JOHN BASIL

John Basil, author of Will Power: How to Act Shakespeare in 21 Days, is Producing Artistic Director and co-founder of American Globe Theatre (established in 1988), an off-off-Broadway theatre company located in the heart of Times Square in Manhattan. Through his independent acting studio, the American Globe Theatre Conservatory, he teaches the Playing Shakespeare Series, which includes five workshops: Speaking the Text, Staging from the Text, Script Analysis, Monologues/ Soliloquies/Auditions, and the Master Class (scene study of classical plays).

Basil’s professional career in theater has spanned two decades. After receiving an M.F.A. in Acting from Temple University in 1975, he worked as an actor, while also training in method acting with Stella Adler, Uta Hagen, and Mira Rostova. He spent several seasons at the Williamstown Theatre Festival. In the early ’80s, his passion for Shakespeare was evoked when attending a lecture given by the legendary British director John Barton, co-founder of the Royal Shakespeare Company. Subsequently, he studied directing, staging, and interpreting Shakespeare with Barton and then with Patrick Tucker, vice-chairman of the Artistic Directorate of Shakespeare’s Globe (rebuilt on the Thames River in London) and founder of the Original Shakespeare Company.

Their combined influence on him was life altering. Basil became a principal director and teacher at the Riverside Shakespeare Company in New York, remaining there until 1987, at which point he was catalyzed to found the American Globe Theatre and Conservatory.

As a director, Basil’s exciting approach to theatre creates a demand for his talents at theatres and universities alike. He has worked as a guest artist at venues such as the American Stage Festival (Candida), the Sarasota Opera Company (L’Amore dei Tre Re, Nabucco, Les Vesperres Siciliennes, La Fanciulla del West, Simon Boccanegra), the Raft Theatre (the Vietnam plays by Dan Lauria), the Asolo Conservatory at Florida State University (Two Gentlemen of Verona, the Gut Girls, Brighton Beach Memoirs), Bradley University (Richard III), Long Island University (Noises Off), and the University of Wyoming (Lend Me a Tenor), among others. In addition, he has served as casting director for the Writer’s Theatre and speech and text consultant to Frank Langella (The Tempest at Roundabout Theatre).

At American Globe Theatre, Basil has directed thirteen of Shakespeare’s plays (Merchant of Venice, Othello, Macbeth, Much Ado About Nothing, Hamlet, The Winter’s Tale, As You Like It, King Lear, Taming of the Shrew, Two Gentlemen of Verona, Romeo and Juliet, Twelfth Night, and Julius Caesar); and numerous other stage classics (Three Sisters, the Seagull, The Importance of Being Earnest, The Rivals, and Hedda Gabler, to name a handful); as well as the New York premieres of Passage by Veronica Francis and the award-winning Vandals by Jeffrey Hatcher.

As a teacher and an active proponent of the “First Folio” approach to Shakespearean acting and directing, Basil’s dynamic and upbeat Playing Shakespeare Series has enlightened and inspired actors and college students across the nation, including those at the Sedona Shakespeare Festival, Montclair State University, Columbia University Teachers College, Pennsylvania State University, the University of Colorado, the University of Wyoming, Bradley University, Long Island University, Oklahoma State University, and the Asolo Conservatory at Florida State University, as well as his own American Globe Theatre Conservatory.

At the secondary school level, Basil has taught teens in public and private schools and youth programs located throughout New York and New Jersey, such as Valley Stream High School, Cardinal Spellman High School, Walt Whitman High School, and the New Jersey Teen Arts Festival, among others. Special projects for youth that he has created include the American Globe Theatre’s “Shakespeare for Schools Program,” which brings educational outreach performances and teaching-artist residencies based on Shakespeare’s plays into New York City schools and public libraries; “Will Power,” a traveling Shakespeare showcase sponsored by Arts Connection NY; and “Secrets,” an AIDS education program for teens offered in metropolitan area schools. He has taught theatre games and improvisation at Paul Newman’s Hole in the Wall Gang Camp for terminally ill children, at Happiness is Camping for children with cancer, and at Children of Hope for homeless children.

Honors that Basil has received include the American Youth Foundation’s William Danforth Leadership Award, the Iben Lectureship for Shakespeare at Bradley University, and Temple University’s Alfred Koko Kovner Leadership Award. He was also recognized by the National Foundation for Advancement in the Arts.