Spring Awakening

Alice recently directed The Next Morning by James Graham, a short film for The National Theatre and is currently Associate Director to Ivo Van Hove on All My Sons. 

Other Directing credits include; For Susie, With Love (Short Film), Anansi The Spider (Unicorn Theatre), An Intervention (Riverside Studios), Duizend Schepen, We’re All Mad Here, Love Stories (Amsterdam on Stage). 

As Associate Director, The Seagull (Barbican Theatre) Oedipus (Wyndham's Theatre) F*ghag (Assembly, Edinburgh Fringe) Opening Night (Gielgud Theatre) Macbeth (UK Tour/Washington DC), An Hour & A Half Late (Theatre Royal Bath). 

As Assistant Director, A Little Life (Harold Pinter & Savoy), Gulliver’s Travels, Maggot Moon, The Canterville Ghost, The Bee in Me (Unicorn Theatre), Love on the Links (Salisbury Playhouse).

Anya Reiss began her writing career in theatre with her debut play Spur of the Moment at the Royal Court Theatre in 2010. She won the Most Promising Playwright Award at both the Critics Circle and Evening Standard awards that year, along with Best New Play at the TMAs. 

Her follow-up play The Acid Test was staged at the same venue the next year, with her National Theatre Connections play Forty-Five Minutes following in 2013. Her original version of The Seagull, directed by Russell Bolam, was staged in 2012 at the Southwark Playhouse, and they worked on two further modern-day Chekhovs together - first at the same venue, then at the St James Theatre. Since then, Anya's version of Spring Awakening has toured with Headlong, and her adaptation of Oliver Twist was at the Regents' Park Theatre in 2017. 

Anya's new version of The Seagull - directed by Jamie Lloyd, and starring Emilia Clarke - opened at the Harold Pinter Theatre in the summer of 2022. 

In television, Anya was the creator, executive producer, and writer of the Starz series Becoming Elizabeth. Previously she was a lead writer on Channel 4's Ackley Bridge and a core writer on EastEnders. Anya is currently adapting A Doll’s House for the Almeida Theatre, and show-running a new original series for BBC.

Contains depictions of sexual activity, rape, pornography, masturbation, suicide, physical assault, self-harm, abuse, pregnancy, abortion and oppression. Contains explicit language.

A version by Anya Reiss.

With thanks to The Charlie Waller Trust, a charity who provides mental health and suicide prevention sessions.