Kip Williams
Kip Williams is an award-winning writer and director of theatre and
opera. He is the current Artistic Director and Co-CEO of Sydney Theatre
Company, a role he has held since November 2016. His appointment
at age thirty made him the youngest Artistic Director in the company’s
history.
Williams has written and directed for many of Australia’s leading theatre
companies and festivals, including Sydney Theatre Company (STC),
Melbourne Theatre Company (MTC), Malthouse Theatre, Adelaide
Festival, Perth Festival, and Melbourne’s RISING Festival, as well as
New Zealand’s Auckland Arts Festival. In addition to The Picture of
Dorian Gray, Williams’ plays include adaptations of Strange Case of Dr
Jekyll and Mr Hyde, Dracula and Miss Julie.
In 2012, Williams made his mainstage theatre debut at the Sydney Opera
House directing Australian screen legend Jack Thompson in Under Milk
Wood. He has since gone on to direct over twenty productions for STC,
including a multi-award-winning cinema-theatre hybrid production
of Suddenly Last Summer, reinterpretations of Shakespeare including
Romeo and Juliet and The Tempest starring Richard Roxburgh, a
retelling of Lord of the Flies starring Mia Wasikowska, Daniel Monks and
Yerin Ha, and collaborations with actor Hugo Weaving in The Resistible
Rise of Arturo Ui, Macbeth, and Cat On A Hot Tin Roof. Williams has
regularly directed new writing, including the seven-hour epic The Harp
in the South by Kate Mulvany, the Australian premiere of works by Caryl
Churchill and Lucy Kirkwood, and most recently the world premiere of
Tommy Murphy’s adaptation of On The Beach.
Williams has been nominated a record six consecutive times for the
Helpmann Award for Best Director, Australia’s top theatre prize, and
in 2015 became the youngest director to win the award, for Suddenly
Last Summer. Williams has twice won Melbourne’s Green Room Award
for both Best Play and Best Director, first in 2016 for his adaptation
of Strindberg’s Miss Julie (MTC) and next in 2023 for The Picture of
Dorian Gray (STC). Williams has won the Sydney Theatre Award for
Best Production twice, for The Harp in the South (2018) and The Picture
of Dorian Gray (2021), and has won the award for Best Director three
times, for The Harp in the South, The Picture of Dorian Gray, and most
recently for his adaptation of Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde
(STC, 2022).
Williams’ work in opera includes productions for Opera Australia (OA),
Victorian Opera, Sydney Chamber Opera (SCO), Carriageworks, Dark
MOFO, and the Biennale of Sydney. His radical production for the SCO
of Fausto Romitelli’s composition An Index of Metals was the first-ever
theatrical staging of the piece.
A graduate of both Sydney University and National Institute of Dramatic
Art (NIDA), Williams served as a Board Member for NIDA from
2016–2023.