Declan Donnellan

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.