#Kimberley Sykes

[tafadhali]

Boys Keep Swinging — an As You Like It fanvid

When you're a boy / Other boys check you out / You get a girl / These are your favorite things / When you're a boy

Treat for ryfkah for Festivids 2023. Cross-posted on AO3.

Production list:

Melbourne Theatre Company — 2022 (dir. Simon Phillips)

Shakespeare's Globe Theatre — 2010 (dir. Robert Delamere), 2018 (dir. Federay Holmes & Elle While), 2023 (dir. Ellen McDougall)

National Theatre — 2016 (dir. Polly Findlay & Tim Van Someren)

The Old Globe — 2012 (dir. Adrian Noble), 2019 (dir. Jessica Stone)

Public Works — 2017 (dir. Laurie Woolery)

Royal Shakespeare Company — 1962 (TV adaptation, dir. Michael Elliott), 2013 (dir. Maria Aberg), 2019 (dir. Kimberley Sykes)

[solo1y]

I was poking around my attic this week and I found these posters in a box full of stuff from university. They’ve been up there at least 25 years (since the mid-90s). I guess I always had a type? 

[peterviney1]

As You Like It- RSC 2019 review The second of three plays in Stratford, AS YOU LIKE IT (linked). Some new variations on lines and scenes, as expected at the RSC. All RSC Shakespeare is unmissable …

[bwthornton]

#StratforduponAvon tonight #RSC #TheWhip RSC The Whip by Juliet Gilkes Romero directed by Kimberley Sykes Swan Theatre Stratford

https://stratford-upon-avon-theatre.blogspot.com/2020/02/rsc-whip-by-juliet-gilkes-romero.html

[lustywidovv]

As You Like It, RSC 2019 - Review

As You Like It, RSC 2019 – Review

Under the greenwood tree,

Who loves to lie with me.

The Royal Shakespeare Company are pushing their audience on to the stage in this inclusive new take on the woodland romance, As You Like It – the production’s programme talks much of breaking down the boundary between actor and audience and, though a nice idea, one can’t help their mind from wandering to the other art form to exploit this…

[shakespearenews]

As You Like It, directed by Kimberley Sykes, set designed by Stephen Brimson Lewis, costume and lighting designed by Bretta Gerecke. (2019) Photo by Topher McGrillis © RSC

[peckhampeculiar]

Stage presence

Words by Luke G Williams; Photo Topher McGrillis for the RSC

Rising Shakespearean actor David Ajao admits that if it wasn’t for a Sliding Doors-style moment as a teenager, he probably wouldn’t have ended up as an actor.

“After school at St Thomas Apostle College I had a place at Christ The King [6th form college],” the 30-year-old tells Peckham Peculiar over a cup of tea at the flatoff Rye Lane where he once shared a bedroom with his older brother and where his Nigerian mother still lives.

“My GCSE results were crap and when I went along to register I asked: ‘is there any way I can get in?’ A lady there told me, very politely: ’I’m afraid not.’

“I thought: ‘what am I going to do? My mum’s going to kill me!’ A mate of mine was waiting outside and it just so happened we got the 436 bus back towards Peckham which goes right past Lewisham College.

“My mate said: ’I’m going in to see what’s going on.’ I picked up a leaflet in the theatre that said if you audition for a place this is what you have to learn. So I went back to my mum and said: ‘I’m not in yet but I’m going to learn this and see what happens!’

“I drilled this monologue every single day for a week, had the audition, got in and ended up doing a BTEC National Diploma in `Drama. That saved me. I don’t think I’d be acting now if it wasn’t for that trip to Lewisham College.”

Ajao had always enjoyed drama but did not initially consider the possibility of a career in the arts.

“I’d always been a performer,” he admits with an endearing chuckle. “I’d sit at the back of the class in school making jokes or playing around.

“In Year 9 my drama teacher Mr Foster took the time to say to me: ‘you could do something in drama’, but I didn’t really know what. I ended up taking Drama at GCSE, mostly because I thought I’d get to play around and do improvisations!”

As befitting a man resolutely and refreshingly free of pretension, David is able to look back on his earliest performances with a sense of humour.

“The first time I was on stage at school was terrible!” he laughs. “We were a Catholic school and we did a play about Jesus going into the desert for 40 days and 40 nights.

“I can’t remember much about the play but I was the devil. I remember standing up in front of the whole school, having come up from a platform, and my first line was: “I’m the devil!” - everyone pissed themselves laughing.

“Then we did a production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream in which I played Helena, which was an interesting experience in an all-boys school, I was hearing about that for the rest of the year!”

Post-Lewisham College, Ajao studied at Rose Bruford Drama School in Sidcup, Kent, an experience about which he speaks candidly.

 “I struggled in that environment. Being a young, black male from south-east London and going to this place in Kent was hard. It was really close to where I’d grown up but it was also really different.

“I didn’t really know how to act around all these actors from across the country. I tried to be myself but I wasn’t staying in student dorms, I was heading back home at the end of every day, which was difficult. I couldn’t always go to the parties and socialise as much as others.”

Before drama school, David admits he existed in something of a south-east London bubble. “My mum’s Nigerian and growing up in Peckham was like being in Little Nigeria or Little Lagos.

“A lot of my mum’s friends lived around here and there was a huge Nigerian community, which was evident along Rye Lane, all the markets and in the hair shops. I loved growing up in Peckham and having that sense of community.”

Despite the ups and downs of drama school, David remains grateful for the support he received from his tutor (“Steven Dykes – he helped me out a lot”) and the fact his course gave him the opportunity to study in America for a year in Nacogdoches, Texas. He also left Rose Bruford with a greater sense of identity.

“You learn more about yourself at drama school than you do about any acting techniques, which in some ways helps inform who you are as an actor. But it was a tough three years.”

While at Rose Bruford, Ajao also secured his first paid acting job, wearing a hoodie in an ESPN commercial and earning the princely sum of £100 (“more than my EMA [Educational Maintenance Allowance] at the time!”)

By now the light-hearted joker of Ajao’s teenage years was gone, and in his place was a man possessing a steely determination to succeed and a formidable dedication to his craft.

“I had an agent but they weren’t very good,” David reveals of his early days as a jobbing actor. “I knew there wasn’t going to be a big break that skyrocketed me, so the first thing I did was go on a website called Casting Call Pro.

“Anything that matched my casting breakdown I applied for. A lot of the work was unpaid, some of it was expenses only. But I did every job I could, as I wanted to add to my experience. I learnt so much from fellow actors, probably more than I did from drama school.

“Fortunately, I was never so long without an acting job where I thought: ‘I’m not supposed to do this’, even when I took on other things like working in Curry’s or in bars or hospitality.”

Ajao’s career soon gained momentum with an appearance in Otieno at the Southwark Playhouse, a play which reworked Othello in Zimbabwe. Soon after, he was cast as Romeo by the Box Clever Theatre Company in a production that toured schools for several months.

“Kids are the most honest audience – if they don’t like you that’s it, you know it straight away! It was some of the most rewarding work I’ve done.” Ironically, Ajao had never really seen himself as a potential Shakespearean actor, but being cast as Romeo set him on a path which would see his career often intersect with the Bard’s work.

“I’d done two Shakespeare plays in secondary school like everyone else. But I was always like: ‘hmm, I’m never going to properly understand it.’

“The artistic director of Box Clever Michael Wicherek took a chance on me. He said: ‘I want to give you this opportunity to play and understand Shakespeare, I think you’re a great actor and you need this.’ I never thought it would work out this way but I’ve done a lot of Shakespeare.”

A further performance as Romeo for Box Clever followed, this time directed by Iqbal Khan, who would become an important figure in David’s career.

“Iqbal and I clicked straight away. I think he really understood me. I’ve since worked with him four or five times and my first RSC job was directed by him.”

The job David mentions was a role in Iqbal’s acclaimed and groundbreaking production of Othello in 2015, in which the title role was played by Hugh Quarshie, alongside Lucian Msumati - the first black actor to play Iago at the RSC.

David understudied for Msumati while also playing Montano. During the same Stratford season he also appeared in The Merchant of Venice and Hecuba.

“I think there’s often a stigma around Shakespeare where people think they have to present it in a certain way with an RP accent.

“Fortunately for me with a lot of these productions I’ve had the privilege of having a director who has wanted to hear the Shakespeare in my voice, to hear the south-east London in it, to hear me speaking naturally.”

Post-Othello, David picked up some major TV work, including a chance to flex his comic muscles in Dane Baptiste’s uproarious BBC sitcom Sunny D and a six-month stint in Holby City alongside former Othello colleague Hugh Quarshie.

“Doing TV was really exciting and helped raise my profile somewhat. There were sort of opportunities to go back to the RSC but I had always said if I went back I’d like to have a really substantial part.”

And so it came to pass when David was cast in the lead role of Orlando in As You Like It in the RSC’s forthcoming Stratford-upon-Avon season.

Rehearsals are well under way now, with the curtain due to rise for the first time on 14 February, while David will also appear later in the year as Pompey in Measure for Measure.

“I’d wanted it for so long but there was still some anxiety attached to it,” he says of the process of auditioning for the role of Orlando. “Part of it still hasn’t hit me – the fact I’m taking on a lead at the RSC. It’s somewhat daunting but also really exciting.

“We started rehearsing at the end of November and the director Kimberley Sykes has set up a room where everyone’s opinion is valid. We are creating this world as a team, which makes me so much more comfortable.

“I’m feeling really good and I’ll hopefully be bringing something new to the character. We all know As You Like It is a comedy but I think within it comedy and tragedy sit side by side. I think you’ll see a lot of that in Orlando.”

David also hopes that his success will inspire other youngsters from working-class urban backgrounds to follow his lead.

“I want anyone reading this interview to be encouraged that they can find their own way. There’s no linear path in acting - you may have to go left, right or all over the place but there’s so many people out there who are doing great things, including loads of people from Peckham.

“I’ve been inspired by so many people so I hope people also will look to me and gain some inspiration and see that Shakespeare can be for kids from Peckham, and that you don’t have to put on an act while acting it.”

[imaginedmigrantfutures-blog]

Introducing Imagined Migrant Futures

We, Gabby Loo and Steven Finch, are the James Sykes Battye Creative Fellows for the State Library for 2018/2019. We are independent community artists working on a project called Imagined Migrant Futures. Imagined Migrant Futures is a community art and research project of exploring creative expression and personal migrant lineage in Western Australia, particularly Asian Migrant lineage. The project aims to explore migrant identity through a combination of shared personal truth and creative imagination and fantasy, in order to make space for more equitable, complete, and emotionally complex pictures of our shared local histories. On this blog we will be sharing creative self-expression and perspectives relating to Asian Migrant lineage, as well as documentation of our research process and creative events. We are currently focused on a group exhibition Seasons, Histories and Hopes: Imagined Migrant Futures, where we will collaborate on other artists with Asian Migrant lineage in WA. We will also be sharing links and scans from our research to make the history of the West Australian state accessible and widely known to the public in the hopes of giving the people who live here access to the stories of this place.  It’s a project of decolonialism and solidarity, of Seasons, Histories and Hopes, of the identities that will arrive in our futures.  We humbly acknowledge that this research project takes place on the lands of the Whadjuk Noongar people, and pay respects to any elders past and present. We also acknowledge that this research project encompasses the lands of the Ngaanyatjarra, Yamatji, Wonkai, Yawaru and Kimberley peoples. Sovereignty was never ceded, and we stand in solidarity with the struggles of First Nations people.

~

Contacts Gabby Loo gabbylooworks@gmail.com www.gabbyloo.com  Steven Finch  sjfinchy@gmail.com  www.facebook.com/sjfinchy

[freetoplyhershuttle]

On 16th November, 6-10pm, at Paper Mountain Gallery, Northbridge Perth there will be a silent auction of art works to raise funds for Paper Mountain. Hope you can make it to add to the fun & to help keep this great space running. Art works for sale are by: Andy Quilty Beverley Isles Marina Kailis Eliza Markes-Young Guundie Kuching Hiroshi Kobayashi Holly O'Meehan Linda Fardoe Perdita Phillips Tom Freeman Matthew McAlpine Gemi Tan with P&V Ray Tat Tan Caspar Fairhall Georgia Alsop Lexalot Randolph & Elizabeth Bills Michael Jalaru Torres Minaxi May Rebecca Orchard Benjamin Bannan Lydia Tretheway Gabby Loo Ruth Halbert Kimberley Pace Jennifer Catalano Jana Braddock Penny Coss Jo Darvall Tessa beale Benjamin Bannan Laura Sykes Justine Aubrit (at Paper Mountain) https://www.instagram.com/p/B4tWHhxJ7D6/?igshid=41u9ox1g39gm

[larryland]

Greenfield Community College Theater Presents "Locally Grown III"

Greenfield Community College Theater Presents “Locally Grown III”

Greenfield Community College Theater presents Locally Grown III Thursday May 2, Friday May 3, Saturday May 4 at 7:30pm Greenfield Community College, Sloan Theater, One College Drive, Greenfield MA

“Locally Grown III” one-acts written by local playwrights and directed by GCC student-directors. GENUINE COUSIN OF PEARL a comedy by Jonathan Caws-Elwitt directed by James Sykes Pearl…………………………….Alex…

[harryandmeghan0-blog]

RSC to reflect diversity of Britain with summer 2019 season

New Post has been published on https://harryandmeghan.xyz/rsc-to-reflect-diversity-of-britain-with-summer-2019-season/

RSC to reflect diversity of Britain with summer 2019 season

The Royal Shakespeare Company is to choose actors for its 2019 summer season who reflect the nation in “terms of gender, ethnicity, regionality, and disability”.

Gregory Doran, the RSC’s artistic director, said the plan was to assemble a consciously diverse cast of 27 actors for a season of three plays, As You Like It, The Taming of the Shrew and Measure for Measure. Each actor would appear in two of the three plays.

Doran said the project was building on diversity work they had been doing for some time. “It felt like a moment to take stock, to check where we are,” he said.

He quoted Hamlet’s phrase about the purpose of playing being to hold a mirror up to nature. “If you look in the mirror and you don’t see your own reflection … if you’re a young black kid in Tottenham and if there were no black faces on stage then why would you engage, why would you think that’s part of your culture too.”

Casting for the summer 2019 season has yet to take place but Doran said he, along with fellow directors Justin Audibert and Kimberley Sykes, wanted to create “a company which reflects the nation in terms of gender, ethnicity, regionality and disability”.

The three plays will be staged in a reconfigured Royal Shakespeare Theatre that will extend the audience further round the stage at the circle levels. Doran said it would create “new perspectives on the action … showing our work in a completely new way”.” After Stratford, all three plays will tour to six regional theatres.

The diversity debate is one of the most urgent in the arts, with all publicly funded organisations in England under pressure from Arts Council England to make more progress. Its most recent annual diversity report highlighted “a large gap between organisational aspiration and action”.

The drive for greater diversity has led to accusations of box-ticking, which Doran vigorously denies. He said casting was never done just for the sake of it: “It is always what is best for the play.”

Last April, the Daily Mail theatre critic Quentin Letts accused the RSC of miscasting a black actor in The Fantastic Follies of Mrs Rich, criticising what he saw as a “clunking approach to politically correct casting”.

The RSC hit back, accusing Letts of appearing “to demonstrate a blatantly racist attitude to a member of the cast”.

Doran will direct Measure for Measure, a play he has described as the ultimate #MeToo play, while Sykes will direct As You Like It, and Audibert will direct a reimagined The Taming of the Shrew, in which England is a matriarchy and Baptista Minola is seeking to sell off her son Katherine to the highest bidder.

Also part of the summer 2019 season will be productions marking the 250th anniversary of David Garrick’s Shakespeare Jubilee, which launched Stratford-upon-Avon as “the epicentre of the Shakespeare industry”. There will be two plays in which Garrick had successful roles – The Provoked Wife by John Vanbrugh and Venice Preserved by Thomas Otway, described by the Guardian’s Michael Billington as a masterpiece and included in his book The 101 Greatest Plays.

[babaalexander]

Great Birthday Wishes to Singers Born November 20 #Great #Birthday #Wishes #HappyBirthdayToYou #HeartilyBirthdayWishes #Singers #November20 Oliver Sykes Connie Talbot Ann Marie Slater Chris Fronzak Dierks Bentley Josh Turner Kimberley Walsh Teoman Joe Walsh Aaron Yan Davey Havok Tamika Scott Fairuz Natalie Okri Ahjah Walls Matthew Schuler Samuel E. Wright Danielle Bouchard Freya Lim Halid Beslic #OliverSykes #ConnieTalbot #AnnMarieSlater #ChrisFronzak #DierksBentley #JoshTurner ##KimberleyWalsh #Teoman #JoeWalsh #AaronYan #DaveyHavok #TamikaScott #Fairuz #NatalieOkri #AhjahWalls #MatthewSchuler #SamuelEWright #DanielleBouchard #FreyaLim #HalidBeslic

[bwthornton]

In #StratfordonAvon today two performances of #TheWhip RSC The Whip by Juliet Gilkes Romero directed by Kimberley Sykes Swan Theatre Stratford

https://stratford-upon-avon-theatre.blogspot.com/2020/02/rsc-whip-by-juliet-gilkes-romero.html

[bwthornton]

In #Stratford today an #AudioDescribed matinee of #RSC #TheWhip RSC The Whip by Juliet Gilkes Romero directed by Kimberley Sykes Swan Theatre Stratford

https://stratford-upon-avon-theatre.blogspot.com/2020/02/rsc-whip-by-juliet-gilkes-romero.html

[bwthornton]

In #StratforduponAvon today a matinee of #RSC #TheWhip RSC The Whip by Juliet Gilkes Romero directed by Kimberley Sykes Swan Theatre Stratford

https://stratford-upon-avon-theatre.blogspot.com/2020/02/rsc-whip-by-juliet-gilkes-romero.html

[bwthornton]

In #StratforduponAvon tonight #RSC #TheWhip RSC The Whip by Juliet Gilkes Romero directed by Kimberley Sykes Swan Theatre Stratford

https://stratford-upon-avon-theatre.blogspot.com/2020/02/rsc-whip-by-juliet-gilkes-romero.html