Directors' Pool
The Almeida Theatre’s Directors' Pool offers directors in the early stages of their career the opportunity to work closely with the theatre in all aspects of the artistic programme, to gain experience through access to the resources provided by the Almeida, and to widen their artistic network. For each of our productions, the director will select a Resident Director from the pool who will support the production process from first rehearsals to public performance. Alongside the opportunity to assist, the pool will take part in script readings and workshops led by Almeida creatives, and lead projects for Almeida Participation during their residency.
We are grateful to the Eranda Rothschild Foundation for its support of our Resident Director programme.
Directors' Pool
Piers Black
Nel Crouch
Floriana Dezou
Or Ben Ezra
Matt Hassall
Hannah Joss
Caitlin McLeod
Dervla Toal
Denzel Westley-Sanderson
Joseph Winters
Lucy Wray
Piers Black
Piers is Artistic Director of Manchester-based company, Ransack Theatre. He trained on the National Theatre Directors’ Course, and is recipient of the John Fernald Award, BBC Alfred Bradley Bursary Award, and JMK Regional Director Award.
As Director, theatre includes: Minus Touch (Royal Exchange); Moth (Hope Mill Theatre); The Dumb Waiter (Site Specific - Lucy Davis Vaults, NSDF and HOME); Solve (Edinburgh Fringe).
As Assistant Director, theatre includes: City of Glass (Lyric Hammersmith and HOME); So Here We Are (Royal Exchange and HighTide Festival); Yen (Royal Exchange).
Nel Crouch
Nel’s company, Bucket Club, are associates at Farnham Maltings and have toured extensively nationally and to the USA. She writes their work and trained on the Royal Court Introduction to Playwriting group.
She was a 2015 Jerwood Assistant Director at the Young Vic and a 2015-16 BBC Performing Arts Fellow, where she spent a year as Director in Residence at Tobacco Factory Theatres.
As Director, theatre includes: Plow (Bristol Ferment); As You Like It (Handlebards); Fossils (Bucket Club, 59E59 Theaters New York); The Long Trick (VAULT Festival); Speaker (Jerwood Assistant Director Programme, Young Vic); Launch Party (Bucket Club, Farnham Maltings); Romeo and Juliet (Handlebards); The Love I Feel is Red (Tobacco Factory Theatres, Oran Mor); Lorraine & Alan (Bucket Club); The Beasts (Lyric Hammersmith, Latitude); Festen (Wickham Theatre); Yellow Moon (Edinburgh Fringe).
As Assistant/ Associate Director, theatre includes: The Fantastic Follies of Mrs Rich (RSC); The Magic Flute (Operaupclose); The Light Princess; Living Quarters (Tobacco Factory Theatres); The Trial (Young Vic); What the Thunder Said (Theatre Centre); Home (Arcola); Found at Sea (Traverse).
Or Ben Ezra
Or trained at Tel-Aviv University and on the director’s MA at LAMDA. He is an artistic associate at the Landor_Space and the founder of Naked Theatre.
His work as a director includes: Alice (Landor_Space); Sad Girls (Edinburgh Festival / London); War Whores (Court Yard); Dark Bread & Bananas (Temuna Tel - Aviv).
He is married to Nir and the father of Paloma.
Floriana Dezou
Floriana is a London based Director, currently working as Assistant Director at the Royal Shakespeare Company on their upcoming season assisting Maria Aberg (Duchess of Malfi) and Erica Wyman (Miss Littlewood). Floriana has previously trained at the Young Vic Theatre on both Introduction to Directing and Springboard Directing Course. And most recently was invited to take part in REPLAY (5 Directors, Direct 5 Plays over 5 days) at the Young Vic. Floriana is also co-Artistic Director of RE:WRITE Theatre, a platform for emerging talent to respond to thematic briefs inspired by the society we live in. RE:WRITE Theatre have produced two sold out showcases at Theatre503 (Re:Awakened and Re:Adapt), for which Floriana Directed two of the five pieces of new writing.
Other Assistant Director credits include: Sweet Bird of Youth; The House That They Grew Up In (Chichester Festival Theatre); Othello (Bristol Tobacco Factory, Shakespeare at the Tobacco Factory, ETT); We Are You (Young Vic).
Floriana has also previously worked as a Production Assistant at English Touring Theatre and at The Old Vic as part of the Old Vic New Voices team.
Matt Hassall
Matt is a theatre director from Manchester where he is currently based at the Royal Exchange Theatre as the Young Company Director. This role sees him making new work, leading the 100-strong company of young artists and supporting the theatre’s artistic and strategic teams. The Young Company is currently shortlisted as School of the Year in The Stage Awards 2018.
In the last few years he has been tasked with developing immersive productions for the organisation which have included an underground takeover of several hidden spaces beneath the building in a show that marked the 50th anniversary of the Sexual Offences Act that began the decriminalisation of homosexuality.
His work at the Royal Exchange Theatre includes: We Were Told There Was Dancing (currently nominated as Production of the Year in the Manchester Evening News Awards), The Factory (Manchester Theatre Award nominee); Mixtape, a new gig-musical that unpicks the notion of cultural identity in Manchester today.
Further work at the Exchange includes Associate Director to Bryony Shanahan on Nothing (Manchester Theatre Award Winner 2017) and to Matthew Xia on Brink plus Assistant Director to Sarah Frankcom on All I Want Is One Night and to Bryony Shanahan on Queens of the Coal Age by Maxine Peake.
Freelance directing work includes: Be/longing (Hope Mill Theatre); Shooting the Messenger; I Forget Your Name (Take Back Theatre); The Burnley Bugger Ball; (Touring, Inkbrew Productions); In My Bed (24:7 Theatre Festival - MTA nominee for Best Fringe Production) Matt has also made work with Contact Theatre, Bolton Octagon Theatre & The Lowry.
Hannah Joss
Hannah trained as a director at the University of Kent and Mountview Academy of Theatre Arts. In 2017 she was Baylis Assistant Director at the Old Vic Theatre.
Credits as Director include: Gidea Park (Mountview Academy of Theatre Arts); Carry On Jaywick (Murphy&Co); Eigengrau (Kings Head Theatre); The 11th Hour (the egg, Theatre Royal Bath); That Moment (Crescent Arts, Belfast).
Associate Director: The Adventure (Bad Physics/Lyric Hammersmith)
Assistant Director include: Woyzeck (Old Vic Theatre); Revolt. She Said. Revolt Again (Royal Shakespeare Company); Incognito (nabakov/HighTide/The Bush), The Teacup Poisoner (Theatre Royal, Bath); The Ladykillers (Watermill Theatre); Soho Young Playwrights (Soho Theatre)
Hannah is an acting tutor for the charity Open Door and a Connections Festival 2018 director for the National Theatre.
Caitlin McLeod
Caitlin McLeod is Artistic Director of new-writing company The Coterie (supported by a Sky Academy Scholarship) and has formerly been part of The Old Vic 12, Artistic Associate with HighTide and Trainee Director at the Royal Court Theatre.
Productions include: One Flea Spare (Sheen Centre, New York City), A Further Education (Hampstead Theatre Downstairs), BRENDA (HighTide FestivalTheatre and Yard Theatre), Polar Bears (West Yorkshire Playhouse), The Malcontent (Shakespeare’s Globe), Commonwealth (Almeida Theatre), HomeTruths (Cardboard Citizens at The Bunker) and The Children’s Hour (Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama).
Caitlin has been Assistant/Associate Director for Dominic Cooke, Jeremy Herrin, James Macdonald (all at the Royal Court Theatre), Simon Godwin (National Theatre), Hamish McColl (Hampstead Theatre), and Dominic Dromgoole (Shakespeare’s Globe).
Dervla Toal
Dervla studied English Literature at Queens University, Belfast. She trained as an actor at the Court Theatre and National Youth Theatre. She has performed and directed with Stockwell Playhouse, Courtyard theatre, London Irish Theatre, Theatre Museum, Covent Garden and Bussey Building, Peckham. Her Film work includes Beautiful Hair and Underexposure.
Denzel Westley-Sanderson
Denzel Westley-Sanderson trained in Theatre Directing at Mountview Academy of Theatre Arts in 2017. He previously gained his First Class honours degree in Theatre and Professional Practice from Coventry University. Since finishing his training Denzel went on to be the Creative Assistant on the revival of Jesus Christ Superstar at Regent's Park Open Air Theatre in 2017.
Directing credits include: Heads, Shoulders, Knees and Elbows (Bunker Theatre); Saturday (Karamel Club); Eigengrau (Mountview Studios); Playhouse Creatures (Incognito Theatre/ Rehearsed Reading); The Chairs (Custard Factory/Birmingham).
As an Associate Director: Much Ado About Nothing (Karamel Club)
Assistantships include: Urinetown (Pleasance Theatre); The Wild Duck (Mountview Studios); A Midsummer Night's Dreams (Karamel Club); The Comedy of Errors (Mountview Studios); Raving (Incognito Theatre); The Picture of Dorian Gray (Incognito Theatre).
Joseph Winters
As Director/Creative Producer: Bigamous (Vaults Festival/Edinburgh Fringe); The Canon (Underbelly/Edinburgh Fringe/UK Tour); Ken Cheng: Chinese Comedian (Edinburgh Fringe); Peter Grimes (ADC Theatre); Love Handles: Footlights Tour Show 2015 (International Tour, inc. The Comedy Store London/Edinburgh Fringe/The Second City, Chicago/Upright Citizens Brigade, New York); Cabin Pressure (Corpus Playroom)
As Assistant Director: Gloria (Hampstead Theatre); The Nose (Royal Opera House Youth Company); 46 Beacon (Trafalgar Studios); G.I.A.N.T. (Mahogany Opera)
Joe is also the Manager of the Fortismere Music Centre, producing a year-round season of classical concerts, and commissioning new large-scale works from emerging composers. He is a reader for the Bunker Theatre. Joe studied English at Peterhouse, Cambridge on the Thomas Richardson Scholarship and Isaac Newton Bursary.
Lucy Wray is a Director of devised and scripted new writing. Her production of RUN by Stephen Laughton at The Bunker was nominated for Best Production & Best Actor at the Off West End Awards 2017. In 2018 she will be directing BOOTS by Jessica Butcher & Sacha Voit (VAULT Festival) and Left My Desk by Olivia Hirst (New Diorama).
Previous directing credits include: COW by Jessica Barker-Wren (Bike Shed Exeter, Theatre Royal Plymouth, Wilton's Music Hall, Underbelly Edinburgh); RUN by Stephen Laughton (The Bunker); They Built It. No One Came. by Callum Cameron (UK Tour, Pleasance, Edinburgh); EGGS by Florence Keith Roach (VAULT Festival); Goodstock by Olivia Hirst (Greenwich Theatre/New Diorama/Pleasance Edinburgh).
As Dramaturg: Give Me Your Skin by Tom Ross Williams and Oonagh Murphy (BAC).
She is Associate Director with METIS, whose next project We Know Not What We May Be dir. Zoe Svendsen will be at the Barbican in September 2018. She previously worked as Associate Director and Game co-Writer on World Factory dir. Zoe Svendsen & Simon Daw (Young Vic/New Wolsey).
