Andrew McKinnon is currently Programme Director of the ground-breaking Birkbeck MA in Creative Producing, which he created in ‘08.
In addition he regularly makes new work with Martin Lewton’s Brighton-based Theatre North: as dramaturg on Lord Arthur’s Bed, dramaturg/director on the Naked Homo series (’08 onwards) and on the recently award-winning site-specific production of Billy Budd, Sailor (’10-’11).
He is also currently working on an extended text on the production of live performance that will place particular emphasis on the work of self-producing artists.
Andrew McKinnon was born and schooled in Glasgow; attended Glasgow and Oxford Universities; became a professional theatre director in his early ‘twenties; and has since directed well over a hundred productions of plays, musicals and operas. He was Artistic Director of York Theatre Royal (’84-‘88), Northern Stage (‘88-‘91) and Perth Theatre (‘93-96) as well as Associate Director of the Nottingham Playhouse (‘82-‘84) and Artistic Director of Actors Centre London (‘91-‘93).
In ‘95 he turned his attention to professional training in theatre and performance when he was commissioned to write The Training of UK Directors, a major Gulbenkian/NCDT Report. Subsequently he became Head of Postgraduate Drama for RSAMD (’96-’00); and then created several degree courses in theatre, including the highly-regarded Birkbeck MFA in Theatre Directing.
McKinnon has been extensively involved in mentoring/developing professional directors, theatremakers and creative producers in the UK and Europe (particularly Holland, Germany and Greece).
Co-founder of the Arches New Directors Awards in ‘00, he mentored its award-winners for seven years. During ‘99–‘02 he edited three advanced training publications for the Directors Guild of Great Britain. In ‘06-‘07 he was facilitator/mentor for the first Scottish Arts Council Creative Producer bursaries.
With his company waywardscot he staged three projects collaboratively devised with Dutch theatremaker Herman van Baar – Look at Me ‘03, Brain Salad ‘04, Featherweight ‘05 – in Glasgow (Arches) and Utrecht (Kikker) – and he created the site-responsive Cabinet of Doctor Jekyll in Scotland (‘07).
Throughout his career he has been a board member and trustee of arts and theatre companies; has acted as a strategic, artistic and planning consultant to a wide range of theatre and arts organisations; and has served on several arts funding assessment panels.
In recognition of his work as an international mentor of emerging artists he received an award at the 2003 Cairo International Festival of Experimental Theatre. Thereafter he became increasingly interested in learning from Middle Eastern performance traditions and spent lengthy periods of study-time in Egypt.
McKinnon has a wide range of cultural interests and was for a decade part of the Edinburgh International Festival’s Insights programme, conducting public interviews with distinguished artists (including Anne Bogart, Calixto Bieito, Andrea Breth, Federico Leon, Tom Murphy, Peter Stein, Silviu Purcarete and many others).
