatre And The Arts.
Marianne Phoebe Elliott, OBE is a British theatre director.
Scott Garnham is a British professional theatre and TV actor. Notable credits include Billy Elliot The Musical, Les Misérables, Made in Dagenham directed by Rupert Goold, and Pompidou by Matt Lucas for the BBC.
Schauspielhaus Wien is a theatre in Vienna, Austria, located at 19 Porzellangasse in the 9th District of Vienna (Alsergrund).
