Jaq Bessell

Previously for the ASC on Tour, Jaq directed Much Ado About Nothing and A Midsummer Night’s Dream before directing Love’s Labour’s Lost for the ASC’s 2007 Summer/Fall Season. For other theatres, Jaq’s directing credits include: The River, Cowboy Mouth (Black Dog Theatre Company at Live Arts, Charlottesville, VA); Macbeth, Romeo and Juliet, Mojo (Utah Pickle Co., Salt Lake City); Rough for Theatre 1 (Jeanne Wanger Theatre, SLC). Jaq is the former Head of Research at Shakespeare’s Globe in London, where her production credits include: A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Twelfth Night, Cymbeline, Macbeth, King Lear, The Antipodes, The Two Noble Kinsmen, The Tempest, Hamlet, Augustine’s Oak, Antony and Cleopatra, The Comedy of Errors, and Julius Caesar. She served as dramaturg for several mainstage productions at Pioneer Theatre, SLC, and the Guthrie Theater. Jaq also served as the Acting Coach for the British Institute for Chinese Martial Arts and the Alisdair Monteith Stunt School, taught Acting at the University of Utah’s BFA Actor Training Program and at the Guthrie Theater. She currently teaches Acting and Directing in the MLitt/MFA program in Shakespeare and Renaissance Literature in Performance at Mary Baldwin College in partnership with the American Shakespeare Center.