JOHN BELL
Artistic Director
John Bell is one of Australia’s most acclaimed theatre personalities. In a career of acting and directing, John Bell has been instrumental in shaping the Australian theatre industry as we know it.
After graduating from Sydney University in 1962, John Bell worked for the Old Tote Theatre Company, all of Australia’s state theatre companies and was an Associate Artist of the Royal Shakespeare Company in the United Kingdom. As co-founder of Sydney’s Nimrod Theatre Company, John Bell presented many productions of landmark Australian plays including David Williamson’s Travelling North, The Club and The Removalists. He also initiated an Australian Shakespeare style with Nimrod productions such as Much Ado About Nothing and Macbeth.
In 1990 John Bell founded The Bell Shakespeare Company where his productions have included Hamlet, Romeo And Juliet, The Taming Of The Shrew, Richard 3, Pericles, Henry 4, Henry 5, Julius Caesar, Antony And Cleopatra, The Comedy Of Errors, Wars Of The Roses, Measure For Measure, Macbeth and As You Like It, as well as Goldoni’s The Servant Of Two Masters, Gogol’s The Government Inspector and Ben Jonson’s The Alchemist.
John Bell’s Shakespeare roles include Hamlet, Shylock, Henry V, Richard III, Macbeth, Malvolio, Berowne, Petruchio, Leontes, Coriolanus, Prospero, King Lear and Titus Andronicus. He played the title role in two co-productions with Queensland Theatre Company: Richard 3 and Heiner Müller’s Anatomy Titus Fall Of Rome: A Shakespeare Commentary. John Bell has also directed a production of Madame Butterfly for an Oz Opera national tour.
John Bell is an Officer of the Order of Australia and the Order of the British Empire. He has an Honorary Doctorate of Letters from the Universities of Sydney, New South Wales and Newcastle. In 1997 he was named by the National Trust of Australia as one of Australia’s Living Treasures. In 2003 the Australia Business Arts Foundation awarded John the Dame Elisabeth Murdoch Cultural Leadership Award.
His many awards as an actor and director include a Helpmann Award for Best Actor (Richard 3, 2002), a Producers and Directors Guild Award for Lifetime Achievement and the JC Williamson Award (2009) for extraordinary contribution to Australia’s live entertainment industry.
PETER EVANS
Associate Artistic Director
Artistic Director, Mind's Eye
Peter’s directing credits include Life Without Me, Dead Man’s Cell Phone, The Ugly One, God of Carnage, Savage River (co production with Griffin Theatre Company), Realism, The Hypocrite, Blackbird, Don Juan in Soho, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, The History Boys, Don’s Party, The Give and Take, Dumbshow, and The Daylight Atheist for Melbourne Theatre Company; The Grenade, The Great, Fat Pig, and The Give and Take for Sydney Theatre Company; Hamlet, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead, King Lear, Copenhagen, Proof, Muldoon, and The Christian Brothers for New Zealand’s Court Theatre; The Tempest, The Two Gentlemen of Verona and Macbeth for Bell Shakespeare; The Daylight Atheist for Queensland Theatre Company and The Yellow Wallpaper for Malthouse and the Store Room. His other Australian credits include Jesus Hopped the A Train for Red Stitch Actors Theatre; A Poor Student for the Store Room at the Malthouse Theatre; Sexual Perversity in Chicago for Theatre Jamb at the Bondi Pavilion; Kiss of the Spiderwoman for Theatre Adami at the Stables and The Dumb Waiter for the Studio Company at Belvoir St Theatre.
In 2006 Peter was Associate Director for the Bell Shakespeare Company and from 2007 until 2010 he was Associate Director for the Melbourne Theatre Company.
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