Artists Appearing on Shakespeare For All
Tiffany Abercrombie
Tiffany Abercrombie is a semi-retired American actress. Trained at New York University and the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, she has appeared off-Broadway (Drunk Shakespeare) and off-off Broadway (La Mama, The Flea Theater, The Queen's Company). Her Shakespearean roles include Katharine in The Taming of the Shrew, Charles and Phoebe in As You Like It, Sir Toby Belch, Orsino, and Olivia in Twelfth Night, Lady Percy in Henry IV parts I & II, Horatio in Hamlet and Lady Macbeth in Macbeth. In 2020, Abercrombie appeared in multiple roles, including Lavinia, Portia, and Trinculo for The Show Must Go Online, a production of the entire Shakespeare canon as a Zoom/YouTube series.
Joseph Arkley
Joseph Arkley is a television, film, and stage actor. He received his BA in Drama at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland and has appeared in a wide range of productions at the Royal Shakespeare Company, the Perth Theatre, The Almeida, and other venues. His Shakespearean roles include Lucio in Measure for Measure, Richard III, Tybalt in Romeo and Juliet, Octavius Caesar in Julius Caesar, and Archidamus in The Winter’s Tale. He starred as Katherine in the gender-swapped production of The Taming of the Shrew at the Royal Shakespeare Company, directed by Justin Audibert. His television credits include The Capture, Andor, and Genius: Einstein; his film credits include Aftermath and Pelican Blood.
Michael Bertenshaw
Michael Bertenshaw is an English actor who works in film, television, radio, and theatre. Trained at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art and a member of the Royal Shakespeare Company from 1977 to 1979, Bertenshaw has an extensive list of theatre credits, including The Merchant of Venice, All’s Well That Ends Well, The Taming of The Shrew, Anne Boleyn, Henry VIII, Measure for Measure (Shakespeare’s Globe); McQueen (Haymarket, West End); One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest (Curve, Leicester); Hotel Cerise, Rapunzel, Red Riding Hood, Cinderella, Aladdin, Two Women, Not Fade Away, Just Frank, Wild Justice, Revolting Peasants (Theatre Royal Stratford East); Taking Care Of Baby (Hampstead Theatre); Inglorious Technicolour, and Absolutely Frank (Stephen Joseph Theatre). In 2020, Bertenshaw appeared in multiple roles, including Titus Andronicus, Old Capulet, Polonius, and King Lear, for The Show Must Go Online, a production of the entire Shakespeare canon as a Zoom/YouTube series.
Joyce Branagh
Joyce Branagh is a theatre director, writer and actor based in the northwest of England, but working throughout the UK and beyond. Branagh has been directing professionally since 1995, specialising in Shakespeare, Pantomime, Comedy and New Writing. Branagh’s film credits include Belfast and The Burying Party, and television credits include The Net - Prometheus, Coronation Street, #Actors, Clink, Porridge, Hollyoaks, and Emmerdale. Onstage, she has appeared in My White Best Friend, Diane Online, Two, Ladies That Bus, Death or Ice Cream, Trump, and Romeo and Juliet. In The Show Must Go Online, Branagh played the roles of Cardinal Wolsey in Henry VIII and Volumnia in Coriolanus.
Ashley Byam
Ashley Byam is a London-born theatre, film, and television actor. Trained as a dancer and a past member of the East London Youth Dance Company, he went on to study at the Oxford School of Drama, graduating in 2014. He has appeared in the films Legend (2015) and The Legend of Tarzan (2016), as well as the short films Different Bayern and Becoming Geno, and the BBC/Netflix show Giri/Haji and the BBC show Death in Paradise. Recently he appeared in Absolute Hell at the National Theatre in London and as part of an international tour of ‘The Velveteen Rabbit.’ He has performed in Love’s Labours Lost, The Taming of the Shrew, and, in 2011, in a touring production of Romeo and Juliet as Romeo. In 2020, Byam appeared in multiple roles, including Richard, Duke of Gloucester, and Richard III, for The Show Must Go Online, a production of the entire Shakespeare canon as a Zoom/YouTube series. Byam is co-founder of the new multi-disciplinary production company ALINEMENT Productions, which “specialises in telling stories centred around the Global Majority, Female and LGBTQI+ characters.”
Keith Hamilton Cobb
Keith Hamilton Cobb is an actor and a playwright who has been drawn mostly to the stage in his working life, but he is also recognized for several unique character portrayals he has created for television. He has appeared in classical and contemporary roles on regional stages country-wide. He is a graduate of New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts with a BFA in acting. His award-winning play, American Moor (published by Methuen Drama), which explores an African-American actor’s perspective through the metaphor of Shakespeare’s Othello, ran off-Broadway at Cherry Lane Theatre in the fall of 2019. It is the winner of an Elliot Norton Award, an AUDELCO Award, and two IRNE Awards, and it is part of the permanent collection of the Folger Shakespeare Library. Learn more at AmericanMoor.com and KeithHamiltonCobb.com.
Photo by Nina Wurtzel
Esmonde Cole
Esmonde Cole is a television and stage actor. His television credits include Citadel, Ted Lasso, The Cleaner, Back, Still So Awkward, and Autopsy. Onstage, he has appeared in Fracture, The Snow Queen, Market Boy, Macbeth: Director’s Cut, Learning to Swim, Run It Back, As You Like It, Cate & Mouse, and Flood Town. In The Show Must Go Online, Cole played King Edward in Richard III, Lance in Two Gentlemen of Verona, and Othello in Othello.
David Collins
David Collins is an actor, director and teacher. He has led acting classes at York University and George Brown College, developed and facilitated drama programs for grassroots arts organizations such as Fresh Arts, Dixon Hall, Regent Park Community Center and St. Christopher House, and led workshops in primary, secondary, and post-secondary schools throughout Southern Ontario with Shakespeare in Action. His directing work was recognized with a Dora nomination for Best Production (TYA) in 1993. He holds an MFA from York University and has tackled leading roles from classic to contemporary theatre, television, and film productions. His stage credits include Twelfth Night, A Taste of Honey, Romeo and Juliet, Twilight Cafe, and his Dora-nominated performances in Theatre Wum’s production of The America Play. He has also been actively involved in the development of new plays with such companies as Nightwood Theatre, Cahoots, and Canadian Stage Tarragon Theatre and the Shaw Festival. Collins is remembered in Toronto for his performances as Micheal in Djanet Sear's The Adventures of a Black Girl on Search of God.
Jeffrey Blair Cornell
An American actor, Jeffrey Blair Cornell has appeared in New York and across the country at such theatres as the Guthrie Theater, Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park, Pittsburgh Public Theater, and Paper Mill Playhouse, among others. His artistic home for the past 25 years has been as a company member with PlayMakers Repertory Company in Chapel Hill, NC. Many seasons have seen him play a great variety of Shakespearean roles, including Brutus, Henry IV, Caliban, Parolles, Duke Frederic/Senior, Pistol, Roderigo, and Trinculo. At the Guthrie, in Joseph Haj’s first season production of Pericles, Cornell played a trio of colorful characters: Antiochus, Simonides and Pandar. Some favorites at PlayMakers: Henry Higgins in My Fair Lady, Roy Cohn in Angels in America, Father Flynn in Doubt, Elyot in Private Lives, Uncle Peck in How I Learned to Drive, and Vanya in Vanya, Sonya, Masha and Spike. Cornell studied in New York with Uta Hagen at HB Studios and holds an MFA from the Professional Actor Training Program at UNC-Chapel Hill. A member of Actors’ Equity Association and Screen Actors Guild, Cornell serves as Teaching Professor and Associate Chair in the Department of Dramatic Art at UNC-CH.
Adam Courting
Adam Courting is a television, film, radio, and stage actor. On television, he has appeared in Chasing Shadows, Crimewatch, Ben Earle’s Deception, CTRL Freaks, Charlie Brooker’s 2011 Wipe, and The Apprentice - English Bubbles, and his film credits include Three. One. Six. and Reverie. His Shakespearean stage roles include Berowne, Katherine and Maria in Love’s Labours Lost, Prospero in The Tempest, Oberon, Theseus, and Bottom in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and King Phillip in King John. In The Show Must Go Online, he played Master Ford in The Merry Wives of Windsor and Richard Plantagent Duke of York in Henry VI Part 1.
Ray Dooley
Ray Dooley is an American actor with more than 40 years of professional acting experience that has spanned film, television, and stages across the United States and abroad, including Circle in the Square and CSC Repertory in New York; Yale Repertory Theatre; Hartford Stage Company; The Folger Theatre, Washington, D.C.; Seattle Repertory Theatre; Center Stage, Baltimore; Huntington Theatre Company, Boston; Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park; Alliance Theatre, Atlanta; and the Citadel Theatre, Edmonton, Canada, among many others. He is the recipient of a Village Voice OBIE Award for Distinguished Performance in Peer Gynt at CSC Repertory; he played Father Flynn in the European premiere of Doubt at Vienna’s English Theatre. He has performed in many of Shakespeare’s plays, including King Lear, Romeo and Juliet, The Tempest, Julius Caesar, Twelfth Night, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and Macbeth. As a professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, he was Head of the MFA Program in Acting from 2005-2018, and received the C. Knox Massey Award for Unusual, Meritorious, and Superior Service to the University.
Julian Glover, CBE
Julian Glover is an English actor with an extensive career in film, television, and theatre, including many performances with the Royal Shakespeare Company. Glover has appeared in many prominent television and film series, including James Bond: For Your Eyes Only, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back, and HBO’s Game of Thrones. He has also appeared in The Avengers, The Saint, Thriller, Doctor Who, Blake’s 7, Remington Steele, and Spies of Warsaw. In 1993, he was awarded a Laurence Olivier Award for his role as Henry IV in the Royal Shakespeare Company’s production of Henry IV Part 1 and Part 2. He is an Associate Artist of the Royal Shakespeare Company and an associate member of the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art. In 2013, Glover was appointed a Commander of the Order of the British Empire for services to drama.
Photo by Simon Purse
Amanda Harris
Amanda Harris is an English actress, an Associate Artist of the Royal Shakespeare Company. She was an early member of the theatre company Cheek By Jowl, performing in four groundbreaking productions that led them to winning the Laurence Olivier Award for Best Newcomer, before joining the Royal Shakespeare Company in 1986. In 2003, she appeared in the all-female productions of The Taming of the Shrew and Richard III at Shakespeare’s Globe. She also played Katherine alongside Anton Lesser as Petruchio in The Taming of the Shrew at the RSC in 1992. In 2005, she won the Olivier Award for Best Supporting Actress for her role as Emilia in Othello with the RSC. Other RSC roles include Titania in A Midsummer Night’s Dream and Celia in As You Like It. Her recent roles with the RSC include Aeneas in Troilus and Cressida, Baptista in The Taming of the Shrew, and Provost in Measure for Measure. She was made an RSC Associate Artist in 2018.
Kelly Hunter, MBE
Kelly Hunter, MBE, is an English actress and the Founder and Director of Flute Theatre. She is a member of the Royal Shakespeare Company and the National Theatre. During her extensive career acting for film, television, radio, and the stage, she has been nominated for a Laurence Olivier Award and has received a Radio Academy Award and a UK Theatre Award (for her role as Rosalind in As You Like It, 1995). Her other Shakespeare roles include Lady Constance, Goneril, and Hermione. In 2002, Hunter began working with children with autism through her theatre company Touchstone Shakespeare Theatre. Through this work, she developed the Hunter Heartbeat Method, which is the basis of the productions at Flute Theatre, which produces interactive performances for audiences of children with autism and their families (See our “Partners” page). In 2019, Hunter was appointed Member of the Order of the British Empire for services to theatre.
Paterson Joseph
Paterson Joseph is a British actor with an extensive career acting for film, television, and the stage. Joseph first appeared with the Royal Shakespeare Company in 1990; his performances as Oswald in King Lear, Dumaine in Love’s Labours Lost, and the Marquis de Mota in The Last Days of Don Juan earned him second prize in the Ian Charleson Awards, honoring the best classical stage performances in Britain by actors under age 30. He starred as Othello at the Royal Exchange, Manchester, and has also performed in Troilus and Cressida, Hamlet, Henry IV, and the television film The Hollow Crown: Henry V. In 2004, as part of the documentary My Shakespeare filmed for Channel 4, Joseph directed Romeo & Juliet with 20 actors from the Harlesden area of London, where he grew up. In 2012, he played Brutus for the RSC production of Julius Caesar, set in contemporary Africa -- the first all-black British production of Shakespeare. Paterson wrote a book about the experience entitled Julius Caesar and Me: Exploring Shakespeare’s African Play. Paterson is also the author of Sancho: An Act of Remembrance, a one-man show that he has performed in Britain and America. This play tells the story of Charles Ignatius Sancho, an African man who was born on a slave ship, became a prominent abolitionist and composer, and made history in 1774 as the first British-African to cast a vote in England.
Photo by Tristram Kenton
Stephen Leask
Stephen Leask is a London-born television, film, and stage actor. A graduate of the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art, he has appeared in Our World War, Trigger Point, County Lines, Doctors, True Horror, and EastEnders. His stage credits include School of Rock, Waitress, Robin Hood, and the production of Troilus and Cressida by the Royal Shakespeare Company and the Edinburgh International Festival (part of the 2006-2007 Complete Works Festival).
Anton Lesser
Anton Lesser is an English actor who has performed a wide range of roles on film, television, and the stage. A graduate of the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, he is well known for his roles as Qyburn in the HBO series Game of Thrones; as Thomas More in Wolf Hall, for which he received a nomination for the British Academy Television Award for Best Supporting Actor; as Harold Macmillan in The Crown; and as Chief Superintendent Bright in Endeavour. He is also an associate artist with the Royal Shakespeare Company. His many Shakespearean roles have included Hamlet, Troilus, Edgar, Petruchio, Romeo, Henry Bolingbroke, Brutus, Leontes, and Richard III. He also played the Duke of Exeter in the BBC television series The Hollow Crown (2012 and 2016). He has recorded extensively for radio and spoken word audio, including Paradise Lost, The Odyssey, and award-winning productions of the novels of Charles Dickens.
Kimisha Lewis
Kimisha Lewis is a British Actress whose credits include stage, voiceover, writing, and stunt performance work. An Acting graduate of Rose Bruford, Lewis performed in the Olivier-nominated production of The Upstart Crow (Gielgud Theatre, 2019) and in the OFFIE finalist production of Freeman (international tour). Other productions include Bright Places (2018), Noughts and Crosses (2018), Over the Top (2017), and Macbeth (2017), in which Lewis played Lady Macbeth. Lewis is a board member for EGO Performance Company, established in 2006 to “produce a dynamic, original and eclectic programme of arts to be celebrated and enjoyed by everyone.”
Danann McAleer
Danann McAleer is a stage and film actor. Trained at the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School, he has appeared in Is That All There Is?, Awumbuk, Watch Over Me, and Conversations with Strangers. His theatre credits include Richard II, Pump Girl, Under the Greenwood Tree, Our Country’s Good, The Arrivals, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Frankenstein, The Tempest, The Comedy of Errors, King Lear, The Tempest, and As You Like It. For The Show Must Go Online, he played Antigonus in The Winter’s Tale, Parolles in All’s Well that Ends Well, and Bolingbrook in Richard II.
Rob Myles
Rob Myles is a multi-award-winning actor, writer and director, a member of the Shakespeare Theatre Association and the British Shakespeare Association. He is the creator of The Shakespeare Deck, the Artistic Director of The Show Must Go Online, workshop leader of Cracking The Shakespeare Code, author of Ragnarok - The Last Viking, curator of Fight Rep, and has worked across theatre, film, documentary, voice over and more. Over thirteen years as an actor, he has played a wide range of Shakespearean roles in national touring and immersive productions, including: Autolycus (Winter's Tale), Banquo (Macbeth), Bedford (Henry V), Benedick (Much Ado), Berowne (Love's Labour's Lost), Bottom (A Midsummer Night's Dream), Brutus (Julius Caesar), Claudius (Hamlet), Chorus (Henry V), Dauphin (Henry V), Douglas (Henry IV Part I), Egeus (MSND), Friar Laurence (Romeo and Juliet), Lennox (Macbeth), Leontes (Winter's Tale), Malvolio (Twelfth Night), Nym (Henry V), Oberon (A Midsummer Night's Dream), Paris (Romeo & Juliet), Petruchio (Taming of The Shrew), Pinch (Comedy of Errors), Puck (A Midsummer Night's Dream), Sampson (Romeo & Juliet), Sebastian (Twelfth Night), Siward & Young Siward (Macbeth), Theseus (A Midsummer Night's Dream). Relentless inquiry into Shakespeare in performance during this period led him to create The Shakespeare Deck: a powerful, portable and practical toolkit for classical actors to wield the power of classical text, sold to date in the US, Canada, Australia, France, Germany, Australia and in the Royal Court Bookshop in London. In 2020, Rob created The Show Must Go Online, directing Shakespeare’s complete First Folio plays in the order they were believed to have been written, one a week every week for 36 weeks. Over that span, Rob worked with over 500 actors and creatives from around the world, including veterans of the RSC, Shakespeare's Globe, Broadway, Hollywood and more, attracting 250,000+ audience members from 60 countries, and winning three awards from OffWestEnd, including the 5th OneOff Award ever given. TSMGO has gone on to champion early career directors from under-represented backgrounds in theatre to create their own interpretations of early-modern productions.
Jonathan Oliver
Jonathan Oliver is a television, film, radio, and stage actor. His film credits include Peterloo, Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, The Return of the Jedi, and Death Watch/La Mort en Direct. On television, he has appeared in Agincourt, The Bill, Raffles, the Gentleman Thief, Eskimo Day, Breakout, King of the Ghetto, and Hannay. His Shakespearean roles include Malvolio/Sir Andrew Aguecheek in Twelfth Night, Enobarbus in Antony and Cleopatra, Banquo, Duncan, and Ross in Macbeth, Achilles in Troilus and Cressida, Oberon/Theseus in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Duke Senior/Duke Frederick/Corin/Audrey in As You Like It, and the Duke of Milan in Two Gentlemen of Verona. In The Show Must Go Online, he played Menenius Agrippa in Coriolanus.
Yolanda Ovide
A graduate from the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art, Yolanda Ovide has had the joy of working with Mischief Theatre in A Comedy about A Bank Robbery, Secret Cinema in Casino Royale, and Womens Write in The Guide to Not Being a Shit Feminist at The Vaults Festival. During lockdown Yolanda has worked with The Show Must Go Online in various Shakespeare roles including Miranda in The Tempest. In 2020 she won Paradox Theatre Company's Monologue Competition Actor Prize and also performed as 'Juliet' in The Shakespeare Republic #AllTheWebsAStage (The Lockdown Chronicles) Web series. Straight out of Lockdown, Yolanda has performed in Persephone, a new writing project, and is currently touring the UK as 'Moon' in Mischief's Groan Ups.
Ruth Page
Ruth Page is an English actress. Page graduated from the Royal Birmingham Conservatoire in 2019 and has gone on to work in a range of stage and screen projects. Credits include: Claire in Immigration Crisis: The Musical (Prickly Pear Productions), First Witch/Thane of Ross/Donalbain in Macbeth (Tread the Boards), Fancy Day in Under The Greenwood Tree and Pussycat in The Owl & The Pussycat (Hammerpuzzle at the Everyman Theatre, Cheltenham), Henry V in Henry V, Lord Clifford in Henry VI Part III, Salerio in The Merchant of Venice, Ensemble in Shakespeare's Star Wars, Romeo/Third Witch/Miranda in Ian Doescher's A Christmas Carol (The Show Must Go Online), Singer in 52 Souls (Chronic Insanity), and Woman in Body (Opsis Theatre Company). Ruth is also an Associate Artist of Nottingham-based theatre company Chronic Insanity. Page has also appeared in The Show Must Go Online, a production of the entire Shakespeare canon as a Zoom/YouTube series. (Image © Darren Bell)
Claire Price
Claire Price is an English television, film, radio, and stage actress. She featured in the television dramas Rebus and Home Fires, and won Best Actress for her role as Alice in Jump at the 2012 British Independent Film Festival. She performed in The Relapse, Cyrano de Bergerac, and The Power of Yes at the Royal National Theatre. Her Shakespearean performances include Hermione in The Winter’s Tale, Lady Anne in Richard III, Helena in A Midsummer Night's Dream, Goneril in King Lear, Olivia in Twelfth Night, Beatrice in Much Ado About Nothing, Miranda in The Tempest, and Rosalind in As You Like It. With the Royal Shakespeare Company, she performed in Measure for Measure and The Taming of the Shrew, in which she played the lead role of Petruchia.
Mark Quartley
Mark Quartley is a television, film, radio, and stage actor. His Shakespearean roles have included the Duke in Measure for Measure, Lysander in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Claudio in Measure for Measure, Ferdinand in The Tempest, and Malcolm in Macbeth. In 2017, Quarterly played Ariel in an RSC production of The Tempest in an innovative motion-capture format created with Intel and the Imaginarium, the studio founded in 2012 by Andy Serkis after his experience with performance capture while performing Gollum for The Lord of the Rings films. Said Quartley about this innovative production, “I feel like there is a place for everything in Shakespeare, it has already been done in so many different ways, and if we can start finding new ways of discovering his work, then all the better.”
Scott Ripley
Scott Ripley is an American actor who has acted and directed at numerous theaters across the United States and abroad. As an actor, he has worked at La Jolla Playhouse, Cincinnati Playhouse, A.C.T., Moscow Art Theater, Taiwan National Theater, Folger Theatre, the American Repertory Theatre, PlayMakers Repertory Company, Connecticut Repertory Theatre, and the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. He has directed productions at Actors Theatre of Charlotte, Connecticut Repertory Theatre, Theatre Row (off-Broadway), Cape Rep Theatre, and at Theater aan het Spui and Zeeheldentheater, both in Den Haag, Netherlands. His Shakespearean roles include Menas and Proculeius in Antony and Cleopatra, Prince Hal in Henry IV, Parts 1 and 2, Henry V, Mistress Quickly, and the Chorus in Henry V, Claudio in Much Ado About Nothing, Ferdinand in The Tempest, Jaques in As You Like It, and Antiochus, Simonides, Pandar, and Pericles in Pericles. He is currently Chair of Theatre and Director of the Undergraduate Theatre Program at the University of San Diego.
Gabrielle Sheppard
Gabrielle Sheppard is a television, film, and stage actor. She has appeared in Seagull, The Outlaws, and Mammals. Onstage, her credits include Normalcy, Pigeons on L’edge, Snow Mouse, Jeff Wayne’s Musical Version of the War of the Worlds, The Pixie’s Scarf, One Man, Two Guvnors, The Soldier’s Tale, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Foodie, and Happiness Ltd. For The Show Must Go Online, she played Imogen in Cymbeline, Peter Quince in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and Marcellus in Hamlet.
Maya Smoot
Maya Smoot received her BA in Drama from San Francisco State University and her MFA in Acting from the University of California, Irvine. She has performed with CounterBalance Theater and the New Swan Shakespeare Festival, and has appeared in The Two Gentlemen of Verona, The Merchant of Venice, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, The Winter’s Tale, Mad Madge, and The Precious Damsels.
Katy Stephens
Katy Stephens is an English actress with an extensive career acting in Shakespeare’s plays. At Shakespeare’s Globe, she has performed the roles of Calpurnia and Iras; with the Royal Shakespeare Company, with whom she is an Associate Artist, she has played Rosalind, Tamora, Cleopatra, Regan, Petruchio, Joan of Arc, and Margaret of Anjou; she has also played Agrippa, Cominius, Emilia, and Titania. She won the WhatsOnStage Award for Best Actress in 2009 for her performance of Joan of Arc/Margaret of Anjou in the RSC’s Histories Cycle. She was also part of the team that won the Olivier Award for Best Ensemble Performance for that same production. She played Nicky in the television series London’s Burning. Stephens is a board member for EGO Performance Company, established in 2006 to “produce a dynamic, original and eclectic programme of arts to be celebrated and enjoyed by everyone.” Within EGO, Stephens runs the company “BOLD AS BARD,” a Shakespeare Theatre Company for learning disabled adults.
Juliet Stevenson, CBE
Juliet Stevenson, CBE, is an English drama and screen actress. She has appeared in the films Emma, Bend It Like Beckham, Mona Lisa Smile, Being Julia, Nicholas Nickleby, Infamous, and Truly, Madly, Deeply, for which she was nominated for the BAFTA Award for Best Actress in a Leading Role. She has appeared in many productions for the Royal Shakespeare Company and the National Theatre. She won the 1992 Olivier Award for Best Actress for her role as Paulina in Death and the Maiden. She started work with the Royal Shakespeare Company in 1978 and went on to perform the roles of Isabella, Cressida, and Rosalind with the RSC. In 2017, she appeared as Gertrude in Hamlet at the Almeida Theatre & Harold Pinter Theatre. In 2016, she was featured in a video for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, the UN agency mandated to aid and protect refugees. Today, she is a patron of Young Roots, an organization whose mission is to improve the well-being and life chances of young refugees and asylum seekers in the UK and overseas. She was appointed a Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1999.
Donald Sumpter
Donald Sumpter is an English television, film, and stage actor. His film credits include The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, The Constant Gardener, Enigma, and Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead. He has appeared in numerous television series including Chernobyl, Endeavour, Peaky Blinders, Doctor Who, Bleak House, and Black Mirror. He played Maester Luwin in Seasons One and Two of Game of Thrones. He has performed in many productions with the Royal Shakespeare Company, including as Iachimo in Cymbeline, Marcus Andronicus in Titus Andronicus, Orsino in Twelth Night, and Don John in Much Ado About Nothing.
Janet Suzman, DBE
Dame Janet Suzman, DBE, is a South African/British actress with an extensive career, beginning as an acclaimed member of the original Royal Shakespeare Company, with such roles as Joan La Pucelle, Rosaline, Portia, Ophelia, Beatrice, Celia, Rosalind, Lavinia, and a lauded performance of Cleopatra. She directed Kim Cattrall in the role in 2012. She has twice won the Evening Standard Award for Chekhov and Fugard, and she has appeared in many television mini-series (The Singing Detective) and films (Draughstman’s Contract). Her Empress Alexandra in Nicholas and Alexandra earned her nominations for both Academy and Golden Globe Awards. Niece of Helen Suzman, South Africa’s eminent anti-apartheid campaigner, she broke the Equity boycott to confront the apartheid issue in her production of Othello at the Market Theatre, Johannesburg in 1987, and filmed it for Channel Four TV. She wrote, starred in, and directed her adaptation of Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard set in post-Mandela South Africa for Birmingham Repertory Theatre. Her book Not Hamlet: Meditations on the Frail History of Women in Drama was published in 2008. She was appointed Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire for services to drama in 2011, and in 2012 she was awarded the Pragnell Award for lifetime services to Shakespeare. She is an Honorary Life member of the Shakespeare Association of Great Britain and is Chair of the British Committee for the Reunification of the Parthenon Marbles.
Austin Tichenor
Austin Tichenor is an actor, playwright, director, and co-Artistic Director of the Reduced Shakespeare Company, for whom he’s written ten stage comedies that include William Shakespeare’s Long Lost First Play (abridged) and Hamlet’s Big Adventure! (a prequel), (all co-written with his RSC Partner Reed Martin). He's also the co-author (with Reed) of Pop-Up Shakespeare (illustrated by Jennie Maizels), and Reduced Shakespeare: The Complete Guide for the Attention-Impaired (abridged). Onstage, Austin has played Claudius in Hamlet; Richard Burbage in Lauren Gunderson’s The Book of Will; the Prince of Aragon in The Merchant of Venice for the Back Room Shakespeare Project; Hamlet, Sir Toby Belch, Cleopatra, Juliet, and Shakespeare himself in William Shakespeare’s Long Lost First Play (abridged); and Cardinal Pandulph, Duke Senior, and Pandarus in Robert Myles’ productions of King John, As You Like It, and Troilus and Cressida for The Show Must Go Online. An actor in films and television, Austin has also acted and directed off-Broadway, in the West End, and on stages around the world His recent directorial credits include Twelfth Night at Cincinnati Shakespeare Company and Much Ado About Nothing at Pacific University.
Stuart Vincent
Stuart Vincent is a film and stage actor. He has appeared in When the Screaming Starts, The Compendium of Shitty Men, Good Luck, Dancing with the Devil, What Could Have Been, Body Shop, and Hero. Onstage, he has appeared in The Kite Runner, Play On! Shakespeare, Dance Class, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, Undercover, and Break the Floorboards. His Shakespearean roles include Mercutio, Lysander/Thisbe/Flute, and Macduff. For The Show Must Go Online, he played Octavius Caesar in Antony & Cleopatra.
Harriet Walter, DBE
Dame Harriet Walter, DBE, is an English actress with an extensive career in film, television, and drama. She has performed many roles with the Royal Shakespeare Company, including Helena in All’s Well That Ends Well; Imogen; Viola (Laurence Olivier Award); Beatrice; Lady Macbeth; and Cleopatra. She played Elizabeth I in the 2005 revival of Mary Stuart and won the Evening Standard Award for Best Actress for the role and a Tony Award nomination for Best Actress in a Play when she performed the role on Broadway in 2009. She has also appeared in the television series Downton Abbey; The Crown; Succession, for which she received an Emmy nomination; and Killing Eve. In 2016, she performed the roles of Brutus, Prospero, and King Henry IV for director Phyllida Lloyd’s all-female productions at the Donmar Warehouse, productions set in a female prison. Dame Harriet is a patron of the charities Prisoners Abroad, which supports Britons imprisoned abroad, and Clean Break, a theatre company for women affected by the criminal justice system. Dame Harriet also supports the Graeae Theatre for the Deaf and Disabled and The West London Welcome refugee centre. She has written numerous books on acting and Shakespeare, including Clamorous Voices: Shakespeare’s Women Today, Other People’s Shoes: Thoughts on Acting, and Brutus and Other Heroines: Playing Shakespeare’s Roles for Women. She was appointed Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 2011 for services to drama.
Andrew Woodall
Andrew Woodall is a British film and stage actor. His film credits include Solo: A Star Wars Story, Regeneration, and The Count of Monte Cristo. He has performed at the Royal Court (Weldon Rising, Search and Destroy, The Sugar Syndrome), the Old Vic (King Lear, The Provok'd Wife, Cloud Nine, and Jack Manningham in Gaslight), the National Theatre (including Racing Demon, The Voysey Inheritance, The Life of Galileo, Luther, Much Ado About Nothing), and the Harold Pinter Theatre (South Downs, The Browning Version). On television, he has appeared in numerous dramas including Prime Suspect, Kavanagh QC, Gimme, Gimme, Gimme, and Silk. For the RSC 2017 Rome Season, he played Enobarbus in Antony and Cleopatra and Julius Caesar in Julius Caesar.
