Warner, Deborah (1959–)

English stage and opera director. Born May 12, 1959, in Oxford, England; raised as Quaker in Cotswold town of Burford; attended St. Clare's College, Oxford, and Central School of Speech and Drama.

Best-known for daring takes on works of Shakespeare, Sophocles, Bach, Berg, Beckett, Brecht and Ibsen, as well as for long-time working relationship with Irish actress Fiona Shaw, started own theater troupe, Kick, at age 21; served as company's artistic director (1980–86) and achieved success at Edinburgh Festival Fringe; was director at Royal Shakespeare Company (1987–89), winning Olivier and London Evening Standard awards for Titus and Andronicus (1987); regarded as wunderkind, became associate director of Royal National Theater (1989); won Olivier and London Evening Standard awards (1989) for Royal National Theater production of Electra and Olivier Award for Ibsen's Hedda Gabbler at Abbey Theater in Dublin (1991); returned to Royal Shakespeare Company as director-in-residence and staged controversial Richard II (1995), starring Fiona Shaw as monarch; made New York stage directing debut with staging of poem The Waste Land (1996) with Shaw again in lead, for which both actress and director received Drama Desk Awards; began directing opera (1992), working at Salzburg Festival (1993) and Glyndebourne Festival (1994), as well as Royal Opera and English National Opera; made film debut with adaptation of Elizabeth Bowen's The Last September (1999) starring Shaw and Maggie Smith; returned to stage with Medea (Obie Award, 2003), The Powerbook (2003) and Julius Caesar, starring Ralph Fiennes as Mark Antony (2005); also directed BBC-TV productions of Hedda Gabler (1993), The Wasteland (1995) and Richard (1997).