Kip Williams

Kip is an award-winning director of theatre and opera and is the current Artistic Director and Co-CEO of Sydney Theatre Company, a role he has held since November 2016. His appointment at age 30 made him the youngest Artistic Director in the company’s history.

Williams has directed for many of Australia’s leading theatre companies and festivals, including Sydney Theatre Company (STC), Melbourne Theatre Company (MTC), Malthouse Theatre, Adelaide Festival, Perth Festival, and Melbourne’s RISING Festival, as well as New Zealand’s Auckland Arts Festival.

In 2012, Williams made his main-stage theatre debut at the Sydney Opera House directing Australian screen legend Jack Thompson in Under Milk Wood. He has since gone on to direct over 20 productions for STC, including a multi-award winning cinema-theatre hybrid production of Suddenly Last Summer, lauded interpretations of Shakespeare including Romeo & Juliet and The Tempest starring Richard Roxburgh, a retelling of Lord of the Flies starring Mia Wasikowska, Daniel Monks and Yerin Ha, and collaborations with actor Hugo Weaving in The Resistable Rise of Arturo Ui, Macbeth, and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. Williams has regularly directed new writing, including the 7-hour epic The Harp in the South by Kate Mulvany, for which he won the Sydney Theatre Award for Best Director and Best Production.

Williams’ work is noted for its stunning visuals and groundbreaking formal experimentation. He has been nominated a record six consecutive times for the Helpmann Award for Best Director, Australia’s top theatre prize, and in 2015 became the youngest director to win the award, for Suddenly Last Summer. He has twice won Melbourne’s Green Room Award for both Best Director and Best Production, first in 2016 for his adaptation of Strindberg’s Miss Julie (MTC) and next in 2023 for his celebrated adaption of The Picture of Dorian Gray (STC). He has won the Sydney Theatre Award for Best Director a record three times, for The Harp in the South (2018), The Picture of Dorian Gray (2021), and most recently for his adaptation of Strange Case of Dr Jekyll & Mr Hyde (2022, STC).

Williams’ work in opera has been much lauded, including acclaimed productions for Victorian Opera, Sydney Chamber Opera (SCO), Carriageworks, Dark MOFO, and the Biennale of Sydney. His radical production for the SCO of Fausto Romitelli’s composition An Index of Metals was the first-ever theatrical staging of the piece.

A graduate of both Sydney University and Australia’s National Institute of Dramatic Art (NIDA), Williams served as a Board Member for NIDA from 2016-2023.