Robert J Williamson

Robert was born in Leeds and trained at RADA. He is the founder of the British Shakespeare Company, as well as the Edinburgh, Brighton, Holland Park, Birmingham, Leicester, Kew Gardens, Nottingham, Oxford, Arundel and Leeds Shakespeare Festivals. After establishing his Company and becoming the most successful open-air producer of Shakespeare in the country, in 2003 Robert played the title role in Hamlet and also Touchstone in As You Like It, directing both shows. Both productions transferred to the West End at the Holland Park Theatre, making Robert one of the only actor-managers in history to take a self-directed Hamlet into London’s West End. His other Shakespearean actor-director credits include: title roles in Henry V and Macbeth, Benedick in Much Ado About Nothing, Feste in Twelfth Night, Petruchio in The Taming of the Shrew, Orlando and Jacques in As You Like It, Mercutio in Romeo and Juliet and Oberon and Bottom in A Midsummer Night’s Dream. For three successful years, Robert created and produced the Holland Park Shakespeare Festival in London’s West End. In 2006 the BSC became an international force in Shakespeare performance when Robert took the Company to Norway for the first time, establishing a new Shakespeare festival at Ramme Gaard near Oslo.

Alongside TV appearances in major series such as A Touch of Frost and Emmerdale, Robert has recently moved into film: the major drama-documentary feature film Sweet Swan of Avon, for which Robert both directs and acts in a series of extracts from Shakespeare’s works, will receive a major international cinema release next year. In 2006, Robert’s campaign for a National Shakespeare Day on the 23rd of April received huge press and cross-party support, and his idea for educational Shakespeare Packs has recently become government policy. Robert has dedicated his entire working life to both his Company and to the works of William Shakespeare. While he has lived in London for 17 years, he is now relocating himself and the BSC to his native Yorkshire in order to dedicate his time to the construction of a replica of Shakespeare’s Rose Theatre.