Ian Rickson

Abstract

Ian Rickson has from the start specialized in directing new writing. After working as a freelance director in the late 1980s, he joined the Royal Court Theatre as Director of the Young Writers’ Festival in 1991. He became Associate Director at the Court in 1994, and was responsible, over the 1990s, for landmark productions of Joe Penhall’s Some Voices (1994), Jez Butterworth’s Mojo (1995), and Conor McPherson’s The Weir (1997), among others. Rickson was Artistic Director of the Royal Court from 1998 to 2006. Following the Court’s three-year West End residency, he supervised the return to the refurbished Sloane Square premises in February 2000. In January 2007, he handed over the directorship of the Royal Court to Dominic Cooke. The interview that follows was conducted in London on 9 February 2004.