ACTOR

After over thirty years as a professional actor, working with some of the most famous (and infamous) stars in the business, Kevin Quarmby has developed his passion for writing whilst researching his Ph.D. in Shakespeare and Renaissance Drama at King's College London. Quarmby's experience as an actor and his enthusiasm for the British stage has given him a unique and invaluable insight into the behind-the-scenes machinations of this supposedly glamorous profession. His theatre reviews and interviews with actors, directors and writers are intelligent, witty and evocative, and are designed to bring ephemeral performances and theatrical experiences back to vivid life. Not scathing critique but sympathetic observation with a light-hearted and knowledgeable background, Quarmby's reviews have been hailed as significant additions to theatre history both in the United Kingdom, the United States and Canada. Quarmby also contributed to the The Shakespeare Encyclopedia: The Complete Guide to the Man and His Works, ed. A.D. Cousins (Ontario: Firefly, 2009), for which, as part of 'an international team of Shakespearean scholars', he supplied material on Macbeth, King Lear, As You Like It and Measure for Measure.

Kevin Quarmby was awarded his Ph.D.in 2008 for his thesis entitled 'The Disguised Ruler in the Early Modern Repertory'. This forms the basis of his first monograph, to be published by Ashgate under the title, The Disguised Ruler in Shakespeare and his Contemporaries (2012). As an academic, Quarmby is aware of the need for literary analysis which combines close textual awareness with the objective contextual discipline of his Humanities with History undergraduate degree, coupled with his MA in Shakespearean Studies (for which he was awarded the prestigious 'Inglis Prize' by the English Department of King's College London). Quarmby's professional experience in the theatre has provided an invaluable practitioner's insight into the production and performance of drama in general, and Shakespeare in particular, which he now brings to bear on the study of literary and dramatic texts from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. During his research studies, Quarmby was invited to teach English courses at King's College London on subjects as diverse as 'Text, Culture, History' and 'Literature of the English Renaissance'. Elsewhere, he has offered undergraduate programmes for the University of Notre Dame Indiana, Shakespeare's Globe and FIE. Quarmby is a member of the academic contributor team of Renaissance and Early Modern Literature for Routledge ABES, The Routledge Annotated Bibliography of English Studies. In November 2011, he was named Distinguished Visiting Scholar at the Claus M. Halle Institute for Global Learning at Emory University, Atlanta.