BEN NAYLOR
Dean of BADA
After studying at Durham University and Magdalen College Oxford, Ben trained as a director with Sir Peter Hall at the National Theatre, John Caird at the Caird Company, and David Lan at the Young Vic; and as an actor at Drama Centre London under Reuven Adiv.
From 2006-2023 he taught at the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama, where he was Senior Lecturer in Acting and Course Leader of MA Classical Acting. From 2008-2021 he was also Shakespeare Tutor for Florida State University’s Theatre Academy London, and he has also taught at Shakespeare’s Globe, the Shakespeare Centre, LAMDA, Cambridge University, Kingston University, and in Italy, Spain, Germany, Greece, Israel and the USA.
Directing work in the UK includes his own translations of Lorca’s Blood Wedding, In Hell (collaboratively adapted from Gorky’s The Lower Depths), Mary Stuart (Schiller) and The Suicide (Erdman); as well as productions of The Devils (Whiting),The Rover (Behn), The Broken Heart (Ford), Three Sisters/Swan Song (Chekhov), Britannicus (Racine), and Shakespeare’s Hamlet (filmed with Illuminations Media), Cymbeline, As You Like It, Antony & Cleopatra, The Winter’s Tale, Much Ado About Nothing, The Merchant of Venice, Henry IV and Julius Caesar. International directing includes Othello and Romeo and Juliet for the award-winning Pop-up Globe in Aotearoa/New Zealand and Australia, and Brecht’s Terrore e Miseria del Terzo Reich in Milan.
Ben has contributed as a script consultant on projects as varied as Robert Icke’s Almeida/West End production of The Doctor and Shakespeare animations for 2-6 year olds on Hopster TV. He also publishes (including in The Routledge Companion to Actors’ Shakespeare) and lectures in scholarly contexts.