Dominic Cooke Awarded CBE

Dominic Cooke, Artistic Director of the Royal Court Theatre from 2007 until April 2013 was awarded a CBE in the 2014 New Year’s Honours List for services to drama.

During Dominic’s seven year tenure at the Royal Court more than 130 plays were staged, including 94 brand new plays and 11 plays by writers from around the world.

As part of his programme, debut plays of 16 first time writers were staged, including Bola Agbaje, Mike Bartlett, Alia Bano, E.V. Crowe, DC Moore, Anya Reiss and Polly Stenham. New work by these writers won awards, was re-staged nationally and internationally, and continues to be studied on syllabuses across the world, as well as transferring to the West End.

Alongside first time writers, Dominic worked to develop the next step for emerging writers and staged work by playwrights in the earlier stage of their career including plays by Bruce Norris, Lucy Prebble, Nina Raine, Christopher Shinn, Penelope Skinner and Laura Wade, as well as creating a home for established writers, with new work from Richard Bean, Jez Butterworth, Caryl Churchill, Martin Crimp, David Eldridge, David Hare, Joe Penhall, Mark Ravenhill, Wallace Shawn, Simon Stephens and Roy Williams.