SOPHIE HUNTER
opera, theatre and film director
Seven Deadly Sins | Teatro Colón | Directed by Sophie Hunter (Photographs: Nina Dunn & Teatro Colón)
Sophie Hunter is an award winning British director whose work spans theatre, opera and film. Recent projects include a short film, Ylur, for Sigur Ròs’ album, Átta and a double bill of Kurt Weill’s Seven Deadly Sins and Bartok’s Bluebeard’s Castle for Teatro Colón in Buenos Aires.
“Risk-taking has arrived to the conservative opera season..this performance is the most avant-garde and daring of the year….Sophie Hunter, who, through her vision and stage directions, creates a truly excellent rendition of the opera”
“Hunter’s staging creates so much impact . …an extraordinary production”
Bluebeard | Teatro Colón | Directed by Sophie Hunter (Photographs: Nina Dunn & Teatro Colón)
Other directing credits include: Benjamin Britten’s Phaedra for the Happy Days Festival in Enniskillen. Hunter staged the cantata as an immersive multi media experience in an Olympic sized equestrian arena in the grounds of the derelict Nectarine castle.
“As the audience surrounds Phaedra in the darkness, she rotates slowly, lamenting her plight. Layers of sound extend the Ulster Orchestra’s percussion.. while the white gown disintegrates in dripping water. All elements combine to create an image of frozen grief exquisitely realised”
“Her director, the brains behind this towering (in every sense) and moving (both emotionally and literally) performance, was Sophie Hunter”
For Aldeburgh, Hunter directed a staging of Benjamin Britten’s The Turn of the Screw, starring Dame Ann Murray and Sophie Bevan. As a companion piece she created Path to Bly, a series of immersive journeys through the Suffolk landscape inspired by the opera, that comprised sound and visual installations and performances.
“Beautifully nuanced and atmospheric. ”
“The director is becoming increasingly acclaimed for her work in opera and classical music.”
In New York, Hunter directed 69 Degrees South for Phantom Limb Company, in collaboration with the Kronos Quartet at The Brooklyn Academy of Music as part of the Next Wave Festival. The show subsequently toured and was described by The Boston Globe as “entrancing”.
Other directing and devising credits include: The Terrific Electric (Barbican) for which she and her company were awarded the Oxford Samuel Beckett Award for new voices in experimental theatre; Lucretia (Location OneGallery, SOHO), a multimedia installation with performance inspired by Benjamin Britten’s Rape of Lucretia; Ghosts, her own adaptation of Ibsen’s play (Access theatre, New York), Tesla in New York (workshop stage) with film maker Jim Jarmusch and composer Phil Kline which previewed at the Hopkins Centre. Hunter was also Associate Director on award winning Production Enron (Royal Court, West End, Broadway). In 2011 she was awarded the Location One British Artist Fellowship.
Currently Hunter is working on a collaboration with architect Santiago Calatrava on a production of Poulenc’s Les Dialogues Des Carmelites which will premiere at Teatro Colón. Hunter is also creating a limited TV series with Jessica Grindstaff and Angela Bourassa on the life and works of the trailblazing children’s author Margaret Wise Brown.
Phaedra | 69 Degrees South | Directed by Sophie Hunter (Photographs: Tommy Bertelsen, Will O’Hare)