Rachel O'Riordan

Early life

Born in Cork, Ireland to poet and novelist Robert Anthony Welch and Angela Welch, O'Riordan first trained as a ballet dancer. This rigorous grounding began as a 6-year-old and culminated in a scholarship to the White Lodge, Royal Ballet School and then Mariinsky Ballet (formerly Kirov). She then studied English and Theatre studies at Queen Mary, University of London before completing her phD entitled Shakespeare's Physical Texts at the University of Ulster.

Biography

Spending most of her twenties as a choreographer and movement director, from to 2002 to 2011 O'Riordan co-founded and ran the Ransom theatre company in Belfast, Northern Ireland, where she notably directed the production Hurricane, which starred Richard Dormer and told the story of snooker legend Alex Higgins. The show was a hit at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe and received almost universally positive criticism earning it a season in London's west-end and off Broadway in New York City. The success of Hurricane secured Rachel a season with the Peter Hall Company Theatre company where she directed August Strindberg's play, Miss Julie, and an adaption of George Orwell's Animal Farm at the Theatre Royal in Bath, England.

O'Riordan's tenure as artistic director of Ransom saw her commission and direct various new works, including the first play by David Ireland, Arguments for Terrorism, and new plays Early Bird by Leo Butler and Transparency by Suzie Miller, Protestants by Robert Welch, and, the Irish famine-based This Piece of Earth by Richard Dormer. During this time she also ran a three-year programme entitled Writers on the Edge to develop new writing for women in Northern Ireland where she worked closely with Paines Plough and the Soho Theatre.

O'Riordan was Artistic Director at the Perth Theatre between 2011 and 2014. Her first production was William Shakespeare's Twelfth Night. In October 2013 the Chair of the Board of Trustees of Sherman Theatre Cymru, David Stacey announced that Rachel O’Riordan had been appointed as the Artistic Director of the Company and due to take up her post as of February 2014.

In January 2016 she was named amongst the 100 most influential people in Theatre in the UK.

Awards

O'Riordan's 2006 stage version of Jonathan Safran Foer's Everything Is Illuminated was the Sunday Times critic's choice for four weeks running. Michael Billington wrote, in The Guardian, that it was "an intriguing story rather than a totally satisfying play. But it is one that is staged with deft economy by Rachel O'Riordan and well acted by the five-strong cast". while Dominic Cavendish writing for the Telegraph said "Having barely been able to wade through the book's overpoweringly pleased-with-itself prose, I found Simon Block's comparatively unfussy stage adaptation, directed by Rachel O'Riordan, a huge relief."

In 2011 O'Riordan took the role of artistic director at the Perth Theatre and Concert Hall where she has received critical acclaim. In her first season she was nominated at the Critics Awards Theatre Scotland awards for best director for Someone who'll watch over me by Frank McGuiness. The play was nominated in two other categories. In her career O'Riordan has received a number of various nominations including for Best Director in the TMA Awards for Much Ado About Nothing and The Absence of Women (both Lyric, Belfast), best director at the Irish Times Theatre Awards nomination for Sam Thompson's Over the Bridge.

Following its inclusion in the 2008 Edinburgh Fringe, Rachel won the Best Director award for the Owen O'Neill play Absolution in the First Irish Theatre Festival Awards in New York. Her 2013 production of The Seafarer was shortlisted in three categories at the annual Critics' Awards for Theatre in Scotland (CATS) for best ensemble, best production and best director. The production won 'Best ensemble' and saw O'Riordan pick up Best director award which critics announced 'cemented her position as one of the finest and most visionary directors in the country'.

Under the direction of O'Riordan, Gary Owen's Iphigenia In Splott became one of the most significant pieces of UK theatre of 2015, receiving critical acclaim for performances, style and direction; winning 'best new play' at the Theatre Awards UK.