Michael Boyd (featured in the video below) was appointed Artistic Director of the Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC) in July 2002 with a mission to reinvigorate the Company as an ensemble, and recommit to a socially engaged, contemporary and internationalist approach. Before joining the RSC, he was a founding Artistic Director of the Tron Theatre in Glasgow from 1985–1996.
Under Michael’s leadership, the RSC staged The Complete Works Festival in 2006, performing all of Shakespeare’s 37 plays, long poems and sonnets, with 30 visiting companies from across the world. From 2006–08 Michael staged Shakespeare’s eight History plays in Stratford-upon-Avon and at The Roundhouse in London, winning many awards, including three Olivier Awards, the Evening Standard Theatre Editor’s Award and the TMA (Theatrical Management Association) Best Director Award.
During his tenure, Michael led the RSC’s successful transformation of the Royal Shakespeare Theatre, a $179.3 million project to bring actors and audiences closer together in a thrust stage auditorium. The new theatre is greatly loved and was shortlisted for the prestigious 2011 Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) Stirling Prize, winning both a RIBA Award and the RIBA Client of the Year Award.
In summer 2011 he took an unprecedented RSC repertoire to New York’s Lincoln Center Festival, performing seven Shakespeare plays in a unique reconstruction of the Royal Shakespeare Theatre at the Park Avenue Amory. In 2012 the RSC will produce the World Shakespeare Festival for the London Olympics.
Michael’s other productions with the RSC have included The Broken Heart, The Spanish Tragedy, Measure for Measure, Troilus and Cressida, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Hamlet, As You Like It, and Macbeth. In 2001 he won the Olivier Award for Best Director and the South Bank Show Award for his productions of Henry VI, Parts I,II,III and Richard III.
In fall 2012 Michael will direct an adaptation by Adrian Mitchell of Pushkin’s epic novel, Boris Godunov, in the RSC’s Swan Theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon.
For more information on Michael Boyd’s life and work, click on the video below: