Jaq Bessell

Jaq Bessell is a director, acting coach and dramaturg. She began teaching while working with Kenneth Washington at the Guthrie Theater, where she helped found the “Guthrie Experience for Actors in Training”. Currently Jaq is a Fellow at the Shakespeare Institute in Stratford upon Avon, where she teaches in the M.A. Shakespeare and Theatre program. She specializes in Shakespeare in performance, under the conditions of what has become known as “original stage practices”, and is one of only four artists to have worked at both the reconstructed Globe and Blackfriars theatres. Directing credits include Love’s Labour’s Lost (American Shakespeare Center, Staunton VA); A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Much Ado about Nothing (both American Shakespeare Center on Tour); The River, Cowboy Mouth (Black Dog Theatre Company at Live Arts, Charlottesville, VA); Macbeth, Romeo and Juliet, Mojo (Utah Pickle Co., Salt Lake City); Rough for Theatre 1 (Jeanne Wagner Theatre, SLC); This Property is Condemned (Lab Theatre, SLC); Cloud Nine (Babcock Theatre, SLC); Perpetual People (Salt Palace, SLC); Bash: Latterday Plays (with Juliet Rylance, Union Theatre, London); The Nearly Men (Boston Center for the Arts, Boston); Ladies of Leeds, Stags and Hens (Guthrie Theatre Lab, Minneapolis); Geography of a Horse Dreamer, Faust Sonata (Little Center Theatre, Worcester, MA).

Shows participated in:
Punk Rock Love Song (2009 - 10) Assistant Director