Irwin Appel, U.S.A. California
Irwin Appel is an American Equity actor and has performed with Shakespeare Santa Cruz, Shakespeare Festival/LA, the New York, Oregon, Utah, and Colorado Shakespeare Festivals, The Acting Company, Theatre For a New Audience, Hartford Stage, Indiana Repertory Theatre, and other prominent regional theatres. He has directed throughout the United States, including two seasons at the National Theatre Conservatory at the Denver Center for the Performing Arts. He has also served as composer/sound designer for the Oregon and New Jersey Shakespeare Festivals, Arizona Theater Company, Shakespeare Santa Cruz, PCPA, Ensemble Theatre, Pan Asian Repertory, Indiana Repertory, and other regional and local theatres. He is also artistic director of Naked Shakes, producing award-winning Shakespearean productions at University of California Santa Barbara and beyond since 2006. He is a graduate of Princeton University and the Juilliard School.
Naked Shakes: The Actor and the Word
Naked Shakes is now in its 12th season at University of California Santa Barbara, and its mission since 2006 has been to present energetic, exciting, raw, vibrant Shakespeare using the power of the actors and the language. Naked Shakes believes in the transformation of the actor and the space, along with the imaginative ability of the audience. The barren physical theater space is very important to the Naked Shakes concept; it takes on the identity of whatever locale or particular piece of poetic language is described, and yet always reminds the audience they are in a theater. When Prospero in The Tempest describes “the great Globe itself,” he is not only referring to the entire Earth, but also the “Globe” Theater – Shakespeare’s theater. That duality is what Naked Shakes is all about.