Simon Stone

Simon Stone was born in Basel in 1984. His family moved, first to Cambridge, and then in 1996 to Melbourne. Stone studied at the Victorian College of the Arts in Melbourne, working in Australia in subsequent years as director, author and actor.

In 2007 he founded the theatre group The Hayloft Project, for which he adapted classical dramas such as Chekhov's Platonov, Seneca’s Thyestes, Wedekind’s Spring Awakening and Ibsen’s Little Eyolf. In 2011 he became resident director at the Belvoir St Theatre in Sydney. His adaptation of Ibsen’s The Wild Duck was invited to the Ibsen Festival in Oslo, the Vienna Festival and to the Holland Festival in Amsterdam. Based on Aeschylos, Die Orestie at Theater Oberhausen in 2014 was his first piece in the German-speaking world. In the same year, Stone’s Thyestes was presented at the Theater der Welt (a festival of the International Theatre Institute in Mannheim), the Holland Festival and the Théâtre des Amandiers in Nanterre.

In 2015 he made the film The Daughter, again based on Ibsen’s The Wild Duck, which was shown at film festivals in Venice, Toronto, London and Stockholm. In the 2015/16 and 2016/17 seasons, Simon Stone was resident director at Theater Basel. His adaptation of Ibsen’s John Gabriel Borkman won the Nestroy Theatre Prize in the category of best direction, was voted 2016 production of the year in a survey of critics by the periodical Theater heute, and was invited to the 2016 Berliner Theatertreffen. His production of Angels in America received the 2016 Nestroy Theatre Prize for the Best German-language performance. He made his UK debut as director in 2016 at the Young Vic in London with his adaptation of Federico García Lorca’s Yerma. He directed his first opera with Korngold’s Die tote Stadt in the 2016/17 season at Theater Basel. He also adapted Chekhov’s Three Sisters there in that season, was invited with this to the 2017 Berliner Theatertreffen, and received the Theater heute magazine’s theater piece of the year award. He directed Reimann’s opera Lear at the Salzburg Festival in 2017 and Cherubini’s Médée in 2019.

In the 2017/18 season he moved his Basel production of The Three Sisters to the Odéon – Théâtre de l’Europe in Paris. He also created Hotel Strindberg based on August Strindberg – a coproduction of Vienna’s Burgtheater and Theater Basel, which won two Nestroy Theatre Prizes. In the 2018/19 season he created Eine griechische Trilogie at the Berliner Ensemble, and staged the German-language première of his adaptation of Medea at Vienna’s Burgtheater. In 2019/20 the Bavarian State Opera staged his production of Die tote Stadt.