Rachel O’Riordan A

Life on stage

Born in Cork, Republic Of Ireland, she trained as a ballet dancer before studying English and theatre. O’Riordan then did a PhD entitled Shakespeare’s Physical Texts.

She worked as a choreographer and movement director, before co-founding the Belfast-based Ransom theatre company in 2002 to direct Richard Dormer’s play Hurricane, in which Dormer played snooker legend Alex Higgins. The play was a hit in Edinburgh, London and New York, and led to O’Riordan directing a season for the Peter Hall Company, with whom she directed productions of Miss Julie and Animal Farm.

With Ransom, O’Riordan commissioned assorted new plays and, working closely with Paines Plough and Soho Theatre, ran Writers On The Edge, a three-year programme to develop women writers in Northern Ireland.

In her first season as Horsecross’s director of theatre at Perth Theatre in 2011, O’Riordan directed Twelfth Night, Someone Who’ll Watch Over Me and Ron Hutchinson’s Hollywood romp, Moonlight And Magnolias. In her 2012/2013 season, she directed the female version of Neil Simon’s The Odd Couple, Mother Goose and Conor McPherson’s The Seafarer, the latter a co-production with the Lyric, Belfast which won two Critics Awards for Theatre In Scotland.

This season saw her direct Macbeth in co-production with the Tron Theatre, Glasgow, ending her tenure with Cinderella, which opens this week.