Tom Bishop

​Tom Bishop is Professor of English at the University of Auckland, where he works on Shakespeare and on commedia dell'arte. He is the author of Shakespeare and the Theatre of Wonder​, the editor of Shakespeare's Pericles, Prince of Tyre​, and the co-editor of the annual Shakespearean International Yearbook. He also acts and sings, but he does not dance much.

​Ira Seidenstein has the best eye I know for when an actor is really working creatively and when not. His vision of the actor’s whole body, of the clown’s whole commitment of him or herself to the exercise or the speech, or the improvisation, is a bracing one that encompasses every moment of presence on stage. He knows how to coach, and advise, and push any actor, any clown, any performer. He knows how to uncover where the obstacles are, and how to work with the performer to overcome those obstacles and improve both the actors’ understanding and the results of that understanding in performance. His discipline is rigorous, but also deeply generous; exacting, but also flexible; methodical but not doctrinaire. What he has to teach responds to the character of the individual performer, but it holds that performer to a high standard for realizing his or her potential in creativity.

Ira Seidenstein