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Selected Press

Articles

Talking Cheek by Jowl: in conversation with Declan Donnellan

Culturised | Alex Hackitt-Anwyl
Declan Donnellan discusses the role and future of contemporary theatre with Culturised.
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Making a scene: the world of theatre design

The Guardian | Nick Ormerod
Nick Ormerod throws some light on his mysterious and often overlooked craft.
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Declan Donnellan Awarded the Golden Lion of Venice

Corriere della Sera | Laura Zangarini
Declan Donnellan discusses theatre and life with Laura Zangarini, as he has just been awarded the Golden Lion of Venice for Lifetime Achievement by La Biennale di Venezia.
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The World’s Great Theatre

El Pais | Mario Vargas Llosa
Nobel Prize Winner Mario Vargas Llosa reviews The Winter’s Tale.
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The no-star system

The Times | Lucy Powell
Lucy Powell asks Declan Donnellan how he unearths talent.
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From kitchen table to global stage

The Telegraph (online edition) | Dominic Cavendish
Cheek by Jowl has been dazzling theatre festivals for 25 years now. As it moves into its new home at the Barbican, its founders tell Dominic Cavendish how it all began.
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As he likes it

Guardian Unlimited | Michael Coveney
Declan Donnellan’s Cheek by Jowl ensemble returns to London with The Changeling, marking a significant step-change in his, and British theatre’s, development.
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On seeing our productions in foreign languages

Charles Spencer on Andromaque

The Telegraph | Charles Spencer
“Hugely impressive, a great torrent of passionate language flowing like dangerous white-hot lava. What’s more, it is easy to follow with the help of surtitles. Indeed, even with my rusty schoolboy French, I was able to get the gist of what was going on without looking at them, so powerful is the acting, so precise the verbal delivery.”

Susan Irvine on Twelfth Night

Sunday Telegraph | Susan Irvine
“There have and will be countless productions with the full text, but I cannot imagine another that will deliver the non-verbal poetry these Russian actors communicate to the audience as casually as if they were tossing roses.”
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Ben Brantley on Twelfth Night

The New York Times | Ben Brantley
“The glorious surprise of this Twelfth Night is in how it finds an alchemical substance in Shakespeare that transcends the verbal. At first I was distracted by the telegraphic nature of the supertitles. But Mr. Donnellan and Mr. Ormerod make the heretical case that the essence of Shakespeare isn’t exclusively linguistic. The words, it seems, are but steppingstones to a universal pattern of images and insights about human behavior and the perplexing world that thwarts and shapes it. Shakespeare’s first language, it would seem, is not English, after all; it’s Theater.”
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Charles Spencer on Three Sisters

The Telegraph | Charles Spencer
“What a pleasure it is to hear Chekhov in Russian. I barely understand a word of the language, but you can follow the dialogue with the help of surtitles, and there is a vigour and urgency about the sound of the language that instantly banishes the wan, droopy quality of second-rate English productions of Chekhov.”
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“Whatever Cheek by Jowl does next constitutes a major happening”

The Guardian

“Cheek by Jowl’s enduring gift to theatre, it would seem, is its uncanny ability to live in an eternal precarious present.”

The Telegraph

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