About
Jaz Woodcock-Stewart is an Olivier-nominated Director and Artist. She makes work between theatre, performance, screen and dance.
She is from the Black Country and based in London.
Glass Menagerie currently plays at Theater Basel and later this year she brings Gulliver's Travels to Deutsches Nationaltheater and Staatskapelle Weimar.
She is a Resident Artist this year with House Productions.
Her production of Paradise Now! by Margaret Perry was nominated for an Olivier Award. She was also nominated for Best Director at the Off West End Awards, alongside nominations for her team with Best Ensemble, Best New Play and Best Set Design.
Her new work Jason Medea Medley, her own adaptation of Medea with the company, premiered at Staatsschauspiel Dresden in 2023.
Her production Civilisation, a collaboration with choreographer Morgann Runacre-Temple won the Jury Prize at Fast Forward Festival (2021), the european festival for young directors at Dresden Staatschauspiel. It was also selected for Radikal Jung in Munich (2022)
Jaz is co-artistic director of jwscompany (previously Antler). They were Associate Artists at the Bush Theatre 2017-2018. Her play Lands ran at the Bush Theatre and was published by Oberon Books.
She is represented by Jessi Stewart at Independent Talent.
History and Press
Between 2012 and 2020, she directed numerous own works on the fringe, two stand outs being Lands **** About everything and anything from intoxication, loneliness, despondency, desensitisation...it starts to feel like a ticking time bomb, as we wait for horrifying results WhatsOnStage
and Civilisation 'A profound piece of visual poetry; illuminating and baffling, hilarious and heart-breaking.' ****The List
In 2021, she won the Jury Prize for Civilisation at Fast Forward Festival, the European Festival for Young Stage Directors at Staatsschauspiel Dresden.
In 2022, she directed Gulliver's Travels for the Unicorn **** Wildly innovative, extremely fun Time Out
Electric Rosary for the Royal Exchange, Manchester Ambition and ingenuity **** The Guardian
Paradise Now! for Bush Theatre Might well be the best new play of the year ***** The Telegraph
And a tour of her original work Civilisation in collaboration with choreographer Morgann Runacre-Temple - to New Diorama, HOME, Hellerau, Horizon Showcase, Cambridge Junction, Shoreditch Town Hall and Arnolfini, presented by MAYK.
She was associate director to Thomas Ostermeier on Enemy of the People, in the West End. As an assistant director, she worked on 3 of Ivo van Hove's english language productions; Lazarus, Network and All About Eve. She also assisted Tim Crouch, Joe Hill-Gibbins and Simon McBurney.
Her training is a culmination of time spent on the National Theatre Studio Director's Course, The Jerwood Assistant Director Program at the Young Vic, Uri Roodner's Contemporary Theatre course at East 15 Acting School and Dartington College of Arts.
She has been a finalist for the following directing awards//
Oxford Samuel Beckett Theatre Trust Award Shortlist 2020 Scenes from Coppelia (own work)
Genesis Future Directors Award Shortlist 2019 The Tin (own work)
RTST Sir Peter Hall Directors Award Finalist 2018 Top Girls by Caryl Churchill
Genesis Future Directors Award Finalist 2017 The Bear/The Proposal by Anton Chekhov
JMK Award Finalist 2016 Woyzeck by Georg Buchner
@jazwoodstew
jwoodcockstewart (at) gmail (dot) com
Complex, raw and insensibly smart, I could watch it forever.
KATE WYVER, THE GUARDIAN on CIVILISATION
Up rising star director... the reliably excellent Jaz Woodcock-Stewart
TIME OUT
There is real pleasure in seeing a show that plays with ambiguities through form. Where the images it presents are layered and strange. It’s often this work that turns out to be the most rewarding, it is the work that rumbles around in your head long after it’s over.
LYN GARDNER, THE STAGE on CIVILISATION
In her Basel debut, Jaz Woodcock-Stewart creates a clearly executed and multifaceted stage experience that is truly absorbing.
NACHTKRITIK