Acclaimed international director joins acting school

British theatre director Tim Supple, known for award-winning adaptations at the Young Vic and a ground-breaking production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, has joined East 15 Acting School.

Tim, who is renowned for his international theatre directing, is the new Head of MA Acting.

He hopes his international experiences will help him build on the heritage of the course and develop it further into “something for people who are really serious about rigorous application and who know they're handling a precious art form.”

As Artistic Director at the Young Vic between 1993 and 2001 Tim worked on acclaimed productions including an adaptation of Grimm’s fairytales, which won him a Time Out award in 1994, and Tales from Ovid, adapted from a Ted Hughes translation.

After leaving the Young Vic, he carved out a global career, directing, teaching and researching theatre practice around the world.

His multi-lingual Indian production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream won him a Theatrical Management Association award in 2008. He describes the production as one of the highlights of his career and as a “release from the restrictions of British theatre that shattered everything and showed me what I could become.”

After focusing the first 20 years of his career on creating theatre in the UK, and the second 20 years researching theatre practice globally through international directing, Tim was drawn to East 15 to turn his attention to teaching.

He will draw inspiration from theatre training models he’s seen abroad in Europe, India and Russia where there is less distinction between directing, teaching and research.

“In Russia you are not seen as a serious theatre director unless you're training students at the same time and directors, designers, actors etc all study together, in one cohort, often staying together as an ensemble afterwards because they have a collective sense of endeavour,” he explained.

The opportunity to work with students at East 15, where he can meld directing, teaching and research, was one that was too good to miss.

“East 15 is a place that’s always been intriguing to me. It's this mixture of a grounded British theatre tradition training - but one that is not in the mainstream – and a more recent rich, international, development of its courses with international students and international tutors.”

“What's great about East 15 is it's got room for each of the course leaders and each of the courses to develop its own thread within a very coherent whole. It’s an exciting environment to be in.”

Recognising the success of the MA Acting course, Tim hopes to develop the programme into something truly unique to East 15.

“What I would love to achieve is a course with such a strong, charismatic, coherent identity that it continues to attract students competitively and has to turn people away; a course that gives students the tools of the trade so that they are adaptable; and thirdly a course that develops them as artists of performance so that they have that potency that you feel in people who know what they're doing and why they're doing it.”

Tim believes his global experiences and time at the Young Vic will offer students a distinctive learning experience.

“In me they have a course leader who has one foot firmly in the nuts and bolts and grunt and grind of the British theatre which means I can help them with the reality of work. But on the other hand, I can open their minds to different approaches to acting which are numerous and rich and very important.”

Dr Chris Main, Director of East 15, added: “On behalf of everyone at our School, I’m delighted to welcome Tim to our team of excellent teaching staff at East 15. His international experience working with great actors and theatre professionals around the world, pushing boundaries in theatre practice and performance, enriches our education and will be inspirational for our students.”

Header image courtesy of Ellie Kurttz.