“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
Caroline is an award winning director, actor and maker. With a background in social and environmental activism, her directing work is often in dialogue with current political issues; always striving to find the hyper personal in the political. 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), working 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 working 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
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). Caroline works with some of the most skilled actors in the UK, as well as people who have never been on stage before. Recent work includes participatory craftivism project, ENTWINED: The Long Covid Quilt (Mayfest 2022), a film work about disabled people’s relationships to their mobility aids, A Love Letter to Penelope Cruizer (Bristol Old Vic, Sudden Connections) and an ongoing screen collaboration with multi-award winning dancer Jonathan Goddard.
“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 was a Jerwood Director at The Young Vic assisting Phelim McDermott. She is a finalist for the Genesis prize and was one of the first Associate Artists of the Yard Theatre. Caroline was invited to take part in the National Theatre’s Directors course in 2016. The same year she was awarded a Somerset House Studio residency and chosen by the Victoria and Albert Museum to represent the UK at the Prague Biennial with her performance installation Shakespeare’s Fools. Caroline is currently a Leverhulme Scholar on attachment to The Bristol Old Vic and resident at The Pervasive Media Studios, Watershed.
“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
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.
Currently Caroline is developing NINA, a contemporary spin on Chekhov’s The Seagull, as well as LOSING MY RAG, an installation about the gender health gap in the UK.