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 new Olivier award-winning version of Bernstein’s Candide. His recent directorial credits include 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 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. His directorial work for the RSC has included more than 20 productions of Shakespeare as well as classic and new plays, including A 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 winning numerous awards in the West End, Broadway and all around the world.
At Dramaten in Stockholm, he has directed Romeo and Juliet, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Dance of Death, The Tempest, Twelfth 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 The Phoenix with music by Tarik O’Regan, both premiering at Houston Grand Opera. He also wrote and directed Children of Eden with music by Stephen Schwartz, as well as Jane Eyre, Daddy Long Legs and Knights’ Tale, all with music by Paul Gordon. Theatre Craft, his book about directing plays and musicals, is published by Faber and Faber.