“Theatre cannot die before the last dream has been dreamt”
Declan Donnellan, The Actor and the Target
“Declan Donnellan – Irish in origin, English in education, European in culture, universal in thought – is one of the most original directors there is”
Le Figaro
Declan Donnellan is joint Artistic Director of Cheek by Jowl, with his partner, the designer Nick Ormerod. They formed Cheek by Jowl in 1981, for which they have created over 40 productions, performing in over 400 cities, across six continents.
Donnellan has staged the English premieres, 300 years after their writing, of major European classics by writers such as Racine, Corneille, Lessing and Ostrovski.
Declan Donnellan was born in England of Irish parents in 1953. He grew up in London and read English and Law at Queens’ College, Cambridge, before being called to the Bar at the Middle Temple in 1978.
Cheek by Jowl’s first production, The Country Wife, directed by Donnellan, was presented at the Edinburgh festival in 1981. In 1989, he was made Associate Director of the Royal National Theatre in London where his productions have included Fuenteovejuna by Lope De Vega, Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street by Stephen Sondheim, The Mandate by Nikolai Erdman and both parts of Angels in America by Tony Kushner.
Donnellan has directed for the Avignon Festival (Le Cid); The Maly Drama Theatre of Saint Petersburg (The Winter’s Tale), The Noel Coward Theatre (Shakespeare in Love), the Piccolo Teatro Milano (The Revenger’s Tragedy) as well as the opera Falstaff for the Salzburg Festival and the ballets Romeo and Juliet and Hamlet for the Bolshoi in Moscow.
He has written a play, Lady Betty, and translated works by De Musset, Erdman, Sophocles and Lermontov. He has received awards in London, Moscow, Paris and New York, including four Olivier Awards, the Order of Charlemagne of Andorra, the Stanislavski International Prize in Moscow and the Golden Lion of Venice.
His first feature film, Bel Ami, co-directed with Nick Ormerod, and starring Uma Thurman, Kristin Scott Thomas, Christina Ricci, and Robert Pattinson, was released in 2012.
His book, The Actor and the Target, was originally published in Russian (1999), and has since appeared in 15 languages, including French, Spanish, Italian, German, Romanian and Mandarin. The third French and fourth English edition were published in 2018.
Date | Production | Playwright | Produced by |
---|---|---|---|
1981 | The Country Wife | Wycherley | Cheek by Jowl |
1982 | Othello | Shakespeare | Cheek by Jowl |
1983 | Vanity Fair | Thackeray | Cheek by Jowl |
1984 | Pericles | Shakespeare | Cheek by Jowl |
1985 | The Man of Mode | Etherege | Cheek by Jowl |
1985 | Bent | Sherman | Northcott Theatre |
1985 | A Midsummer Night’s Dream | Shakespeare | Cheek by Jowl |
1985 | A Masked Ball | Verdi | Opera 80 |
1985 | Andromache | Racine | Cheek by Jowl |
1986 | Twelfth Night | Shakespeare | Cheek by Jowl |
1986 | The Cid | Corneille | Cheek by Jowl |
1986 | Romeo and Juliet | Shakespeare | New Shakespeare Company |
1987 | Macbeth | Shakespeare | Cheek by Jowl |
1988 | A Family Affair | Ostrovsky | Cheek by Jowl * |
1988 | Philoctetes | Sophocles | Cheek by Jowl |
1988 | The Tempest | Shakespeare | Cheek by Jowl |
1989 | Lady Betty | Donnellan | Cheek by Jowl * |
1989 | Fuente Ovejuna | de Vega | National Theatre |
1990 | Sara | Lessing | Cheek by Jowl * |
1990 | Peer Gynt | Ibsen | National Theatre |
1991 | Hamlet | Shakespeare | Cheek by Jowl |
1991 | Big Fish | Donnellan | A short film |
1992 | Angels in America: Part One | Kushner | National Theatre |
1992 | As You Like It | Shakespeare | Cheek by Jowl |
1993 | The Blind Men | de Ghelderode | Cheek by Jowl * |
1993 | Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street | Sondheim & Wheeler | National Theatre |
1993 | Don’t Fool With Love | de Musset | Cheek by Jowl |
1993 | Angels in America: Part Two | Kushner | National Theatre |
1994 | The Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny | Weill & Brecht | English National Opera |
1994 | Measure for Measure | Shakespeare | Cheek by Jowl |
1995 | As You Like It (revival) | Shakespeare | Cheek by Jowl |
1996 | The Duchess of Malfi | Webster | Cheek by Jowl |
1997 | Out Cry | Tennesse Williams | Cheek by Jowl * |
1997 | The Winter’s Tale | Shakespeare | Cheek by Jowl |
1997 | Martin Guerre | Boublil & Schonberg | Prince Edward Theatre |
1998 | Much Ado About Nothing | Shakespeare | Cheek by Jowl |
1998 | Le Cid | Corneille | Avignon Festival |
1999 | Antigone | Sophocles | Old Vic Theatre |
1999 | Hay Fever | Coward | Savoy Theatre |
1999 | The School for Scandal | Sheridan | Royal Shakespeare Company |
2000 | Boris Godunov | Pushkin | Chekhov International Theatre Festival with Cheek by Jowl |
2001 | Falstaff | Verdi | The Salzburg Festival |
2002 | Homebody/Kabul | Kushner | Cheek by Jowl * |
2002 | King Lear | Shakespeare | Royal Shakespeare Company Academy |
2003 | Twelfth Night | Shakespeare | Chekhov International Theatre Festival with Cheek by Jowl |
2004 | Othello | Shakespeare | Cheek by Jowl |
2004 | Romeo and Juliet | Shakespeare | The Bolshoi Ballet |
2004 | The Mandate | Erdman | National Theatre |
2005 | Three Sisters | Chekhov | Chekhov International Theatre Festival with Cheek by Jowl |
2005 | Great Expectations | Dickens | Royal Shakespeare Company |
2006 | The Changeling | Middleton & Rowley | Cheek by Jowl |
2007 | Cymbeline | Shakespeare | Cheek by Jowl |
2007 | Andromaque | Racine | Bouffes du Nord with Cheek by Jowl |
2008 | Troilus and Cressida | Shakespeare | Cheek by Jowl |
2009 | Macbeth | Shakespeare | Cheek by Jowl |
2011 | The Tempest | Shakespeare | Cheek by Jowl |
2011 | ‘Tis Pity She’s A Whore | Ford | Chekhov International Theatre Festival with Cheek by Jowl |
2012 | Bel Ami | Maupassant | Feature Film |
2013 | Ubu Roi | Jarry | Cheek by Jowl |
2013 | Measure for Measure | Shakespeare | Cheek by Jowl |
2014 | Shakespeare in Love | Lee Hall | Noël Coward Theatre |
2015 | Hamlet | Shakespeare | The Bolshoi Ballet |
2016 | The Winter’s Tale | Shakespeare | Cheek by Jowl |
2018 | Périclès, Prince de Tyr | Shakespeare | Cheek by Jowl |
2018 | The Revenger’s Tragedy | Middleton | Piccolo Teatro Milano |
2019 | The Knight of the Burning Pestle | Beaumont | Cheek by Jowl |
The dates represent the year each production premiered
* British première