Director

Kerry has been the Artistic Director and Chief Executive of Theatre Royal Stratford East since 2004. He upholds the theatre’s commitment to develop new work and to provide a platform for those voices underrepresented in the ever-changing communities of East London.

In 2007 Theatre Royal Stratford East was nominated for an Olivier Award for ‘presenting a powerful season of provocative work that reaches new audiences’. Its hip-hop production Boy Blue’s Pied Piper won an Olivier the same year. The following year, Kerry’s production of Cinderella was nominated;  the first pantomime ever nominated in the award’s history. In 2012, in association with the Barbican, we won the Olivier Award for ‘Outstanding Achievement in an Affiliate Theatre’ for Cora Bissett’s immersive theatre experience Roadkill. We received a further nomination for You Me Bum Bum Train.

Kerry pioneered the OPEN STAGE project, where Theatre Royal Stratford East became the first theatre to hand over its programming to its audiences in the run up to the 2012 Olympics. During these Games, Theatre Royal Stratford East hosted Nigeria’s Hospitality House (Nigeria House). 30 Nigeria House is a project coming out of that residency where there was secured commissioning grants for 30 young artists of Nigerian heritage

In 2014 Kerry worked with partners in Brazil and delivered Home Theatre where bespoke one-person shows were developed and co-created for homes in the favelas of northern Rio. The technique and mythology has grown with two consecutive seasons in Birmingham and London (UK), and most recently, the townships of Pretoria and Johannesburg in South Africa. There are also plans for a third season in Rio in the run up to their Games in 2016, followed by New Mexico and the West Bank.

Kerry’s recent directing credits include Tanika Gupta’s Love n Stuff, the John Adams opera I Was Looking At the Ceiling and Then I Saw the Sky (a co-production with the Barbican Centre); Cosh Omar’s The Great Extension; The Harder They Come, which transferred to the Barbican and then to Playhouse Theatre in the West End before touring to North American and Canada; Ray Davies’ Come Dancing; and the world premiere of Takeaway, the first British Chinese musical of that scale.

Kerry is a member of Equity’s International Committee for Artists’ Freedom.