Sir Kenneth Charles Branagh is a British actor and filmmaker. He has won an Academy Award, four BAFTAs, two Emmy Awards, a Golden Globe Award, and an Olivier Award. He was appointed a Knight Bachelor in the 2012 Birthday Honours, and was given Freedom of the City in his native Belfast in 2018. In 2020, he was ranked in 20th place on The Irish Times' list of Ireland's greatest film actors.
The Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC) is a major British theatre company, based in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England. The company employs over 1,000 staff and produces around 20 productions a year. The RSC plays regularly in London, Stratford-upon-Avon, and on tour across the UK and internationally.
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.
Sir David Mark Rylance Waters is a British 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.
The Renaissance Theatre Company was a theatre company founded in 1987 by Kenneth Branagh and David Parfitt. It was disbanded in 1992.
The Southern Shakespeare Festival is an annual festival in Tallahassee, Florida organized by the Southern Shakespeare Company. The festival's first incarnation existed from 1995 to 2000. In 2012, a group of scholars saw an opportunity to revive the free outdoor festival at the award-winning Cascades Park.
Terence David Hands was a multi-award English theatre director. He founded the Liverpool Everyman Theatre and ran the Royal Shakespeare Company for thirteen years during one of the company's most successful periods; he spent 25 years in all with the RSC. He also saved Clwyd Theatr Cymru from closure and turned it into the most successful theatre in Wales in his seventeen years as Artistic Director. He received several Olivier, Tony and Molière awards and nominations for directing and lighting.
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 (2009–13), First Lady Dolley Madison in the American Experience television special (2011), and Monica Chatwin in the BBC miniseries The Honourable Woman (2014). She also played Wallis Simpson in the 2010 film The King's Speech.
Much Ado About Nothing is a comedy by William Shakespeare thought to have been written in 1598 and 1599. The play was included in the First Folio, published in 1623.
Simon Dormandy is an English theatre director, teacher and actor. As an actor, he worked with Cheek by Jowl and the Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC), as well as at The Donmar Warehouse, The Old Vic, Chichester Festival Theatre and The Royal Exchange, amongst many others. He is perhaps best known on screen for his performances in Little Dorrit (film) and Vanity Fair. Between 1997 and 2012, he taught drama at Eton College, Berkshire, and held the posts of Director of Drama, Head of Theatre Studies and Deputy Head of English. He worked as a freelance theatre director until 2019 and has been Head of Academic Drama at St Paul's School, London since 2020. His directing credits include Julius Caesar at the Bristol Old Vic and Much Ado About Nothing at the Rose Theatre, Kingston, and his own adaptations of A Passage to India and the Coen Brothers' film The Hudsucker Proxy.
The Hudson Valley Shakespeare Festival (HVSF) is a non-profit professional theater company based in Garrison, New York. The festival runs a roughly twelve-week repertory season each year, operating under a large open-air theater tent. Its productions attract a total audience of about 50,000 from the Hudson Valley, New York City, and 40 US states.
Nobby Clark is an English photographer of theatre, opera, dance and live classical and contemporary music performance.
Jamie Hendry was born on July 24, 1985, in London, England. Hendry is a British theater executive, actor, and producer.
Much Ado About Nothing is a 2012 American romantic comedy film written, produced, directed, edited, and composed by Joss Whedon, based on William Shakespeare's play of the same name. The film stars Amy Acker, Alexis Denisof, Nathan Fillion, Clark Gregg, Reed Diamond, Fran Kranz, Sean Maher, and Jillian Morgese.
David Davies is an English actor best known for his portrayal of Shakespeare's characters and for playing leading parts when he was the Company Manager of The GB Theatre Company.
Don Pedro, Prince of Aragon, is a fictional character from William Shakespeare's play Much Ado About Nothing. In the play, Don Pedro is a nobleman who visits his friend Leonato in Messina, Italy after a successful military conquest. Don Pedro helps Claudio to woo Hero and helps set up Benedick and Beatrice who together form the two key couples in the play.
Pop-up Globe was a New Zealand theatre production company, based in Auckland, New Zealand. It produced Jacobean theatre, particularly the works of Shakespeare, in specially-built temporary replicas of the second Globe, the theatre Shakespeare and his company built and used. The company’s theatre was the world's first full-scale reconstruction of the Second Globe Theatre (1614–44).
Beatrice is a fictional character in William Shakespeare's play Much Ado About Nothing. In the play, she is the niece of Leonato and the cousin of Hero. Atypically for romantic heroines of the sixteenth century, she is feisty and sharp-witted; these characteristics have led some scholars to label Beatrice a protofeminist character. During the play, she is tricked into falling in love with Benedick, a soldier with whom she has a "merry war", after rumours are spread that they are in love with each other.
Hero is a fictional character in William Shakespeare's play Much Ado About Nothing. She is the daughter of Leonato, a governor in Messina, and cousin to Beatrice. In the play, Hero falls in love with Claudio, who, under the influence of Don John, wrongfully accuses her of adultery causing her to fake her death. Hero is ultimately proven innocent and reconciles with Claudio at the play's conclusion.
Iqbal Khan is a theatre director. He is associate director at the Birmingham Repertory Theatre and Associate Artist of Box Clever Theatre Company.
