The Young Vic Theatre announces the appointment of Nadia Fall as its new Artistic Director and Joint Chief Executive.
Nadia will join the organisation in January 2025 and will succeed Kwame Kwei-Armah who steps down from the role following his final production, A Face in the Crowd, in September. She will lead together with Executive Director Lucy Davies who also becomes Joint Chief Executive.
Nadia has been Artistic Director of Stratford East since 2017 and was previously Associate at the National Theatre from 2015 to 2018. Her debut feature film Brides is in post production and was chosen for the Great8 platform of British films at the 2024 Cannes Film Festival.
At Stratford East, her programming highlights include a hit revival of Equus which transferred to the West End in her first season, August Wilson’s King Hedley II starring Sir Lenny Henry which she also directed, and new collaborations including a large-scale production of Noye’s Fludde with English National Opera, bringing together 200 young people and which received the Olivier Award for Outstanding Achievement in Opera.
As Associate at the National Theatre, she wrote and directed the critically acclaimed HOME, and directed further productions including Chewing Gum Dreams written and performed by Michaela Coel, The Suicide, Our Country’s Good and DARA amongst others. She returned to the National in 2019 to direct Inua Ellams’ adaptation of Three Sisters.
As Sky Arts Ambassador for Theatre, Nadia created the inaugural Sky Arts Artistic Associates Bursary. Her TV credits also include Alan Bennett’s Talking Heads: The Outside Dog for BBC One and NO MASKS for Sky Arts. She was named in Screen International’s 2023 Screen Stars of Tomorrow, spotlighting filmmakers in the UK and Ireland.
Nadia Fall said: “The Young Vic was first built as a pop-up theatre for a younger, bolder generation of artists and audiences. Today it is a celebrated cornerstone of London theatre but that mischievous spirit of a makeshift, anti-establishment theatre still courses through its veins, and I find that incredibly compelling. The Young Vic is not afraid to ask the difficult questions, and it’s particularly exciting to me that its audiences have an appetite for that provocation.
“I was born in Southwark and raised in and around the borough as well as the Middle East, to South Asian parents, and I love that the Young Vic holds hands with its local community of Southwark and Lambeth whilst looking out towards the rest of the world through its artists and stories. It’s exactly who we are in London – both local and international.
“I am thrilled to be leading the team at a theatre where I was first taken into the fold as a young student director when Associate Artistic Director Sue Emmas watched the first night of the very first show I ever directed in a pub theatre in Kennington. It’s one of life’s full circle moments and I cannot wait to get started.”
