Practitioner focus: Rupert Goold

He is currently the artistic director of the Almeida Theatre, having previously been associate director of The Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC) and artistic director of the Northampton Theatre. During his career, his list of achievements appears almost limitless. According to the Almeida Theatre website, Goold has directed ‘revivals, opera, musicals, new plays, classic texts, farce, pantomime, youth theatre, installation work, comedy and Shakespeare (including two films) around the world and for a wide range of commercial and subsidised organisations.’

Rupert Goold has been involved in some of the most notable productions in recent history. When he directed The Tempest at the RSC, he started the play with a radio presenting the last moments of the shipwreck along with projections on the storm on a gauze spread over the stage. He also had Ariel first appear as a disembodied head, then as a ghastly figure dripping in blood and bones. His Macbeth at the RSC was equally visceral, intense, and bloody, set in an undefined and threatening central European world. His production of Medea at The Almeida transposed the play into a middle-class modern world. The play deliberately made the audience feel uncomfortable, focusing on the fact that someone from the audience's own world could be capable of killing their own children.