| Mark Rylance |
| Born |
David Mark Rylance Waters
18 January 1960 (1960-01-18) (age 49)
Ashford, Kent, England, UK |
| Occupation |
Actor, theatre director, playwright |
| Years active |
1980–present |
| Spouse(s) |
Claire van Kampen |
Mark Rylance (born 18 January 1960) is an English actor, theatre director and playwright.
As an actor, Rylance found success on stage and screen. For his work in theatre he has won Olivier and Tony Awards among others, and a BAFTA TV Award. His film roles include Ferdinand in Prospero's Books (after a play by William Shakespeare), Jay in Intimacy (after a novel by Hanif Kureishi) and Jakob von Gunten in Institute Benjamenta (after a novel by Robert Walser).
He was the first Artistic Director of Shakespeare's Globe in London, from 1995 to 2005.
Life and career
Early years
Rylance was born David Mark Rylance Waters in Ashford, Kent, the son of David and Anne (Skinner) 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). In 1962, when he was two, his parents moved to Connecticut in the United States and in 1969, to Wisconsin, where his father was headmaster at a prestigious preparatory school, the University School of Milwaukee. Rylance 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.[1]
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 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 2005, he took the leading role as British weapons expert David Kelly in The Government Inspector, an award-winning Channel 4 production for which he himself won the British Academy Television Award for Best Actor in 2005.
In 2007, Rylance performed in Boeing Boeing in London. In 2008, he reprised the role on Broadway and subsequently won Drama Desk and Tony Awards for his performance. For his acceptance speech for the Tony, Rylance read from a work by poet Louis Jenkins.
Globe Theatre
In 1995, Rylance became the first Artistic Director of Shakespeare's Globe Theatre, a post he filled until 2005. Rylance directed and acted in every season, in works by Shakespeare and others, notably in all-male productions of Twelfth Night where he starred as Olivia, and Richard II where he took the title role. Under his directorate, new plays were performed at the Globe, the first being Augustine's Oak (referring to Augustine of Canterbury and Christianisation of Anglo-Saxon England) by Peter Oswald, the writer-in-residence, which was performed in 1999. A second play by Oswald followed in 2002: The Golden Ass or the Curious Man. In 2005, Oswald's 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 Shakespeare's The Tempest. Other historical first nights were organized by Rylance while director of the Globe including 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 .
Shakespeare controversy
On 8 September 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 actual 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, 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.[2]
Rylance wrote (co-conceived by John Dove) and starred in The BIG Secret Live—I am Shakespeare—Webcam Daytime Chatroom Show (A comedy of Shakespearean identity crisis) which toured England in 2007.
Personal life
In 1992 he married Claire van Kampen whom he met while working at the National Theatre.[3] His stepdaughter is actress Juliet Rylance, who is married to actor Christian Camargo.
Work
Shakespeare's Globe Theatre
Other theatres
- 1981 Desperado Corner at the Citizens Theatre, in Glasgow
- with the Royal Shakespeare Company: 1989 Hamlet (Hamlet) and Romeo and Juliet (Romeo), also 1982 The Tempest (Ariel)
- 1993 Henry V, Theatre For a New Audience, NYC
- 1993 Much Ado About Nothing: Benedick, Queens Theatre (won the Olivier Award for best actor)
- 1994 As You Like It: Touchstone, Theatre For a New Audience (NYC)
- 1994 True West: Lee/Austin, Donmar Warehouse
- 1995 Macbeth: Macbeth, Greenwich Theatre
- 2000 Live x 3: Henry, Royal National Theatre
- 2007 Boeing Boeing: Robert, Comedy Theatre
- 2007 I am Shakespeare: Frank, UK tour
- 2008 Peer Gynt: Peer Gynt, Guthrie Theater (Minneapolis)
- 2008 Boeing Boeing: Robert, Longacre Theater (won 2008 Tony Award for Best Performance by a Leading Actor in a Play)
- 2009 (Jul-Aug) Jerusalem written by Jez Butterworth: Johnny Byron, Royal Court Theatre (London)
- 2009 (Oct-Dec) Endgame written by Samuel Beckett: Hamm, Duchess Theatre (London)
- 2010 (Jan-Apr) Jerusalem written by Jez Butterworth: Johnny Byron, Apollo Theatre (London)
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 von Gunten
- Angels & Insects (1995) .... William Adamson
- Biography playing "Hamlet/Himself" in episode: Hamlet (February 1995) (TV)
- Henry V (1997) (TV) .... King Henry V
- Intimacy (2001) .... Jay
- Leonardo (2003) (TV) .... Leonardo Da Vinci
- Hearts of Fire (1987) .... Fizz
- William Shakespeare (2000) .... Artistic Director, Shakespeare's Globe
- Changing Stages (2001) (TV) Series .... Himself
- Richard II (2003) (TV) .... Richard II
- Celebrity Naked Ambition (2003) (TV)
- Breakfast playing "Himself" (19 April 2004) (TV)
- The Government Inspector (2005) (TV) .... Dr. David Kelly
- The Other Boleyn Girl (2008) .... Thomas Boleyn
Bibliography
- 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.
References
- ^ Cynthia Zarin, Onward and Upward with the Arts, "After Hamlet," The New Yorker, May 5, 2008, p. 38.
- ^ "Coalition aims to expose Shakespeare". yahoo! News. 8 September 2007. http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070908/ap_on_re_eu/britain_shakespeare_debate. Retrieved 2009-01-27.
- ^ General Register Office. England & Wales, Marriage Index: 1984-2005 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: The Generations Network, Inc., 2007.
External links
