Stuart Cox
Professional Biography
Stuart Cox was a professional actor, movement director and theatre director for almost 50 years (1969-2017), in the first instance across the full spectrum of British theatre – Repertory Theatre in Leeds, Cheltenham, Aberystwyth, Newcastle, Liverpool and Bristol; experimental; touring; Shakespeare’s The Tempest with Paul Scofield in London’s West End; twice as Movement Director at Glyndebourne Festival Opera; directing a community tour for Welsh National Opera; as well as acting in film and TV, including four plays in the BBC Shakespeare series. He has worked internationally, in Poland, Ireland, Iceland, India, Pakistan, the USA, Mexico and Cuba, also attending festivals in Helsinki and Istanbul as a delegate of the International Theatre Institute. He has directed workshops on The Acting of Shakespeare in Wales, India, Mexico, the USA and Cuba.
Pride of place goes to directing a personal trilogy of productions of the Celtic story of Tristan & Essyllt: in Wales with and for Cardiff’s Indian Immigrant community; in the village of Borunda in the desert of Rajasthan, India; in Mexico in the villages of Real del Monte, Hidalgo and Tepoztlán, Morelos as well as the cities of Pachuca and Mexico City, each time adapting performances to integrate the local cultural traditions using text, songs, dance and music as a form of total theatre.
He performed a series of one man shows – The Fever by Wallace Shawn (England), Stargazer – Tales of Ancient India (Mexico & the USA), Quetzalcoatl – A Tale of Gods & Monsters (Mexico, England and the USA), Shakespeare by Flashes of Lightning, the life of the great early 19th century classical actor Edmund Kean (Mexico), and his own adaptations for solo performance of Shakespeare’s Richard II (Mexico) and The Tempest (Mexico).
Living and working in Mexico for 18 years, Stuart was the director of the Anglo Arts/Anglo Mexican Foundation’s Shakespeare Project from 2002-2017. During those 15 years he worked directly with over a thousand Mexican teenagers. He was joint founder and Co-Artistic Director of Theatre Taliesin Wales from 1983-1990 and was also the founder and Artistic Director of Celebrating Cultures, a performing arts company formed in 1998, dedicated to working internationally with cultural diversity. Following a successful Shakespeare Workshop at the Teatro El Publicó in Havana, Cuba, in 2014, he was invited by the Cuban Ministry of Culture to direct Shakespeare's Pericles in Spanish for performances in 2016 in Havana where he lived for 2 years, returning to Mexico later that year to direct Twelfth Night, also in Spanish, for Anglo Arts in Mexico City.
Having survived a life-threatening heart attack whilst visiting Britain, Stuart has had to relinquish his international work and travels and now lives reluctantly and quietly in an enforced retirement.
Extracts from The British Film Institute’s film of Triple Action Theatre’s adaptation of Shakespeare’s King Lear, 1975
The film is an adaptation of Triple Action Theatre’s production of King Lear which a member of the British Film Institute Production Board saw and admired. In 1975 the BFI funded the film which was shot on location in North Wales in a slate quarry and coastal sand dunes. The original theatre production toured Britain in 1973-74 and was also performed in Wrocław and Gdansk, Poland.
“A harsh, barbaric vision of pre-medieval Britain, all flaming torches and inexplicably disturbing rituals. We are dropped onto the blasted heath without a narrative map. This interpretation offers an effective condensation of the play’s themes and tone. Like Peter Brook and Gregori Kozintsev, director/adapter Steven Rumbelow favours high-contrast black and white imagery, illuminated by flickering flames.“ British Film Institute.
Tristán & Iseult, Real Del Monte, Pachuca, Mexico City & Tepoztlán, Mexico, 2008
Shakespeare Workshop, Teatro Publicó, Havana, Cuba, October 2014
Anglo Arts’ (of the Anglo Mexican Foundation) Shakespeare Competition, 2002-2017
A BBC Radio 4 documentary about Trystan & Essyllt in Cardiff 1986
A BBC Television documentary, India Comes to Grangetown, about the staging of Twm Sion Cati, with the Grangetown community and the Bhavaias of Gujarat, an Indian folk theatre company, 1986
Adaptation of Shakespeare’s The Tempest for solo actor, Tepoztlán, Mexico, 2014
Paul Scofield as Prospero
Our revels now are ended. These our actors
(As I foretold you) were all spirits, and
Are melted into air, into thin air,
And like the baseless fabric of this vision,
The cloud-capp’d tow’rs, the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples, the great globe itself,
Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve,
And like this insubstantial pageant faded
Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff
As dreams are made on; and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep.
William Shakespeare, The Tempest