Anna Pool

Anna Pool is an award-winning British theatre director, composer and writer with a primary focus on music theatre of all kinds. She has directed musicals, operas and plays for organisations including the Barbican, Opera North, Hall for Cornwall, English Touring Opera and Finborough Theatre. She is a recipient of the Bury Court Opera Prize, Rolf Liebermann Fund award and is a New British Music Theatre Award nominee for development of site-specific theatre.  Her Mozart Double Bill (Pop Up Opera UK) was a finalist for Best Opera at the 2019 Off West End Awards.

Upcoming directing work includes Lady in the Dark (Opera Zuid/Teatres de la Ville, Luxembourg) and Mother Trucker, a new musical about female truckers supported by site-specific pioneers, Slung Low.  Other Theatre and Opera direction includes: Acis and Galatea (Opera North), Apart/Mental (Winner of the Bury Court Prize), These Wondering Stones (Barbican), Bastienne und Bastienne/ Der Schauspieldirektor (Pop Up Opera UK), SCRAWW! (Hall for Cornwall), Trident Moon (Finborough Theatre), Dust Child (English Touring Opera) and Boys of Paradise (Egg LDN/Tete a Tete).

As a composer and lyricist, Anna’s work includes We Are But Shadows (Spitalfields Festival- winner of an Open Call Award), Return of the Unknown (Marlowe Theatre, Canterbury), A Journey to the Moon (Wigmore Hall), Standing Together:  Reflections for Holocaust Memorial Day (Opera North) and Unleashed (Barbican).  She trained at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, winning the Edmund Rubbra prize for composing in 2015.