The play's the thing: Shakespeare Prize & working with Ian McKellen

Olivier, Tony and Golden Globe winning actor of screen and stage over the last 70 years, champion of LGBTQ+ social movements across the world, and all-round legend in his own lifetime, Sir Ian McKellen was in College to judge our new Shakespeare Prize.

The new award celebrates the actors’ technical ability with verse, and their connection with character and situation.

Ian spent the first day auditioning and working with the students before giving individual masterclasses during the next day to the five finalists, Nathan Kirby, Alyson Handley, Mya Pennicott, Saskia West and James Mace.

Highly commended were Aoise Meaney, Chris Odulele and Joshua Gordon.

Huge congratulations to them all. The finalists will head to London early next year where they'll meet with Ian again when he judges the final.

Working with a national treasure and renowned Shakespearian actor as the culmination of their immersion in the Bard, could have been a little bit awe-inspiring. However, the actors were put at ease as soon as they met him:

Ian commented on how lucky the students were to have the time during their training to work on the bricks and mortar of performing Shakespeare, really getting to know it, to play with it, without the pressure of delivering a performance until their final year.

All of the students performed a speech and a sonnet in front of Ian, Jonathan Munby, Director of Drama performance, and lecturer in voice, Alice White, performing to a third year actor to give their words context.

Ian talked about the high standard of the performances, and both he and Jonathan both lauded the actors' clarity of language, and the way they brought together the historical material and authentic, clear speech, embracing what was there on the page and presenting it as rooted in a believeable reality.

'We've been used to working with directors, and of course, Ian's approach was that of an actor,' said Saskia. 'He reads it, he plays around with it, he connects with it creatively - and he's unshackled by a sense of process. His love of words, giving us different scenarios, opened up my brain and gave me the freedom to play, which is so important with Shakespeare.'

'It was great to work actor to actor, building it up line by line, patiently and methodically. He gave me insights into the story of my character, explored it with us,' said Nathan.

'It really requires you to ground everything you say in an imagined reality, in your breath, in your thoughts and in a clear sense of character,' added James. 'It's all tied to the text - and then the magic happens.'

So what did our students take from working with one of the world’s leading Shakespearian actors?

So many things, but Nathan said, ‘it was a real lesson in treasuring your role, no matter how small. We had to create a character around the sonnet and it really brought it home that if you only have that amount of lines in a film or a play, you still have that fully rounded character: a sonnet’s worth of life.’

One of the challenges Saskia took away is to apply this same level of analysis to any other character that she’s performing, using the same insights to create fully rounded people across her work.

For Mya it was hearing that Ian still genuinely loved what he did as a day job:

James agreed: ‘I’ll be taking this work with me into the rest of our training. It’s given us a clearer appreciation of ourselves, and working with Sir Ian, there’s a real awareness of a community of actors, passing on knowledge and enriching the acting community.’