About

After fifteen years directing many productions for the Royal Shakespeare Company, where he was the Artistic Director of The Other Place Theatre, Ron was named Honorary Associate Director of the RSC. His work for the RSC included two productions of Hamlet, one with Roger Rees and one with Mark Rylance (see documentary below), The Tempest (with Derek Jacobi and Mark Rylance), A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Julius Caesar, Timon of Athens, Pericles, Romeo and Juliet, Much Ado about Nothing, Richard II and Henry V along with plays by Stephen Poliakoff, David Rudkin, David Edgar and Naomi Wallace, including Anthony Burgess' A Clockwork Orange.

In his native Brazil, he directed King Lear, Hamlet, Macbeth, Measure for Measure and Colm Tóibín’s The Testament of Mary and in Japan, Titus Andronicus and Hamlet. In preparation is a production of A Midsummer Night's Dream.

Ron is a former Associate Artistic Director of the American Repertory Theatre in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and a former head of the Institute for Advanced Theatre Training at Harvard University, where he taught acting and directing. At the A.R.T he directed that company’s productions of Henry IV parts 1 and 2, Henry V, Hamlet and The Seagull (both with Mark Rylance), The Tempest, The Cherry Orchard, among others.

While in New York he directed Richard II, Richard III and Macbeth for the Theatre for a New Audience and Naomi Wallace's One Flea Spare for the Public Theatre. He also directed Much Ado about Nothing and The Taming of the Shrew at the Old Globe in San Diego and most recently, Othello at the Shakespeare Theatre in Washington, DC.

The Brazilian-born director’s world-premiere production of Daniel Schnyder’s Charlie Parker’s Yardbird for the Philadelphia Opera was remounted at London’s English National Opera after it was seen at the Apollo Theatre in New York, the Chicago Lyric Opera and Madison Opera early in 2017. Ron's new production of Lucia di Lammermoor premiered at The Santa Fe Opera in July 2017 and Carmen at the LA Opera had its opening in September 2017. Gluck's Orfeo and Euridice was seen in a new production at the Opera Theatre of St Louis, in 2018 and he has just opened his production of Madama Butterfly at the Lyric Opera of Kansas City, twenty one years after its première at the San Francisco Opera.

The most recent was a production of Sweeney Todd, The Demon Barber of Fleetstreet opened at the Michigan Opera Theatre in 2019 and Charlie Parker's Yardbird opened at the Seattle Opera at the beginning of 2020.

He most recently directed Naomi Wallace and historian Marcus Rediker's The Return of Benjamin Lay starring Mark Povinelli, about the XVIII century Quaker abolitionist, at the Finborough Theatre in London, in June 2023. The Return of Benjamin Lay will be seen again in Pittsburgh in February 2025, under the banner of the Quantum Theatre, and later in New York, produced by Playhouse Creatures.

Ron was the Executive Producer on the film Lawn Dogs and the director of The War Boys, his first feature film, starring Peter Gallagher, Benjamin Walker, Brian J. Smith, and Victor Rasuk.

His extensive work with musical theatre includes Carmen (Houston Grand Opera, Opera Pacific, Michigan Opera Theatre) and new productions of La Forza del Destino (San Francisco Opera), Madama Butterfly (San Francisco Opera, Opera Pacific, Florida Grand Opera, Washington National Opera, LA Opera and many others), Tosca (Colorado Opera and Theatro Municipal of Rio de Janeiro), Pagliacci and Il Tabarro (Opera Theatre of St Louis) and Britten’s The Turn of the Screw (Berkshire Opera). In 2017 he directed the world premiere of Ricky Ian Gordon’s Morning Star at the Cincinnati Opera, La Bohème at the Opera Theatre of Saint Louis and a hugely popular Don Giovanni at the Santa Fe Opera.

Ron’s widely praised production of Sondheim’s Sweeney Todd, The Demon Barber of Fleet Street at the Opera Theatre of St. Louis followed his staging of the hip-hop musical, Kingdom, at San Diego’s Old Globe. Ron also directed the critically acclaimed world premiere of Daniel Catán’s Il Postino at the LA Opera in 2010, with Plácido Domingo in the role of Pablo Neruda. That production was revived at the Theatre an der Wien, in Vienna, the Châtelet in Paris, the Bellas Artes in Mexico City and the Teatro Municipal, Santiago, Chile.

South Bank Show with Melvyn Bragg 1989 - Ron Daniels on his Hamlet starring Mark Rylance.

"Some of this century’s greatest actors perform Shakespeare’s greatest role – Hamlet. The play is currently running at the National Theatre, with two other major productions, at the RSC and on tour, forthcoming soon...The three directors concerned – Richard Eyre, Ron Daniels and Yuri Lyubimov – discuss the play’s merits and relevance, aided by Orson Welles, Mark Rylance, Tyron Guthrie, John Barton and Michael Pennington. Performances are provided by Hamlets past and present including Laurence Olivier, John Gielgud, Richard Burton, Derek Jacobi, John Barrymore and Sarah Brenhardt.”