Deborah Warner

This brilliant young British stage and opera director was best-known for her dazzling and daring takes on the works of Shakespeare, Sophocles, Bach, Berg, Beckett, Brecht and Ibsen--and for her long-time working relationship with Irish actress Fiona Shaw. Stating that her objective was to take a classic and "make it real for now," Warner was alternately praised as an innovator and blasted for her unorthodox approaches in her stagings of works like "Footfalls" (1994) and "Richard II" (1995), the former being curtailed by the playwright's estate due to Warner's disregard of Samuel Beckett's stage directions, the latter starring actress Shaw as the monarch.