James Dacre

James Dacre has been the Artistic Director of the Royal & Derngate Theatre in Northampton since 2013. The Royal & Derngate is one of our outstanding regional theatres, commissioning and co-producing a consistently successful steam of new work that regularly tours and reaches the West End. Recent productions include TS Eliot’s Four Quartets, Alone in Berlin, The Worst Witch, Touching the Void, and The Lovely Bones. James himself has directed world premieres of adaptations of Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World and Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities, as well as Roy Williams’ Soul and Arthur Miller’s The Hook, as well as a diverse catalogue of other new and classic titles.

Before the Royal & Derngate, James directed shows at numerous of our best regional and London theatres, including Manchester Royal Exchange, The New Vic, Theatre Royal Bath, the Traverse, Trafalgar Studios and Shakespeare’s Globe, among others. James started directing at Cambridge and then won a fellowship to train at Columbia University in New York.