Richard Digby Day


Richard Digby Day is a British stage director and international professor and lecturer. He is particularly well known for his work in the classical theatre, and is considered to have a special penchant for the plays of William Shakespeare and George Bernard Shaw. He is vice president of the Shaw Society, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, and has staged more productions of Shaw's work than any other living director. His productions of Stephen Sondheim musicals have also been notable.

Artistic Directorships

Digby Day has been Artistic Director of five UK theatres: the Bournemouth Theatre Company ; the New Shakespeare Company at the Open Air Theatre in Regent's Park ; the Welsh National Theatre Company ; the York Theatre Royal ; the Nottingham Playhouse ; and the Northcott Theatre,.
Additionally, his work has been seen in the West End and on tour extensively throughout the UK, Canada, Denmark, and Ireland. Particularly successful were his touring productions of Sondheim's A Little Night Music and Company, Shaw's The Devil's Disciple, Somerset Maugham's Our Betters, and J M Barrie's Peter Pan. He directed Geraldine McEwan at the National Theatre in Two Inches of Ivory, a production about Jane Austen that has been seen all over the world under the auspices of the British Council, the UK's official international organisation for educational opportunities and cultural relations.

Career as a Professor

Richard Digby Day has taught and lectured in the UK and in North America. Since 2003 he has been Principal of the London Dramatic Academy of Fordham University. He previously served on the faculty at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, as well as the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art, the National Theatre School of Canada, and the graduate program of Columbia University where he directed the Shakespeare Project for two years. Currently, Digby Day is teaching theatre classes for the students of Fordham University in the London Centre at Heythrop University.
From 1998–2002, he was Principal of the London Academy of Theatre, a classical theatre program for American students in the UK. From 1990 to 1998, he was director of the National Theater Institute at the Eugene O'Neill Theater Center in Waterford, CT. During this period, he served on the Regional Committee of the Arts Council of Great Britain, on the National Council for Drama Training, was Chairman of the Drama Panel of the Yorkshire Arts Association, and taught regularly at colleges and universities in the United States. He also served on the Board of the Drama League of New York and helped found their Directors Project. In 1997 he was named Adjunct Professor of Theater at Connecticut College where he had worked since 1984.

Trivia

Richard Digby Day is a contemporary of British actor Ian McKellen, and the two began their professional careers working on many of the same productions with Digby Day serving as assistant director.
As an actor, he appeared in the role of Swiss Cheese in the Midlands premiere of Brecht's Mother Courage in Stratford-upon-Avon, 1961.
He is credited with discovering actors Ralph Fiennes and Hugh Grant.
He trained at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art and was the school's first ever directing student.