Laurance Rudic

Laurance Rudic was born into a musical, theatrical family in Glasgow, Scotland, 1952. His father was classical violinist and his mother a semi-professional light-opera singer.

Laurance appeared in his first play when he was eight years old, and went on to play Tom Sawyer in a school play when he was 10. In 1967, intent on pursuing a career as a professional actor, he left school at the age of fifteen and got a job as an office boy at BBC Glasgow. While working at the BBC he attracted the attention of the director Pharic McLaren who had seen him acting in staff amateur drama plays. McLaren asked him to audition for a ‘Wednesday Play’ he was about to direct, called The Boy Who Wanted Peace (BBC1969). Rudic was cast in the name role of Percy Phinn, and left the BBC staff to begin actor training at The Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama. During this time, he became the pupil of the mime performer, Lindsay Kemp, who was then based in Edinburgh. Kemp accepted him as a student and through his own example encouraged Rudic to think of theatre as a magical and living art. He acted with Kemp in his early productions of “Flowers”, based on Jean Genet’s novel, Our Lady of the Flowers; and Georg Buchner’s, Woyzeck. Both productions were shown at The Old Traverse Theatre in Edinburgh in 1970 and 1971.

While still at drama school, Rudic was developing a relationship with the newly formed Glasgow Citizens Theatre Company ‘The Citz’ (1969 – 2003) and its triumvirate of directors: Giles Havergal, Philip Prowse, and Robert David McDonald. On leaving RSAM&D, he was invited to join the company whose actors were all under the age of 25 and he was also one of only three Scots actors to be accepted into the mainly English company. His first role was as Celebinus in Keith Hack’s production for the Edinburgh International Festival of Christopher Marlowe’s, Tamburlaine the Great. He stayed with the company for the next four seasons, playing a variety of roles.

Curious about the very different everyday-life he had witnessed in Morocco and Egypt, in 1975 he traveled alone overland to India via Iran and Afghanistan, in order to meet refugee Tibetans and to look for clues in this more holistic environment to the development of his own approach to acting. In the Himalayas, he was invited by the Dalai Lama’s Private Secretary to teach acting to the young performers of the Tibetan Institute of Performing Arts (T.I.P.A.) who were preparing for the first Tibetan-in-exile cultural tour of Europe and America.

He returned to the Citizens for a final season, and in 1976, left Glasgow to explore the London market place. The same year he was chosen to play a young Friar Lawrence in James Rhoose-Evans’ production of Shakespeare’s, Romeo and Juliet. The production at the Shaw Theatre, also featured Mickey Feast, Angela Pleasance, Brian Sterner, and making her second appearance as an actress, the renowned Prima ballerina, Svetlana Beriosova, who played Lady Capulet. He had seen her dance in Glasgow and was somewhat flabbergasted to find himself working with her.

That same year, London was host to the Festival of Islam and the whole city was given over to a variety of singers and dancers and musicians from Islamic cultures, who again reaffirmed in Rudic his belief that inspiration for the development of his own process lay in those more traditional cultures with their living approach to storytelling and performance.

In 1978, the Kathakali actors of Kerala, South India, made their first-ever appearance in London at The Sadlers Wells Theatre. Rudic applied for and was accepted as a student at the Kerala Kalamandalum. At Kerala Kalamandalum he became disillusioned by the mechanized drilling techniques of the teachers. He lasted a little under six months, and left Kerala to return to the Tibetans in the Himalayas.

In 1979 he returned to the UK and was invited by John McGrath, playwright and founder of the 7:84 Theatre Company, to appear in his new play, Blood Red Roses. Laurance subsequently returned to his old company, The Glasgow Citizens, to play the role of Socrate in a new play by Robert David McDonald, Chincilla.

In 1981 he performed once more with 7:84, in a revival of a play by Ena Lamont Stewart: Men Should Weep. That winter he appeared as Friar Tuck in the Citizens’ annual pantomime Babes in the Wood, written by John Byrne of Slab Boys fame, and also starring newcomers, Gary Oldman as Daniel the Dog, and Robbie Coltrane as Little John. Rudic embarked on three more successful seasons, playing his usual diverse selection of roles.

In 1985, Sir Peter Hall invited Sir Ian McKellan to start a new company at the Royal National Theatre and Rudic was asked to join the company which included Roy Kinnear, Eleanor Bron, Ian McKellan, Edward Petherbridge, Sheila Hancock, Hugh Lloyd, Jonathan Hyde and Greg Hicks. The company presented four plays in the UK and also toured to Paris, Aberdeen and Chicago.

Preferring theatre to films and TV, he returned regularly to the Glasgow Citizens throughout the late 80’s and 90’s. In 1993, curious to discover yet more about his own process in theatre, he returned once more on an extended visit to India and The Tibetan Institute of Performing Arts in the Indian Himalayas, where he was invited to work with a new generation of young Tibetan performers. He returned to the UK in late 1993 and accepted a season at Pitlochry. In 1995, he returned to the Citizens under its old regime for the last time, playing the role of James Tyrone in Eugene O’Neill’s, Long Day’s Journey Into Night.

Since that time, he has become increasingly interested in developing his approach to theatre as a living storyteller and in 2000 he was awarded a Ford Foundation Grant to travel to Egypt and observe one of the last of the old generation of improvising epic storytellers, Sayid El Dawy, whose approach has been compared by scholars to that of the old Homeric bards. As part of his research, he based himself with El Warsha Theatre Company, a group of young Egyptian actors, dancers and singers, working in an old apartment in busy downtown Cairo. He has remained with the company passing on his discoveries in theatre to them and at the same time preparing himself to move onto the next level of performance as an improvising storyteller. At present he is working on a one-man show with his friend Andrew McKinnon based on stories of his life as a traveler and actor, which he hopes to present in his native Scotland later in 2006.

Also see The Unofficial Glasgow Citizen’s Theatre site: http://www.members.aol.com/actorsite2/lr/lrhomepg.htm

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