FRANCIS O'CONNOR
- How To Succeed In Business Without Really Trying - Designer -Festival 2005
Biography
Previously at Chichester designed Out of This World (Festival Theatre).
Current and recent work includes The Shaugraun (Abbey, Dublin), Sixteen Wounded (Walter Kerr Theatre, New York), Calico (Duke of York's, London), Playboy of the Western World (Druid, Galway) and Galileo (Guildford).
Francis has designed a considerable body of work in Ireland, notably The Beauty Queen of Leenane (Galway's Druid Theatre Company) and The Lieutenant of Inishmore (RSC and West End).
Numerous productions for Dublin's Abbey Theatre as well as for the Gate and Gaiety Theatres include The House of Bernada Alba, The Plough and the Stars, Juno and the Paycock, The Colleen Bawn and Tarry Flynn (also seen at London's National Theatre). With Galway's Druid Theatre, Sharon's Grave, Sive, The Good Father and My Beautiful Divorce.
Francis won Best Designer in the 1998 Irish Times/ESB Irish Theatre Awards for The Leenane Trilogy and Tarry Flynn, and again in 2002 for Iphigenia and Big Maggie.
Other work includes The Madness of George III (West Yorkshire Playhouse, Leeds), The Daughter in Law, Andorra and A Raisin in the Sun (Young Vic), The Wonder of Sex and Love on the Throne (National Theatre of Brent) and the Premiere of Arthur Miller’s Mr Peters' Connections (off Broadway).
Musical theatre includes most recently The Pirates of Penzance (Savoy); also Forbidden City (Singapore); and La Cava (Victoria Palace).
Recent opera includes Manon (Opera North), Der Vogelhandler (Komische Oper, Berlin), Maometto Ii (Strasbourg) and Iolanthe and Fortunio (Grange Park).
Francis trained at the Wimbledon School of Art.
