Richard Williams

Richard is a theatre director, producer and teacher working primarily in the dramatic, musical and lyric theatre. He has been artistic director of four varied companies responsible for the staff, building and all aspects of the work. He is also a freelance director/producer. As a teacher he has worked in universities, drama schools, music and art colleges.

His major professional appointments have been as artistic director of Contact Theatre Manchester, The Oxford Stage Company, The Unicorn-Arts Theatre London and The Liverpool Playhouse.

While having wide taste his main interests in theatre are the classics and music theatre. He has directed numerous Shakespeare, Restoration and Brecht productions as well as music theatre pieces like The Magic Flute, The Doctor and The Devils, ThreePenny Opera and Purcell’s King Arthur. However he also has a long record of commissioning new work (Adrian Mitchell, Fay Weldon, Ken Campbell, Mark Ravenshill). He was Richard Eyre’s associate at Nottingham Playhouse and assistant to David Hare at The National Theatre.

Under his leadership Contact Theatre became the country’s leading regional company addressing young adult audiences, gaining the title ‘The Young Vic of the North’. He was awarded Best Director twice for his productions by The Manchester Evening News. While leading The Oxford Stage Company he took the company’s production of The Seagull with Vanessa Redgrave and Jonathan Pryce into the West End and his production of Hamlet opened at Elsinore Castle before featuring at The Edinburgh Festival and a world tour. At Liverpool Playhouse his productions were nominated for Best Production Barclays Regional Theatre Awards. He has directed in the West End (most recently Pocket Orchestra at The Trafalgar Studios) and has frequently directed opera, especially Baroque opera at The Dartington International Summer School. Among his productions at DISS are Medee (Charpentier), Maria de Buenos Aires (Piazzola) and FAÇADE (Walton). He has directed students at RADA, Mountview, Drama Centre and Trinity College of Music. He has also written opera librettos and adapted several novels for the stage.

He is Course Director of the University of the Arts, London Foundation Course in Performance and leader of the Arts in London course for New York University, Tisch School of Performing Arts, London program. He also lectures on Contextual and Historical Studies for the Design for Performance course at Wimbledon School of Art. He has taught at Liverpool University, Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts on subjects as varied as directing from Stanislavski to Boal, Opera in Performance and Theatre in Education.

He has also been administrative director of the independent record company Soundcircus and Creative Producer for Scarabeus Aerial Performance Company.

He has worked abroad in the USA, Canada and the Far East.  Recently he organised a course of workshops on Shakespeare for Japanese actors in Tokyo.

In addition to his theatre and music work he has also made a special study of working with performers on issues including stress, audition nerves, and achieving peak performance.