Carrie Cracknell (born 15 October 1980) is a British theatre and film director.
She works regularly at the National Theatre. Her first feature film, Persuasion, is on Netflix. She was artistic director of the Gate Theatre, London, from 2007 to 2012. She was associate director at both the Young Vic (2012–2013) and the Royal Court (2013–2014).
Contents
Life and career
Early years and education
Cracknell was born in Carlisle and was raised in Oxford. She read history at the University of Nottingham, where she was president of the Nottingham New Theatre. She later studied directing at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama in Glasgow. She then trained at the National Theatre.
Career
At university, she set up a production company called Hush with a group of friends including the actor Ruth Wilson. Their first show transferred to New York and London while they were still studying. At the age of 26, Cracknell became the youngest artistic director of a professional theatre in Britain when she and Natalie Abrahami took over the Gate Theatre in Notting Hill, which they ran for 5 years and where she directed extensively.
Her first dance/theatre collaboration at the Gate Theatre, I Am Falling, transferred to Sadler's Wells and was nominated for a South Bank Show Award. After leaving the Gate, Cracknell went on to create her production of A Doll's House which ran twice at the Young Vic before transferring to the Duke of York's Theatre's in the West End and the Brooklyn Academy of Music in New York and for which she was nominated for the Evening Standard Best Director Award. It led to her developing the short film Nora with Nick Payne in response to the play which was produced by the Young Vic. She then went on to direct her first opera, Berg's Wozzeck, for the English National Opera at the London Coliseum, which was nominated for an Olivier Award and an International Opera Award. In 2019 she directed Jake Gyllenhaal and Tom Sturridge in Seawall/A Life at The Public Theater and on Broadway, receiving four Tony nominations, for Best Play, Best Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role twice, for both Gyllenhaal and Sturridge, and Best Sound Design in a Play for Daniel Kluger.
Cracknell now regularly collaborates with the Royal National Theatre, where her credits include her productions of The Grapes of Wrath, Medea, A Deep Blue Sea (both were live-streamed into cinemas internationally as part of National Theatre Live), Blurred Lines and Julie (a new version of Strindberg's Miss Julie by Polly Stenham, also NT Live.) Other credits include Macbeth and Electra (Young Vic), Birdland and Pigeons (Royal Court Theatre), Oil (Almeida Theatre), A Doll's House, and Stacy (National Theatre of Scotland).
Works
Theatre
The Hush – 2002, Battersea Arts Centre, Ohio Theatre, New York
Macbeth – 2002, Lakeside Arts Centre, Nottingham
A Mobile Thriller – 2004, Traverse Theatre, Battersea Arts Centre, Harbourfront Toronto, Bristol Old Vic, national tour
Death and the City – 2005, Tron Theatre
Stacy by Jack Thorne – 2005, Tron Theatre
Broken Road by Ryan Craig – 2005, British Council Showcase, Battersea Arts Centre; Fringe First Award
The Sexual Neuroses of Our Parents – 2007, Gate Theatre (London)
Hedda by Ibsen, adapted by Lucy Kirkwood – 2008, Gate Theatre
I Am Falling – 2008, Gate Theatre and Sadler's Wells; nominated for Southbank Show Award
Armageddon by Mark Ravenhill – 2008, Gate Theatre
Dolls after Takeshi Kitano's 2002 film Dolls – 2009, National Theatre of Scotland
Breathing Irregular – 2009/2010, Gate Theatre,
Elektra – 2010, Gate Theatre/Headlong
Electra – 2011, Gate Theatre/Young Vic
A Doll's House by Ibsen – 2012, Young Vic
Wozzeck – 2013, London Coliseum
Searched – 2013, Royal Court Theatre Rough Cuts