production of Handel's
Messiah (
London Coliseum, 2009) Warner has since the 1980s worked in close creative partnership with the actor
Fiona Shaw, developing a wide range of projects that have been seen throughout Europe and the United States.
The Sunday Times critic John Peter wrote of their vision of
Richard II that "Warner and Shaw are not being either fashionable or reactionary ... They are making theatre that is an adventure, a journey of the mind, a discovery of other ages, other countries, other people, other minds." Warner has also enjoyed long-term collaborations with the designers ,
Hildegard Bechtler, , Tom Pye, the composer and the
choreographer Kim Brandstrup. Although the majority of her work has focused on major classics of spoken
drama and
opera, she has also experimented with the performance of
poetry (
The Waste Land,
Readings) and the staging of
oratorios (
St John Passion,
Messiah), as well as
installations (
The St Pancras and Angel projects, Peace Camp). She has made relatively few excursions into new work (
Jeanette Winterson's
The Powerbook (2002),
Tansy Davies' 2015 opera
Between Worlds and
The Testament of Mary being exceptions) or
comedy (
The School for Scandal), and although she has made much creative use of video on stage, she has directed little for film and television. Her first creations for Kick, a company that she started and managed, were deeply influenced by the example of
Peter Brook and his belief that the performer must always be at the centre of the event. "I'm not sure I would have been in any way conscious of the potency of theatre if I hadn't seen his work", she said in an interview with
Vogue in July 1994. Other figures important in her formative years include
Peter Stein, who commissioned her production of
Coriolanus at the
Salzburg Festival, and Nicholas Payne and Anthony Whitworth-Jones who commissioned her first essays in
opera, at
Opera North and
Glyndebourne respectively. Although she has refused to subscribe to a programmatic
feminism or a
political ideology, her work has often explored issues of gender, notably in her ground-breaking casting of
Fiona Shaw as Shakespeare's Richard II. She was also the first woman director to be given sole charge of a production in the main house of the
Royal Shakespeare Theatre. In January 2026, the
Park Avenue Armory Conservancy announced the appointment of Warner as its artistic director, with immediate effect.
Theatre In 1987 Warner joined the
Royal Shakespeare Company, where she directed
Titus Andronicus and where she also began her long-time collaboration with
Fiona Shaw. Warner and Shaw have collaborated on many plays, including
Electra (RSC);
The Good Person of Sezuan (1989,
National Theatre);
Hedda Gabler (1991, The
Abbey Theatre and
BBC2); the controversial
Richard II, with Shaw in the title role, also at the National Theatre (1995) and televised by BBC2;
Footfalls, whose radical staging so enraged the
Beckett estate that the production was pulled during its run;
The PowerBook, at the National Theatre, a dramatisation of
Jeanette Winterson's novel;
Medea (2000–2001, Queen's Theatre and
Broadway); and
Shakespeare's
Julius Caesar, in which Shaw played the small part of
Portia. The production starred
Ralph Fiennes and
Simon Russell Beale; first staged at the
Barbican Centre, it later toured Europe. Shaw and Warner toured the world with
T. S. Eliot's
The Waste Land, which began in
Wilton's Music Hall in London's
East End. Her work began to focus on the link of drama to places, a theme which was expanded upon in her Angel Project. In 2007, following negotiations with the Beckett estate, Warner directed Shaw in
Happy Days at the National Theatre, which toured internationally including at the ancient amphitheatre at
Epidaurus in Greece and
Brooklyn Academy of Music in New York, followed in 2009 by
Mother Courage and Her Children (with Shaw in the title role) at the Olivier Theatre at the National. She returned to the Barbican Centre in 2011 to direct
The School for Scandal.
Opera and classical music Warner has also worked extensively in field of opera and classical music, including a production of
The Diary of One Who Disappeared by
Janáček starring
Ian Bostridge; a staging of the
St John Passion at
English National Opera; a controversial staging of
Mozart's
Don Giovanni at
Glyndebourne;
Wozzeck for
Opera North;
Death in Venice and
Tansy Davies'
Between Worlds at English National Opera; and
Henry Purcell's
Dido and Aeneas with
Les Arts Florissants in
Vienna,
Paris, and
Amsterdam. Other notable productions include opening the 2015/15 season at
La Scala, Milan, with
Fidelio conducted by
Daniel Barenboim and
Tchaikovsky's
Eugene Onegin at the
Metropolitan Opera in New York in the 2013/2014 season. She frequently collaborates with Canadian set designer
Michael Levine.
Film Warner directed the 1999 film
The Last September, starring
Michael Gambon and
Maggie Smith. ==Recognition and awards==