A promising young actor from Frome has been selected to perform at Shakespeare’s Globe in London, as part of the fifth annual Sam Wanamaker Festival on Sunday 21st March.
Martin Coat, a third-year student at Oxford School of Drama who is originally from Frome, will perform a scene from the play Macbeth in front of an audience of casting agents, artistic directors, friends, family and the general public alongside other students from 22 of the UK’s leading drama schools.
Martin spent many years acting at Frome’s Merlin Theatre before deciding to train professionally in Oxford.
He said “I am so excited and honoured to get the chance to stand on one of the world’s greatest stages and as one of the greatest ever characters as Macbeth. To think it was not all that long ago I was scared to death to even read Shakespeare out loud. Now after three years of top training and because of the support of so many friends and family, I will get to realise one of my biggest ever dreams”.
The festival will include 22 pairs of students performing a mix of comic, tragic, historical, and pastoral duologues, and will end in time-honoured Globe fashion with the actors performing a specially choreographed jig, accompanied by Shakespeare’s Globe musicians.
Martin will also take part in a weekend of classes, lectures and workshops at the Globe, exploring language, movement and voice with the theatre’s practitioners, as well participating in a question and answer session with the artistic director, Dominic Dromgoole. The festival culminates in the public performance of duologues from plays by Shakespeare and his contemporaries, including Webster, Dekker, Fletcher, Ford and Middleton.
The Sam Wanamaker Festival is inspired by the Globe’s founder, the actor Sam Wanamaker, who worked tirelessly for the last 23 years of his life to rebuild Shakespeare’s Globe on the banks of the River Thames in London.
Previous participants of the Sam Wanamaker Festival include Thomasin Rand, who starred as Rosaline in the Globe’s 2009 production of Love’s Labour’s Lost, and Rachel Winters, who is about to appear in Globe Education’s upcoming production of Macbeth for schools.
Patrick Spottiswoode, director of Globe education, said “The festival celebrates the remarkable talent that is being nurtured in our drama schools. There will be no Simon Cowell or panel of judges in the audience – there will be a spirit of celebration rather than competition”.
