Caroline is an award-winning director and multi-disciplinary artist. She is currently Associate Artist at The Bristol Old Vic.
Caroline’s work has ranged from a flash mob take over of the British Museum (Millions of Years, ENO) a one-on-one installation-performance inside a cardboard box performed by migrants (Make Yourself At Home, Nuit Blanche Brussels), to a reimagining of The Tempest as an opera (Sam Wanamaker Playhouse, The Globe). Her work has been seen all across the UK including at The National Theatre, Bristol Old Vic, The Young Vic, The Globe, The V&A Museum, Edinburgh and Galway International Festival.
With a background in social and environmental activism (Drax 29), her work has often been co-created with people affected by current political issues. Examples include working with Syrian filmmaker Reem Karssli to explore the semantics of screens in witnessing global conflicts from the UK (Now Is the Time to Say Nothing, extensive touring 2018/19 produced by MAYK), with residents of Tower Hamlets to explore the multiple deaths in police custody in East London (You Do Not Have To Say Anything, The Yard Theatre) or with teenagers in Rwanda and Uganda to explore their relationship to technology (Can You Hear Me Now –British Council/ MAYK).
“If the essence of theatre is an invitation to imagine that we are someone else and for a moment to see the world through their eyes, then this is truly theatre at its most essential.”
— Tom Morris, Former Artistic Director, Bristol Old Vic, on Caroline Williams’ Now is the Time to Say Nothing
“It’s just over three hours since I’ve seen it, and I’d be surprised if in 3 years I’ve fully understood what it’s done to me.”
— Tim X Atack, Sleepdogs on Caroline Williams’ Now is the Time to Say Nothing
Caroline is an alumnus of The National Theatre Director’s Course and a regular associate of Improbable’s Phelim McDermott. She is a finalist for the Genesis prize and was one of the first Associate Artists of the Yard Theatre. Caroline was chosen by The V&A Museum to represent the UK at the Prague Quadrennial 2016 with her performance and film installation Shakespeare’s Fools, in which three performers danced from Norwich to London and then London to Prague in the footsteps of William Kempe who danced from London to Norwich in 1600 to protest being let go from Shakespeare’s King’s Men.
Other work includes Dad Dancing with Second Hand Dance, Puffball at The Yard/ BAC, Shadwell’s Tempest and Le Malade Imaginaire with OAE at Shakespeare’s Globe. Twelfth Night starring BAFTA winner Deirdre Mullins (Pilgrim Players, Galway) and A Love Letter to Penelope Cruizer (Bristol Old Vic, Sudden Connections), a film work about disabled people’s relationships to their mobility aids.
“I want to say now that it is a performance — looking back — I increasingly value as particularly rare. I look back on it as one of the most insightful encounters I have had in a theatre.”
— Theatre Voices on Caroline Williams’ Puffball
“Strange, detailed and deeply personal, it speaks straight to the heart of our fragile, fearful souls. Tiny and epic, contemporary and timeless. I love this piece.”
— Emma Rice on Caroline Williams’ Puffball
Currently Caroline is working on a triptych on power and gender. The triptych includes NINA, a contemporary response to Chekhov’s The Seagull, as well as LOSING MY RAG, an installation about the gender health-gap in the UK.