The American Shakespeare Center presents its prestigious award to acclaimed director

Around the same time Jim Warren and Ralph Cohen were beginning to mount productions as Shenandoah Shakespeare Express (later to become the American Shakespeare Center), Tim Carroll was launching an illustrious and acclaimed career at the English Shakespeare Company. He would go on to serve as the Associate Director of the Northcott Theatre, Artistic Director of Kent Opera, and Associate Director at Shakespeare’s Globe in London where his productions of Richard III and Twelfth Night enjoyed record-breaking runs in Europe and North America. He is a founding member of the London-based experimental theatre group The Factory which created “one-night-only, accidental interpretations” of Hamlet, The Odyssey, and The Seagull to widespread acclaim. He has directed shows for the Royal Shakespeare Company in Stratford, England and for the Stratford Festival in Canada. Carroll was recently named the Artistic Director of the Shaw Festival in Ontario, Canada.

The American Shakespeare Center awards the prestigious Burbage Award annually to a person whose work has advanced the enjoyment of the works of William Shakespeare for the delight and instruction of the world. The Burbage Award is named for James Burbage, the man who erected the first of London’s large outdoor theatres and later converted an old Dominican dining hall into the original Blackfriars Playhouse. The 2016 Burbage Award was presented at the ASC Annual Benefit Celebration on September 24th at the Stonewall Jackson Hotel.

“Honestly the reason that I am so thrilled to have Tim Carroll here to accept this award is that I think he, as much as any successful director in the world, understands why we built the Blackfriars Playhouse,” ASC Co-Founder and Director of Mission Ralph Cohen said while introducing Carroll to the gathered audience at the Annual Benefit Celebration. “For T.C., and I quote, ‘Original Practices has meant looking back to go forwards.’ That is why we built the Blackfriars – to get back to the future by way of the past. To consider his stagecraft with the same respect we consider his wordcraft. T.C. comes to all his work rich with the treasure of whatever was in his last box but not weighed down by it. Believing in the words, he comes from his work at the Globe all the more ready to have the technology of modern theatre help, not hide, the language.”

Carroll spoke briefly upon receiving the Burbage Award saying, “It wasn’t until I began work in Shakespeare that I found my people.”