Adam Long is an American actor, screenwriter, writer, and director based in London, England, as well as a founding member of The Reduced Shakespeare Company. From 1987 to 2003, [1] he co-wrote and performed The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (Abridged) , [2] The Complete History of America (Abridged), [3] The Reduced Shakespeare Radio Show for the BBC World Service, and The Ring Reduced, a 30 minute condensation of Wagner's Ring Cycle for Channel 4 television.
In 1996, Long directed the Reduced Shakespeare Company's London production of The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (Abridged) which was nominated for an Olivier Award for Best Comedy in 1997, [4] and ran for nine years at the Criterion Theatre in Piccadilly Circus. Stage production licensing in the U.S. and Canada is by Broadway Play Publishing Inc.
Long left The Reduced Shakespeare Company in 2003. He then co-wrote and starred in The Barn, [5] an independent feature film which won a British Independent Film Award in 2004 - The Raindance Award, for the film which best embodies the spirit of independent filmmaking. In 2006, he wrote and performed Star Wars Shortened [6] [7] for Sky Movies, and The Condensed History of Tony Blair for BBC Radio 4. [8] In 2007 he wrote and directed Dickens Unplugged, which premiered at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. [9] [10] The show was brought to Guildford in February, 2007, [11] and made its West End debut on May 23, 2008 at the Comedy Theatre. [12] It has been published as Dickens (abridged) by Broadway Play Publishing Inc. In 2008, he wrote and performed The Condensed History of Political Parties for BBC Radio 4, [13] and in 2009 The Condensed History of George W Bush, also for BBC Radio 4. [14]
From 2008 to the present, Long has worked extensively in animation, writing for Netflix, CBBC, CBeebies, Disney, Nickelodeon, and Sprout. He is the voice of Mr. Small in seasons 2 to 6 of the BAFTA and Emmy Award-winning animated series The Amazing World of Gumball. He has also provided voices for Elliott from Earth.
Long currently resides in London.
Sir Tom Stoppard is a Czech-born British playwright and screenwriter. He has written for film, radio, stage, and television, finding prominence with plays. His work covers the themes of human rights, censorship, and political freedom, often delving into the deeper philosophical thematics of society. Stoppard has been a playwright of the National Theatre and is one of the most internationally performed dramatists of his generation. He was knighted for his contribution to theatre by Queen Elizabeth II in 1997.
Sir Derek George Jacobi is an English actor. Jacobi is known for his work at the Royal National Theatre and for his film and television roles. He has received numerous accolades including a BAFTA Award, two Olivier Awards, two Primetime Emmy Awards, two Screen Actors Guild Awards, and a Tony Award. He was given a knighthood for his services to theatre by Queen Elizabeth II in 1994.
Simon Phillip Hugh Callow is an English actor. Known as a character actor on stage and screen, he has received numerous accolades including an Olivier Award and Screen Actors Guild Award as well as nominations for two BAFTA Awards. He was made a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) for his services to acting by Queen Elizabeth II in 1999.
Ralph Nathaniel Twisleton-Wykeham-Fiennes is an English actor, film producer, and director. He graduated from RADA in 1985. A Shakespeare interpreter, Fiennes excelled onstage at the Royal National Theatre before having further success at the Royal Shakespeare Company. Widely regarded as one of Britain's most well-known and popular actors, he has received various accolades, including a BAFTA Award and a Tony Award, as well as nominations for two Academy Awards and an Emmy Award.
Sir Trevor Robert Nunn is an English theatre director. He has been the artistic director for the Royal Shakespeare Company, the Royal National Theatre, and, currently, the Theatre Royal Haymarket. He has directed dramas for the stage, including Macbeth, as well as opera and musicals, such as Cats (1981) and Les Misérables (1985).
Julie Taymor is an American director and writer of theater, opera, and film. Her stage adaptation of The Lion King debuted in 1997 and received eleven Tony Award nominations, with Taymor receiving Tony Awards for her direction and costume design. Her 2002 film Frida, about Mexican artist Frida Kahlo, was nominated for five Academy Awards, including a Best Original Song nomination for Taymor's composition "Burn It Blue." She also directed the 2007 jukebox musical film Across the Universe, based on the music of the Beatles.
The Reduced Shakespeare Company (RSC) is an American touring acting troupe that performs fast-paced, seemingly improvisational condensations of different topics. The company's style has been described as "New Vaudeville," combining both physical and verbal humor, as well as highbrow and lowbrow.
John O'Farrell is a British author, comedy scriptwriter, and political campaigner. Previously a lead writer for such shows as Spitting Image and Have I Got News for You, he is now best known as a comic author for such books such as The Man Who Forgot His Wife and An Utterly Impartial History of Britain. He is one of a small number of British writers to have achieved best-seller status with both fiction and nonfiction. His books have been translated into around thirty languages and adapted for radio and television.
Lee Hall is an English writer and lyricist. He is best known for writing the screenplay for the film Billy Elliot (2000) and the book and lyrics for its adaptation as a stage musical of the same name. In addition, he wrote the play The Pitmen Painters (2007), and the screenplays for the films War Horse and Rocketman (2019).
Robert Lindsay Stevenson, known professionally as Robert Lindsay, is an English actor. He is the recipient of a British Academy Television Award, a Tony Award, and two Laurence Olivier Awards.
Mackenzie Crook is an English actor, director and writer. He played Gareth Keenan in The Office, Ragetti in the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise, Orell in the HBO series Game of Thrones, and the title role of Worzel Gummidge. He is also the creator and star of BBC Four's Detectorists (2014–2022), for which he won two BAFTA awards. He also plays major roles in TV series Britannia, as the opposite leading druids Veran and Harka.
Roy Dotrice was a British stage and screen actor. He played the antiquarian John Aubrey in the solo play Brief Lives. He won a Tony Award for his performance in the 2000 Broadway revival of A Moon for the Misbegotten, also appearing as Leopold Mozart in the film version of Amadeus (1984), Charles Dickens in Dickens of London (1976), and Jacob Wells/Father in Beauty and the Beast.
Sir David Mark Rylance Waters is an English actor, playwright and theatre director. He is known for his roles on stage and screen having received numerous awards including an Academy Award, three BAFTA Awards, two Olivier Awards and three Tony Awards. In 2016 he was included in the Time 100 list of the world's most influential people. In 2017 he was made a knight by Queen Elizabeth II.
Alan Armstrong, known professionally as Alun Armstrong, is an English character actor. He grew up in County Durham in North East England, and first became interested in acting through Shakespeare productions at his grammar school. Since his career began in the early 1970s, he has played, in his words, "the full spectrum of characters from the grotesque to musicals... I always play very colourful characters, often a bit crazy, despotic, psychotic".
Ken Ludwig may well be the most performed playwright of his generation. He has had six productions on Broadway and eight in London’s West End. His 34 plays and musicals are staged throughout the United States and around the world every night of the year. They have been produced in over 20 languages in more than 30 countries, and many have become standards of the American repertoire.
Benjamin Charles Miles is an English actor, best known for his starring role as Patrick Maitland in the television comedy Coupling, from 2000 to 2004, as Montague Dartie in The Forsyte Saga, from 2002 to 2003, as propagandist and television executive Roger Dascombe in 2005 film V for Vendetta, as Peter Townsend in the Netflix drama The Crown (2016–2017) and George in episode 8 "The One That Holds Everything" in the TV drama The Romanoffs (2018).
Samuel Barnett is an English actor. He has performed on stage, film, television and radio and achieved recognition for his work on the stage and film versions of The History Boys by Alan Bennett. His television performances include roles in the BBC comedy Twenty Twelve and in the Showtime drama Penny Dreadful. He played the lead role of Dirk Gently in Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency, the 2016 BBC America adaptation of the book series by Douglas Adams.
Nathaniel Parker is an English stage and screen actor best known for playing the lead in the BBC crime drama series The Inspector Lynley Mysteries, and Agravaine de Bois in the fourth series of Merlin.
Emily "Eve" Best is an English actress and director. She is known for her television roles as Dr. Eleanor O'Hara in the Showtime series Nurse Jackie (2009–2013), First Lady Dolley Madison in the American Experience television special (2011), Monica Chatwin in the BBC miniseries The Honourable Woman (2014) and Princess Rhaenys Targaryen in HBO’s House of the Dragon. She also played Wallis Simpson in the 2010 film The King's Speech.
Matt Rippy is an American actor, born in St. Louis, Missouri and raised in Houston, Texas. He is most known for the recent Netflix series Glória, his role as the 'real' Captain Jack Harkness in Torchwood in 2007 and his comic stage performances with the Reduced Shakespeare Company.