1. Deborah Warner was born on 12 May 1959 and is a British director of theatre and opera, known for her interpretations of the works of Shakespeare, Bertolt Brecht, Benjamin Britten, and Henrik Ibsen, and for her collaborations with Irish actress Fiona Shaw.
Deborah Warner has since the 1980s worked in close creative partnership with the actor Fiona Shaw, developing a wide range of projects that have been seen throughout Europe and the United States.
Deborah Warner has made relatively few excursions into new work or comedy, and although she has made much creative use of video on stage, she has directed little for film and television.
Deborah Warner was the first woman director to be given sole charge of a production in the main house of the Royal Shakespeare Theatre.
In 1987 Deborah Warner joined the Royal Shakespeare Company, where she directed Titus Andronicus and where she began her long-time collaboration with Fiona Shaw.
Shaw and Warner toured the world with T S Eliot's The Waste Land, which began in Wilton's Music Hall in London's East End.
Deborah Warner's work began to focus on the link of drama to places, a theme which was expanded upon in her Angel Project.
In 2007, following negotiations with the Beckett estate, Deborah Warner directed Shaw in Happy Days at the National Theatre, which toured internationally including at the ancient amphitheatre at Epidaurus in Greece and Brooklyn Academy of Music in New York, followed in 2009 by Mother Courage and Her Children at the Olivier Theatre at the National.
Deborah Warner returned to the Barbican Centre in 2011 to direct The School for Scandal.
Deborah Warner has worked extensively in field of opera and classical music, including a production of The Diary of One Who Disappeared by Janacek starring Ian Bostridge; a staging of the St John Passion at English National Opera; a controversial staging of Mozart's Don Giovanni at Glyndebourne; Wozzeck for Opera North; Death in Venice and Tansy Davies' Between Worlds at English National Opera; and Henry Purcell's Dido and Aeneas with Les Arts Florissants in Vienna, Paris, and Amsterdam.
Deborah Warner directed the 1999 film The Last September, starring Michael Gambon and Maggie Smith.