Phillip Breen was born in Liverpool and attended state school on Merseyside before studying Social and Political Sciences at Trinity College, Cambridge. He trained under Terry Hands at Clwyd Theatr Cymru. He is an Associate Artist of the Royal Shakespeare Company.
He was given his professional debut by Philip Prowse at the Citizens Theatre in Glasgow at the age of 22, directing and adapting Brecht’s The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui. Six further productions at the Citizens followed, including an award-winning True West by Sam Shepard which was praised by the author who was instrumental in its London transfer to the Tricycle Theatre in autumn 2014, and can be seen by clicking here.
Phillip has directed over 60 professional productions, all over the UK: at the Citizens, the Royal Shakespeare Company, Clwyd Theatr Cymru (where he was director of new writing 2006-08), and at Theatre Cocoon Tokyo, at the invitation of Yukio Ninagawa. He has directed off-Broadway, as well as in the West End of London. His work has played all over the UK, Tokyo, Kyoto, Osaka, New York, Los Angeles, the Sydney International Theatre Festival, Adelaide, Canberra, Dubai, and through the streets of Assisi. His eclectic range of work encompasses opera, theatre, comedy, musicals, jazz cabaret, large-scale community theatre projects, new work and classics. He also regularly collaborated with Vivienne Westwood, for whom he directed and co-devised Homo Loquax, her London Fashion Week show in 2019. In 2016 he directed the York Mysteries in York Minster with a community cast of hundreds.
His work has variously won or been nominated for the Edinburgh Comedy Award (formerly the Perrier), Fringe First, Critics’ Awards for Theatre In Scotland, TMA / British Theatre, What’s On Stage, Broadway World, Time Out New York, Off-Broadway Stonys, The Stage Award, The Holden Street Theatre Award, Yorkshire Culture Award, the Yomiura Award, among a host of awards and nominations in Tokyo.
He made his Royal Shakespeare Company debut in 2012 with The Merry Wives of Windsor, in the RST, this was followed up with a production of Dekker’s The Shoemaker’s Holiday in the Swan, followed by an award winning production of Richard Bean’s new play The Hypocrite and Vanbrugh’s The Provok’d Wife and The Comedy of Errors, in the RSC’s first custom built outdoor theatre during the Covid-19 pandemic, before transferring to the Barbican Theatre, all of which of were hits with audiences and critics alike.
His production of Orpheus Descending by Tennessee Williams starring Shinobu Otake was a sell out hit in Tokyo and Osaka in 2015. Shinobu Otake received the 2017 Kinokuniya Individual Award for her performance as Blanche DuBois in his A Streetcar Named Desire. The role of Raskolnikov in Phillip’s production of his adaptation of Crime And Punishment was played by the late Haruma Miura, who won a host of Tokyo acting awards for his performance. He directed Shinobu Otake, Tadayoshi Ohkura and Yosuke Sugino in Long Day’s Journey Into Night, and in 2023 directed Rie Miyazawa in his adaptation of Anna Karenina.
He has created opening ceremonies for major cultural events at Windsor Castle, the Basilica of St. Francis in Assisi and in the United Arab Emirates. As a writer Phillip has written adaptations of Tender is the Night by F Scott Fitzgerald, Crime and Punishment by Dostoevsky, Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy, Lady Chatterley’s Lover by DH Lawrence, Rooftoppers by Katherine Rundell and an adaptation of Red Or Dead by David Peace.
He has contributed extended essays on Shakespeare to two books on Shakespeare, and completed his own monograph on The Merry Wives of Windsor, ‘Walking in A Windsor Wonderland: Some Ramshackle Reflections on Directing Shakespeare’s Greatest Comedy’.
He has lectured in Shakespeare and taught acting at conservatoires all over the world.
He is a trustee of the Richard Shephard Music Foundation, dedicated to providing music lessons and access to music for children in Yorkshire, and as part of ‘Ukraine Future’, is part of ongoing missions to provide prosthetics and training to soldiers and civilians that have become amputees as a result of the war.
Phillip is indebted to his close artistic collaborators. Theatre is a team game, and he has a wonderful team of creatives and friends with whom he works regularly. In particular the designers Max Jones, Mark Bailey and Ruth Hall, lighting designer Tina MacHugh, composers Paddy Cunneen, Dyfan Jones and Jason Carr, sound designers Andrea J Cox and Dyfan Jones, movement director Ayse Tashkiran, fight director Renny Krupinski and stage manager Bryony Rutter. A director is nothing without living writers: Stefan Golaszewski, Eugene O’Hare, Meredydd Barker, Richard Bean, Tom Basden and DC Jackson are among the best in the world writing for the stage right now.