Category: Theater

Throwback Thursday to Damian Lewis in Cymbeline

Hang there like a fruit, my soul,
Till the tree die!

Posthumus, Cymbeline

source: damianista
Cymbeline, Stage at Delacorte Theater, Central Park, NYC source: damianista

Having grown up in Turkey, I am not coming from a deep Shakespeare culture. We read translated excerpts from Romeo and Juliet and Hamlet in our literature classes but I really believe one has to read Shakespeare in his language to understand and love it… That’s why my relationship with the great man really started as we moved to NYC and started doing Shakespeare in the Park, a New York tradition combining two great things about the city: It’s Theater in Central Park… And, hey, it’s FREE, too! The only thing you have to do is go early in the morning and get in the line for free tickets distributed at noon. And, believe me,  waiting in line is half the FUN… You have people sleeping on their blankets, playing board games, reading the evening’s play together as a group… Continue reading “Throwback Thursday to Damian Lewis in Cymbeline”

Throwback Thursday to Damian Lewis in Hamlet on Broadway *UPDATED*

Damianista’s note: Hi everyone! Damian was Stephen Colbert’s guest on The Late Show on Monday and he talked about his sword fight with Ralph Fiennes in Hamlet on Broadway! So we travel back to 1995 today and revisit Damian Lewis as Laertes in Hamlet on Broadway. ENJOY!

Did you know that Damian Lewis made his Broadway debut some twenty three years ago in Hamlet? So why not travel back to 1995 and chase a 24 year old Englishman in New York today? 😀

Damian as Laertes in Hamlet on Broadway, copyright: Damian Lewis

Damian’s debut on Broadway is as Laertes to Ralph Fiennes’ Hamlet in 1995. The Almeida Theatre production is staged first at Hackney Empire in March 1995, and after its successful run in London, it comes to Belasco Theatre in the summer of 1995.  Continue reading “Throwback Thursday to Damian Lewis in Hamlet on Broadway *UPDATED*”

Throwback Thursday to Damian Lewis at the Royal Shakespeare Company

Big thanks go to Damian’s pal Jonsel Gourkan for tweeting the lovely picture below and inspiring today’s post.

Spot a certain ginger among a bunch of young actors playing in a celebrity football tournament around, according to Jonsel, 1995/96. Both he and Damian were playing for Royal Shakespeare Company and it is clear from the tweet that the competition on the football field was real. Well, we all know Damian knows his footie, don’t we?

So how about traveling back to mid 1990s today and talk about young Damian being as serious about theatre as he was about football? Continue reading “Throwback Thursday to Damian Lewis at the Royal Shakespeare Company”

Throwback Thursday to Damian Lewis in Into The Woods

This lovely picture tweeted by Michelle Blair last year shows a group of young actors that were together in the 1998 London revival of Stephen Sondheim’s Into the Woods at Donmar Warehouse.

source: @MichelleBlair Twitter

Oh, yeah! Way earlier than being the big, bad wolf Henry in Wolf Hall, Damian Lewis was the Wolf in Into the Woods.  Continue reading “Throwback Thursday to Damian Lewis in Into The Woods”

A Lesson in Rhetoric: Damian Lewis as Antony

To be filed in the category of “This is a guy who makes you want to go back to school”, we learned and reported (on our lovely sister site damian-lewis.com) that Damian’s version of Antony’s funeral speech from Julius Caesar, for The Guardian’s video series Shakespeare Solos, was featured in a seminar on rhetoric. This wasn’t an avenue for literary criticism or drama theory, but a newsletter on effective public speaking.

How is speaking any different from writing and reading, you may wonder? Well, there are components to classical rhetoric, when dissected, can show you what makes one speech different from another. Such an analysis would reach your brain (or at least attempt to). Alternatively, we can talk about how a speech makes you feel. Granted we’re not seeing much great oratory from our current elder statesmen, so examples are few and far between. But, there was a time, wasn’t there? In our not too distant history, when a leader spoke, it did a heart good to hear, didn’t it?

Continue reading “A Lesson in Rhetoric: Damian Lewis as Antony”