17/07/2026
Meet 2026 team/
Andrew Visnevski
Course Leader KaDISS and Scene Study.
Trained in acting at the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama (1973-76) and is honoured as one of the one hundred most successful alumni of the RCSSD of its first one hundred years of illustrious existence. Andrew began his directing career at the Young Vic Theatre, London. In 1978 he created The Cherub Company London, a pioneering ensemble which, under his artistic leadership until 2003, re-discovered neglected classics, introduced European drama to UK repertoire and toured its productions on 3 continents, visited many festivals in Britain and abroad and mounted seven Edinburgh Festival Fringe premières.
His freelance work includes productions in Holland, Poland and Greece; the first British multi-ethnic Romeo & Juliet at the Young Vic Theatre and UK tour; the British premières of two plays by Poland’s outstanding contemporary poet and dramatist, Tadeusz Różewicz; a revival of Brecht’s The Life of Edward II of England at BAC, Riverside Studios, The Place and on UK tour. He has written the award-winning stage adaptation of Kafka’s THE TRIAL, which formed the basis for an opera at Dartington in 1986, also of Kafka’s THE CASTLE and, in collaboration with Barbara Bogoczek and Tony Howard, of Mikhail Bulgakov’s cult novel The Master and Margarita – the production was the first to play at the Menier Theatre in London.
He founded and runs Theatre Alive! an organisation promoting and supporting the work of new professionals and creative aspiration in theatre. This and his continuing exploration of text-based physical theatre led him in June 2009 to direct Gogol’s Diary of a Madman in Paris then, afterwards, in September 2010, he directed a new Greek translation of the same play for the Balkan Theatre Festival at the Albanian National Theatre in Tirana. A production of a contemporary adaptation of the play in French premièred at the Avignon Festival in July 2014 and was revived in Paris.
In 2012 in London, he directed Phaedra by Yannis Ritsos, a multi-cultural project with music by Javanese gamelan instrumentalist, Aris Daryono, and in collaboration with graduates of the RADA MA courses: Guillaume Pigé from France (Artistic Director of Theatre Re) and artist/director Huan Wang from China.
More recently, he conceived and developed Macbeth. A Dialogue. It was the first stage in his exploration, as Honorary Research Fellow of the Queen Mary University, London, into the training of the contemporary actor and the tension between the language of early modern poetic drama and the language of the body; he presented the work at the 2016 Bloomsbury Festival in London and at a special performance for the students of the Royal Ballet School, Covent Garden, as part of its Creative Artist Programme. As part of the same exploration, his latest production, O***m, based on the book and drawings of Jean Cocteau, premièred at the RADA Festival, 28th June 2017.
He is at present developing a new adaptation of The Human Voice by Jean Cocteau, returning the play for the first time in its 96-year history to its original q***r roots. In all, Andrew Visnevski has directed over 100 productions.
His wide-reaching educational work includes heading the MA Courses at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art until 2017, many productions of classics and new plays, courses and projects as guest director for RADA and other leading drama schools in London, as well as supervising design projects for the Slade School of Fine Art. He was Associate Teacher on the new theatre directing course at the Drama School of the National Theatre of Greece (2018/19).
Professional Skills: Director (text-based physical theatre) – Classical and Early Modern Text, Classical and Continental Theatre; stage adaptation, devising; international workshops in interpreting and acting Shakespeare in the UK, Belgium (regular encounters with the Brussels Shakespeare Society), Israel, France (collaboration with young actors-in-training of the Théâtre IRIS in Lyon) and Greece (2018 masterclasses for UTE Decentralised Academy).
Applications for KaDISS 2026 are open until July 31.
Find your application and more about our programme at: www.kalamatadrama.com
