Actor and director, born in Kent, SE England, UK. Brought up in Milwaukee, WI, he trained as an actor at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art and with the Chrysalis Theatre School, London. He was given his first job in 1980 at the Glasgow Citizens Theatre. Since then he has worked for many of Britain's leading theatre companies, including Shared Experience (touring), the Bush in London, the Contact Theatre in Manchester, the Royal Court in London, the Oxford Playhouse, the Royal National Theatre, and the Royal Shakespeare Company. In 1994 he received an Olivier Award for Best Actor in Thelma Holt's production of Much Ado About Nothing. He has always demonstrated an extraordinary affinity for the works of Shakespeare, and in 1995 was appointed founding artistic director of Shakespeare's Globe Theatre on London's South Bank. Performances at the Globe include Two Gentlemen of Verona (1996), Henry V (1997), Anthony and Cleopatra (1999, playing Cleopatra), Hamlet (2000), and Twelfth Night (2002, playing Olivia). For the Globe he has directed Triumphs and Mirths (1997) and Julius Caesar (1999). Film work includes Prospero's Books (1991) and Intimacy (2000), and he won a BAFTA best actor award for Channel 4 television's The Government Inspector (2005). He stepped down as artistic director of the Globe at the end of 2005 and was succeeded by Dominic Dromgoole.
| Mark Rylance | |
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Mark Rylance as the Duke in Measure For Measure |
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| Born |
January 18, 1960 (age 46) Ashford, Kent, England |
Mark Rylance (born January 18, 1960) is an internationally well-known actor and theatre director.
Rylance was born in Ashford, Kent, England, his various film roles include Ferdinand in Prospero's Books (after a play by William Shakespeare), Jay in Intimacy (after a novel by Hanif Kureishi) or Jakob van Gunten in Institute Benjamenta (after a novel by Robert Walser), where he worked with directors like Peter Greenaway, Patrice Chéreau or the Brothers Quay.
He was the first Artistic Director of Shakespeare's Globe in London, from 1995 to 2005. His first notable role was Hamlet in a 1976 school production (with his own father as the First Gravedigger), and the next year Puck in A Midsummer Night's Dream, during the University School of Milwaukee's First Shakespeare Festival.
1982/3: playing for the Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC) both in Stratford upon Avon and London.
1980s: worked with the London Theatre of Imagination, Royal Opera House, English Stage Company at the Royal Court Theatre (with Max Stafford Clark).
1987: work with Mike Alfreds' Shared Experience at the Royal National Theatre (RNT), met Claire van Kampen, musician and composer (the first female Musical Director at the RNT and RSC, and both at the same time).
1988: played Hamlet with the RSC in Ron Daniels' acclaimed production that toured Ireland and England for a year.
1991 (summer): performing The Tempest in magic sites with Phoebus' Cart: at the Rollright Stones Circle in Oxfordshire, the ruins of Corfe Castle in Dorset and the site of not yet started Shakespeare's Globe (* Shakespeare's Globe online) in London. Mark was then invited by Sam Wanamaker to join the Board of Directors of Shakespeare's Globe, thus getting involved with the project.
1991: played the lead in Gillies Mackinnon's film The Grass Arena, and won the BBC Radio Times Award for Best Newcomer.
1995-2005: first Artistic Director of Shakespeare's Globe Theatre.
Under his directorate, the first new play for the Globe in 400 years, Augustine's Oak (ref. In 2005 the third play of Peter Oswald written for the Globe was performed for the first time: The Storm, an adaptation of Plautus' comedy Rudens (The Rope), that was one of the sources of The Tempest by William Shakespeare.
Other historical first nights organized by Mark Rylance as director of Shakespeare's Globe include Twelfth Night performed in 2002 at Middle Temple, to commemorate its first performance there exactly 400 years before.
Claire van Kampen is Artistic Associate and Director of theatre Music at the Globe since 1995.
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