Michael York

A renowned actor of the stage and screen, Michael York is a cult favorite for his roles in Austin Powers, Logan’s Run and The Three Musketeers. His one-man lecture performances stunningly display the full breadth and splendor of the acting craft. They include:

“Will and I”
Speaking of his fellow playwright, Ben Johnson once said of William Shakespeare that he was “Not of an age, but for all time.” In his presentation on this beloved dramatist, York explores both what makes Shakespeare so special and what it requires to perform his words through anecdotes, quotations, and riveting performance pieces extracted from “Henry V,” “The Merchant of Venice,” “Hamlet,” “Romeo and Juliet,” “Richard II,” and other favorite plays.

“The Man Who Would Be Poet”
Rudyard Kipling earned a Nobel Prize for his contributions to literature, and is largely remembered and appreciated through his stories and novels. York, however, seeks to further explore Kipling’s poetry, dismissed by many as “jingoistic outpourings” in support of British Imperialism. Through readings of and reflections on such famous Barrack-room Ballads as “Tommy” as well as more lyrical poems, York substantiates T.S. Eliot’s claim that Kipling was indeed a writer of “great verse.”

“Rogues and Vagabonds”
Borrowing its title from a term used in Elizabethan times to describe performers, York’s “Rogues and Vagabonds” provides an entertaining overview of the art and profession of acting. It draws from five centuries of British theatre and highlights the contributions of such luminaries as Burbage, Garrick, Siddons, Kean, Macready, Irving, and the latter titans Gielgud and Olivier. Extracts are taken from songs, poems and novels as well as diaries, pamphlets and documents.

York has a lively, witty, accessible style, touching memorably on every aspect of Shakespeare’s work- his use of poetry, his finely delineated sense of character, the kind of theater in which his plays were initially performed.