John Caird is an Honorary Associate Director of the Royal Shakespeare Company, Principal Guest Director of the Royal Dramatic Theatre, Stockholm and a freelance writer and director of plays, musicals and operas.
His National Theatre productions include Hamlet, Money, Humbleboy,The Seagull, Stanley, Trelawney of the Wells, Peter Pan and his own Olivier-award winning version of Bernstein’s Candide which is now playing in multiple productions world-wide.
His recent directorial credits include his new musical Knights’ Tale and Hamlet both in Tokyo, Don Giovanni at WNO in Cardiff, McQueen at the Haymarket Theatre, Tosca in Chicago, Houston and LA, Love’s Labour’s Lost at the Stratford Festival in Canada, La Bohème in San Francisco, Houston and Toronto, Parsifal in Chicago, Twelfth Night in Tokyo, and his own musical Daddy Long Legs off-Broadway, in Tokyo and all across the US.
John’s directorial work for the RSC has included over 20 productions of Shakespeare as well as classic and new plays, including Midsummer Night’s Dream, Romeo and Juliet, The Beggar’s Opera, Twelfth Night, Peter Pan, Our Friends in the North, Nicholas Nickleby and Les Misérables - the last two productions, co-directed with Trevor Nunn, winning numerous awards in the West End, Broadway and all around the world.
At Dramaten in Stockholm he has directed Romeo and Juliet, Midsummer Night’s Dream, Dance of Death, The Tempest, 12th Night, Gertrud and Merry Wives of Windsor. Other productions include Macbeth at the Almeida Theatre, Becket at the Haymarket and Song & Dance at the Palace Theatre. For BBC TV he adapted and directed Henry IV Parts I and II.
He wrote and directed the Siegfried and Roy Spectacular in Las Vegas. He wrote the libretti for André Previn’s opera Brief Encounter, and for Tarik O’Regan’s opera The Phoenix, both premiering at Houston Grand Opera. He also wrote and directed Children of Eden with music by Stephen Schwartz, Hard Times, with music by John Cameron and lyrics by Ranjit Bolt, and Jane Eyre, Daddy Long Legs and Knights’ Tale, all with music by Paul Gordon.
In 2020, the year of Covid, John has directed a concert version of his musical Knights’ Tale and a revival of Daddy Long Legs, both in Tokyo, also a new musical Estella Scrooge, a Christmas Carol with a Twist, co-written with Paul Gordon and Sam Caird, and filmed in a green screen studio in New York. These three productions all had to be directed remotely through Zoom.
Theatre Craft, his book about directing plays and musicals, is published by Faber and Faber.