About
Welcome to matthewparker.net; the official site for Theatre Director Matthew Parker.
Matthew is a multi award winning Theatre Director, Actor and the former Artistic Director of The Hope Theatre. He trained on the Postgraduate Directing Course at Drama Studio London and at Bretton Hall College where he gained a First Class Degree in Acting.
He has a passion for bringing his vivid visual imagination and physical approach to his storytelling and relishes a collaborative process, creating highly theatrical, detailed work, rich in emotion and with a tight connection to the audiences heartbeat.
Matthew won Best Director of a Musical at the 2023 OFFIE Awards for his direction of Thrill Me: The Leopold & Loeb Story. In 2017 Matthew won the Best Artistic Director OFFIE Award for his work at The Hope Theatre in 2016; the same year that The Hope was nominated as UK Fringe Theatre of the Year at The Stage Awards. His adaptation of Chekhov’s Ward No.6 gained a Best Ensemble nomination at The Stage Awards 2009 and Time Out Critic’s Choice upon its transfer to London.
Directing credits include The Dawn of Reckoning (White Bear Theatre), One Jab Cures All (Theatre at the Tabard), Beauty & The Beast – A Pantomime (The Bridge House Theatre), Bonding (UK Tour), I Wish My Life Were Like A Musical (Wilton’s Music Hall & UK Tour), Thrill Me: The Leopold & Loeb Story (Jermyn Street Theatre), Trestle (Jack Studio Theatre), Vinegar Tom (OVO Theatre), The Comedy of Errors and Henry V (Roman Theatre of Verulamium). Whilst Artistic Director of The Hope Theatre Matthew directed 9 in-house productions including Her Aching Heart (Winner Best Off West End Play, Spy In The Stalls Awards 2016), Steel Magnolias (Winner of Best Off West End Production, Break A Leg Critic’s Choice Awards 2016), Sea Life, The Lesson , Brimstone and Treacle and Lovesong of the Electric Bear which later transfreed to the Arts Theatre, West End.
Matthew has received 9 nominations as Best Director at the Off West End (OFFIE) Awards, 5 of which were for productions at The Hope Theatre: The House Of Yes, The Lesson, Her Aching Heart, Sea Life and the European premiere of Lovesong of the Electric Bear. His other nominations were for I Wish My Life Were Like A Musical at Wilton’s Music Hall (2023), the West End transfer of Thrill Me: The Leopold & Loeb Story (2022) and his revivals of Trestle (2021) and Thark (2017).
For further details on his Directing work please click on his CV or Portfolio pages.
Matthew is also an award-winning Actor and, when not engaged in his own productions, he runs PR campaign’s for Off West End shows. For more info on these strands of Matthew’s work please click on his Acting and PR pages.
Matthew combines his work as a theatre maker with teaching emerging artists in drama schools. As a faculty member of Drama Studio London, Matthew taught acting classes including stagecraft and text analysis and has directed many productions with training and graduating students including 20th and 21st century classics, Pantomime tours, new writing, Restoration Comedy and devised work. He has also taught and led courses, seminars and workshops in various acting and theatre-making disciplines at the MTA, Mountview, Trinity Laban and University of East London as well as at various London branches of Equity and on the Off West End.
He is represented by Savages Personal Management.
Best Director of a Musical, OFFIE Awards 2023
Best Artistic Director, OFFIE Awards 2017
