Declan Donnellan

“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

Director

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 45 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.

Rehearsal photo — Declan Donnellan. Photograph: Johan Persson.

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.

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 45 productions, performing in over 400 cities, across six continents.

Cheek by Jowl’s first production, The Country Wife, was presented at the Edinburgh festival in 1981. In 1989, he was made Associate Director of the Royal National Theatre in London. Since then, he has received awards in London, Moscow, Paris and New York, including four Olivier Awards, the Order of Charlemagne of Andorra, the Order of Isabella the Catholic, the Stanislavski International Prize in Moscow and the Golden Lion of Venice.

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. Recent collaborations include work with the Compañía Nacional de Teatro Clásico (Spain) and the National Theatre of Craiova (Romania).

Declan’s first book The Actor and the Target, a fresh and radical approach to acting, was an international bestseller upon release in 2005, being translated into 15 languages. In 2024 he published The Actor and the Space, which develops and extends those ideas, exploring that most profound source of vitality in life as well as performance: the space around us.

He has written a play, Lady Betty, and translated works by De Musset, Erdman, Sophocles and Lermontov.

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.

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
2022	Oedipus	Sophocles	Teatrul Naţional “Marin Sorescu”
2022	Life is a Dream	Calderón de la Barca	Cheek by Jowl, CNTC, and LAZONA
2024	Hamlet	Shakespeare	Teatrul Naţional “Marin Sorescu”
2024	Medea	Euripides	Ivan Vazov National Theatre
2024	ACTING	Sophie Fiennes	Cheek by Jowl and Lonestar
2025	The Two Gentlemen of Verona	Shakespeare	Cheek by Jowl, CNTC, and LAZONA

The dates represent the year each production premiered
* British première

Awards

“Theatre cannot die before the last dream has been dreamt”

Declan Donnellan, The Actor and the Target

“Cheek by Jowl brings fresh life to the classics using intense vivid performances like a laser of light to set the text ablaze.”

The Guardian

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Declan Donnellan

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