Mark Rylance

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Mark Rylance

Born January 18, 1960 (1960-01-18) (age 48)
Ashford, Kent

Mark Rylance (born January 18, 1960) is an internationally well-known English actor and theatre director.

Rylance has numerous stage credits. as well as film roles that include Ferdinand in Prospero's Books (after a play by William Shakespeare), Jay in Intimacy (after a novel by Hanif Kureishi) and Jakob van Gunten in Institute Benjamenta (after a novel by Robert Walser (writer)). He was the first Artistic Director of Shakespeare's Globe in London, from 1995 to 2005.

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[edit] Early life

Rylance was born Mark Waters in England, the son of Anne and David Waters, both English teachers (as an adult, he took the stage name of Mark Rylance because the name Mark Waters was already taken by someone else registered with Actors Equity). When he was two, his parents moved to Connecticut in the United States and in 1971, to Wisconsin, where his father was headmaster at a prestigious preparatory school, the University School of Milwaukee. Mark later attended the school, where he began acting. His first notable role was Hamlet in a 1976 production (with his own father as the First Gravedigger), and the next year Puck in A Midsummer Night's Dream, during the First Shakespeare Festival at his father's school.

[edit] Acting career

With considerable juvenile experience already in hand, Rylance won a scholarship by audition to the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts (RADA) in London. There he trained from 1978-1980 under Hugh Cruttwell, and with Barbara Bridgmont at the Chrysalis Theatre School, Balham, London. In 1980 he got his first professional work at the Glasgow Citizens' Theatre.

In 1982 and 1983, Rylance performed with the Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC) both in Stratford upon Avon and London. In 1987, he was featured in Mike Alfred's Shared Experience at the Royal National Theatre (RNT), with Claire van Kampen, musician and composer (the first female Musical Director at the RNT and RSC, and both at the same time). Rylance and van Kampen would marry in 1989.

In 1988, Rylance played Hamlet with the RSC in Ron Daniels' acclaimed production that toured Ireland and England for a year. The play then ran in Stratford-upon-Avon, where Mark alternated Hamlet with Romeo in the production of Romeo and Juliet that inaugurated the rebuilt Swan theatre in Stratford. Hamlet toured to the United States for two years.

In 1990, Rylance and van Kampen founded "Phoebus' Cart", their own theatre company. The following year, the company staged The Tempest on the road in unique, unusual sites. Also in 1991, Rylance played the lead in Gillies Mackinnon's film The Grass Arena (1991), and won the BBC Radio Times Award for Best Newcomer. In 1993, he starred in Matthew Warchus' production of Much Ado About Nothing at the Queen's Theatre, produced by Thelma Holt. His Benedick won him an Olivier Award for Best Actor.

In 2007, Rylance performed in Boeing Boeing in London. In 2008, he reprised the role on Broadway and subsequently won a Drama Desk Award for his performance.

[edit] Artistic directorship of Globe Theatre

In 1995, Rylance was named first Artistic Director of Shakespeare's Globe Theatre, a role he would serve until 2005.

  • Rylance directed and acted in every season, both in Shakespeare's works and those of his contemporaries, notably in the all-male productions of Twelfth Night and Richard II.
  • Under his directorate, the first new play for the Globe in 400 years, Augustine's Oak (ref. to Augustine of Canterbury and Christianisation of Anglo-Saxon England) written by Peter Oswald, writer-in-residence, was performed in 1999. A second play by Oswald followed in 2002: The Golden Ass or the Curious Man. In 2005, his third play written for the Globe was performed for the first time: The Storm, an adaptation of Plautus' comedy Rudens (The Rope) - one of the sources of The Tempest by William Shakespeare.
  • Other historical first nights organized by 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, and Much Ado about Nothing at Hampton Court in summer 2004 .

[edit] Shakespeare controversy

On September 8, 2007, Derek Jacobi and Mark Rylance unveiled a Declaration of Reasonable Doubt on the authorship of Shakespeare's work, after the final matinee of "I am Shakespeare," a play in Chichester, England.

The "real" author was identified as Christopher Marlowe, Francis Bacon, the Earl of Oxford, Edward de Vere, or Mary Sidney, Mary Sidney Herbert, Countess of Pembroke. The declaration named 20 prominent doubters of the past, including Mark Twain, Orson Welles, Sir John Gielgud and Charlie Chaplin and was made by Shakespeare Authorship Coalition duly signed online by 300 people to begin a new research. Jacobi and Rylance presented a copy of the document to William Leahy, head of English at Brunel University, London.[1]

Rylance wrote (co-conceived by John Dove) a play called The BIG Secret Live—I am Shakespeare—Webcam Daytime Chatroom Show (A comedy of Shakespearean identity crisis) which toured England in 2007.

[edit] Theatre credits

[edit] At Shakespeare's Globe Theatre

[edit] Other theatre roles

[edit] Filmography

  • The McGuffin (1985) .... Gavin
  • Wallenberg: A Hero's Story (1985) (TV) .... Nikki Fodor
  • The Grass Arena (1991) .... John Healy (won the BBC Radio Times Award for Best Newcomer)
  • Prospero's Books (1991) .... Ferdinand
  • Love Lies Bleeding (1993) (TV) .... Conn
  • Loving (1995) (TV) .... Charlie Raunce
  • Institute Benjamenta, or This Dream People Call Human Life (1995) .... Jakob van Gunten
  • Angels & Insects (1995) .... William Adamson
  • Henry V (1997) (TV) .... King Henry V
  • Intimacy (2001) .... Jay
  • Leonardo (2003) (TV) .... Leonardo Da Vinci
  • Hearts of Fire (1987) .... Fizz
  • Richard II (2003) (TV) .... Richard II
  • The Government Inspector (2005) (TV) .... Dr. David Kelly
  • The Other Boleyn Girl (2008) .... Thomas Boleyn

[edit] As himself

  • Changing Stages (2001) (TV) Series .... Himself
  • William Shakespeare (2000) .... Artistic Director, Shakespeare's Globe

[edit] Archive footage

  • Celebrity Naked Ambition (2003) (TV)

[edit] Notable TV guest appearances

  • Breakfast playing "Himself" 19 April 2004
  • Biography playing "Hamlet/Himself" in episode: Hamlet February 1995

[edit] Books

  • Mark Rylance: Play - A Recollection in Pictures and Words of the First Five Years of Play at Shakespeares's Globe Theatre. Photogr.: Sheila Burnett, Donald Cooper, Richard Kolina, John Tramper. Shakespeare's Globe Publ., London, UK. 2003. ISBN 0-9536480-4-4.
  • The Wisdom of Shakespeare Series by Peter Dawkins (Foreword by Mark Rylance):
  • The Wisdom of Shakespeare in As You Like It. I.C. Media Productions, 1998. Paperback. ISBN 0-9532890-1-X.
  • The Wisdom of Shakespeare in The Merchant of Venice. I.C. Media Productions, 1998. Paperback. ISBN 0-9532890-0-1.
  • The Wisdom of Shakespeare in Julius Caesar. I.C. Media Productions, 1999. Paperback. ISBN 0-9532890-2-8.
  • The Wisdom of Shakespeare in The Tempest. I.C. Media Productions, 2000. Paperback. ISBN 0-9532890-3-6.
  • The Wisdom of Shakespeare in Twelfth Night. I.C. Media Productions, 2002. Paperback. ISBN 0-9532890-4-4.
  • Peter Dawkins. The Shakespeare Enigma (Foreword by Mark Rylance). Polair, UK. 2004. Illustrated paperback, 476pp. ISBN 0-9545389-4-3.

[edit] References

  1. ^ Yahoo.com, Coalition aims to expose Shakespeare

[edit] External links

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