Emily
Ling Williams

Emily trained as a Resident Director at the Almeida Theatre, Jerwood Assistant Director at the Young Vic and Trainee Director at Paines Plough.

She most recently directed The Full Works, The Key Workers Cycle by Josh Elliot at the Almeida Theatre. Before this she directed text me when you’re home by Zia Ahmed as part of Five Plays at the Young Vic. She has also directed shows at the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama, Omnibus Theatre, LAMDA and Rose Bruford. As an assistant director she has worked at the Almeida Theatre, the Young Vic, Chichester Festival Theatre, Arcola Theatre and Paines Plough. Emily has completed the Soho Theatre Writers Lab and has an MSc in International Politics from SOAS. She is currently attached to direct new work being developed at the Almeida Theatre, New Earth Theatre and Metal Rabbit Productions.

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CV

Theatre

Director 

The Full Works (Key Workers Cycle)
Writer Josh Elliot
Almedia Theatre
Before You Go

In development with New Earth Theatre

NT Studio
Miss Julie
Writer Amy Ng
LAMDA
GYSB
Producer Moongate Productions
Writer Anchuli Felicia King
Omnibus Theatre
Good Trouble
Producer Moongate Productions
Writer Sonali Bhattacharyya
Omnibus Theatre
A Perpetual State of Happiness
Producer Moongate Productions
Writer Kat Golding
Omnibus Theatre
Tuesday at the Library
Producer Moongate Productions
Writer Joanne Lau
Omnibus Theatre
16
Writer Lucy Foster
Lemon House Theatre
Swallow
Writer Lydia Luke
Lemon House Theatre
Appropriate
Writer Jacobs Jenkins
RWCMD
Text Me When You’re Home
Writer Zia Ahmed

Five Plays - Jerwood Assistant Director Programme

Young Vic
Lucky Cigarette
Writer Megan Cowley
New Earth Theatre
Buried Kingdom
Writer Kim Ho

Staged reading

Yellow Earth/ Tristan Bates Theatre
Yellow Earth Academy Showcase

Assorted Dialogues

Yellow Earth
Preach
Writer Henry Devas
Rose Bruford / Hoxton Hall
Turbines
Writer Sarah McDonald-Hughes
Paines Plough / RWCMD / Gate Theatre
Lungs (Extract)
Writer Duncan Macmillan
The Young Vic

Assistant Director 

Blood Wedding
Director Yaël Farber
Writer Federico García Lorca, adapted by Marina Carr
Young Vic
The Meeting
Director Natalie Abrahami
Writer Charlotte Jones
Chichester Festival Theatre
The Chalk Garden
Director Alan Strachan
Writer Enid Bagnold
Chichester Festival Theatre
Out Of Love
Director James Grieve
Writer Elinor Cook
Paines Plough / Orange Tree / Theatr Clywd
Black Mountain
Director James Grieve
Writer Brad Birch
Paines Plough / Orange Tree / Theatr Clywd
How To Be A Kid
Director James Grieve
Writer Sarah McDonald-Hughes
Paines Plough / Orange Tree / Theatr Clwyd
The Island Nation
Director Ria Parry
Writer Christine Bacon
Arcola Theatre

Dramaturg 

Endurance
Writer Jenni Jackson
Manchester Home

Josh Elliott’s The Full Works: The Funeral Directors’ Play is a fantastically weird, funny, macabre piece, tremendously acted by Chima Akpa, Jason Barnett and Bill Milner. It involves a personable corpse who lets us into his thoughts as he receives a close shave in the funeral parlour. There is wonderful direction by Emily Ling Williams.

The Guardian
on The Full Works (Key Workers Cycle)

Josh Elliott’s clever The Full Works: the Funeral Directors’ Play was more concentrated. Here an experienced funeral director (Jason Barnett) instructs his apprentice grandson (Chima Akpa, a promising member of one of the Almeida’s two youth groups) in preparing a body for burial. Bill Milner plays the attention-loving corpse whose responses, whether humorous or poignant, to their ministrations — from shaving to dressing — are only audible to us. Elliott’s neat, witty text could conceivably have, and deserves, a life beyond Emily Ling Williams’s deft initial staging.

The Times
on The Full Works (Key Workers Cycle)