Matthew Radford Davies
social media
  • Home
  • Actor CV
    • Theatre
    • TV & Film
    • Reviews & Awards
  • Director CV
    • Production Photos
  • Academic Vita
    • Teaching
    • Scholarship
  • Contact Form

Actor, Director, Teacher

Welsh by blood, English by birth, European by nature, and transatlantic by profession, my dogged pursuit of excellence in theater -- both on stage and on the page -- has brought me to Staunton, Virginia, where I teach acting and directing in Mary Baldwin University's Shakespeare and Performance graduate program in association with the American Shakespeare Center at the Blackfriars Playhouse.

Following an early professional career as an actor and director in the UK and numerous US tours of Shakespeare plays with the celebrated troupe Actors From The London Stage, I ended up staying to study in the Department of English at The University of Texas at Austin, where I completed a Ph.D in Renaissance Drama in 2012. During this time, I earned numerous B. Iden Payne and Austin Critics Circle awards and nominations for my theater work in the vibrant Austin community.

An ardent advocate of the Renaissance ideal of the multidisciplinary artist and individual, I continue to integrate my theatrical and academic careers, nurturing actor-scholars in our unique MLitt/MFA program, while engaging in dramatic projects, both as an actor and a director, that favor ensemble and inspire collaboration.

bulletin board
​2022-23

This year has been busy on stage, on the page, and also in the office.

In late summer of 2022, I headed to Cincinnati Shakespeare Company to play Kent in King Lear, my first "fourth" Shakespeare play (two Kents, two Kings). The weekly commute was long but the rewards were rich, and I discovered the delights of a vibrant city. After enjoying a Covid-delayed honeymoon in Venice, Italy, in the new year, my colleague Doreen Bechtol and I rehearsed Henry VI, Part 1 with our first year graduate students, which, we discovered is as much satire on war as history play.

This summer's theatre began early, with a brief and breezy run of The Collected Works of William Shakespeare (Abridged) [Revised] (Again) at the American Shakespeare Center, directed by our three-person company. Immediately following this run, I return to Prague Shakespeare Company to direct Henry V, thereby completing the second history cycle with the company. I will also perform Fluellen in the show, although I'm not sure being Welsh will help me figure out Shakespeare's odd phonemic transcription for the character.

On the page, my chapter, "'O villain, villain, smiling, damned villain': Hamlet and the Rhetoric of Repetition," was published in Building Embodiment: a collection of exercises to illuminate poetic text," edited by Karen Kopryanski and Baron Kelly, published by Routledge. This work continues my efforts to write on subjects that turn my practice into theory. 

My piece honoring a former mentor, “From Texas Hill Country to Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley: The Living Legacy of James Loehlin’s Approach to Studying Shakespeare Through Performance,” was published in The Hare Online Journal of Untimely Reviews in January, 2023.

At the beginning of the 2022 academic year, I became the co-director of our Shakespeare and Performance graduate program at Mary Baldwin University, and at the end of the academic year I was promoted to full Professor, both events ensuring that I will spend more time writing emails than I would probably like, but which give me the chance to shape some of the future developments within our thriving program and theatre community.




Powered by Create your own unique website with customizable templates.