Anneli Mäkelä

Biography

Anneli Mäkelä, born in 1941 in Helsinki is a Finnish director, playwright and dramaturge. After graduating from Theatre School she continued her studies first at University of Helsinki, Finland and then in France at the University of Caen and at Théâtre National de Châillot of Paris as a student under the French director Antoine Vitez. Until 1987 Anneli Mäkelä worked in a number of theatres and different countries as an actress, dramaturge and director. In 1987 she settled down in Helsinki, Finland and became manager of Unga Teatern (1987-1997), a bilingual theatre for youth and children with productions in the two official languages of Finland, Finnish and Swedish. At that period she also started to write and adapt plays. Since that her plays and adaptations have been played all around Europe as well as in India and China. In 1995 she started in addition to her regular work to direct at different theatres of Helsinki, among others at the Finnish National Theatre and the Helsinki City Theatre. She also started collaboration with the festival Les Lumières, a festival inspired of the ideas of the Enlightenment. In 1999 she became dramaturge of Helsinki City Theatre and three years later manager and director of its Family Theatre-section. In 2007 she started to work as freelance and collaborated as dramaturge with Javier Torres in the ballet Sleeping Beauty at the Finnish National Opera and in 2010 she directed her adaptation by Moominpappa and the Sea of Tove Jansson at the Shanghai Grand Theatre in connection of the World Exposition in Shanghai.