Over more than 35 years, Cieplak worked with leading Polish theatre companies, most notably the National Theatre in Warsaw, with which he became associated in 2014.
He had been scheduled this season to stage an adaptation of Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead by Nobel Prize-winning author Olga Tokarczuk.
Cieplak directed more than 20 stage productions and created about a dozen premieres for Polish Television Theatre. His most celebrated works included Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot, Shakespeare's King Lear and Twelfth Night, and Georg Büchner's Woyzeck.
Friends and colleagues remembered him as a gifted artist, "a humanist with a love for life," and "a wonderful man who had an exceptional ability to establish rapport with actors."
One critic wrote that Cieplak "knew how to communicate his ideas to them in a way they thought they were theirs."
Cieplak taught for many years at the Warsaw Drama Academy. His honours included Poland's Gold Gloria Artis Medal for Cultural Merit and several major theatre awards.