Jack Shepherd

Jack Shepherd Biography

Jack Shepherd (born 29 October 1940) is an English actor, playwright, theatre director, saxophone player and jazz pianist, who made his film debut in 1969 with All Neat in Black Stockings and The Virgin Soldiers. He is perhaps best known for his television roles, most notably the title role in detective drama Wycliffe. His daughter Catherine Shepherd is also an actress.

Biography

Early life

Shepherd attended Roundhay School, Leeds and then studied fine art at Kings College, Newcastle. During his time in Newcastle, he was an amateur actor with the People's Theatre. After gaining a BA he went on to study acting at the Central School of Speech and Drama, and then as a student founder of the Drama Centre London.

Career

He worked at the Royal Court Theatre from 1965 to 1969, making his first appearance on the London stage as an Officer of Dragoons in Serjeant Musgrave's Dance. In July 1967 he played Arnold Middleton in David Storey's The Restoration of Arnold Middleton, which transferred to the Criterion Theatre, a performance for which he received the Plays and Players London Critics' Award as most promising actor of the year.

During the 1970s, he appeared in many television dramas, including an occasional appearance in the series Budgie. Shepherd took the title role in Trevor Griffiths's Thames TV series Bill Brand (1976) as a radical Labour MP. In the same year he also played a television director struggling to keep patient on a doomed location shoot in Ready When You Are, Mr McGill, both performances gaining 1976 RTS Awards. He appeared as Renfield in Count Dracula (1977), with Louis Jourdan in the title role.

Shepherd also spent the decade running a drama studio in Kentish Town, north London with fellow actor Richard Wilson, and during that time became interested in playwriting. He devised several plays for the theatre including The Sleep of Reason, Real Time, Clapperclaw and Half Moon.

In 1972 he was a co-founder member, with Ian McKellen and Edward Petherbridge, of the democratically run Actors' Company, playing Vasques in 'Tis Pity She's a Whore, Inspector of Police in Ruling the Roost (Edinburgh Festival and tour) and Okano in The Three Arrows at the Arts, Cambridge in October 1972. In December 1972 he played Ben in Let's Murder Vivaldi at The King's Head Theatre, and in January 1973 took the title role in Dracula at the Bush Theatre, also collaborating in the writing.

From 1977 to 1985 he was a member of Bill Bryden's Cottesloe Theatre Company at the National Theatre, playing Teach in American Buffalo, Judas in The Passion, Boamer in Lark Rise, Thomas Clarkeson in The World Turned Upside Down, Smitty in The Long Voyage Home, The Correspondent in Dispatches and Hickey in The Iceman Cometh. Shepherd was the first actor to take the stage role of Richard Roma in Glengarry Glen Ross at the Cottesloe in 1983, for which he received a Society of West End Theatre award (later known as the Laurence Olivier Awards) as Actor of the Year in a New Play

His first written work for the stage was In Lambeth, an imaginary conversation about revolution between the poet and artist William Blake, his wife Catherine and Thomas Paine, author of The Rights of Man. He first directed it at the Partisan Theatre in July 1989 before its transfer to the Donmar Warehouse, winning the 1989 Time Out Awards for Best Directing and Best Writing.

Shepherd's work in television increased during the 1980s and 1990s, culminating in his acclaimed role as the eponymous Detective Superintendent Charles Wycliffe in the HTV television series Wycliffe from 1993 to 1998. As a theatre director he has staged several productions at the Shakespeare's Globe, including his lively 'Prologue Production' of The Two Gentlemen of Verona starring Mark Rylance as Proteus, which opened the Globe to the theatregoing public in August 1996, a year before the formal opening Gala. In 1998 at the Globe he played a sad Antonio in Richard Olivier's production of The Merchant of Venice.

Shepherd's epic drama about the Chartist movement, Holding Fire! was commissioned by the Shakespeare's Globe Theatre as part of its Renaissance and Revolution season, and was first staged there by Mark Rosenblatt in August, 2007.

He played the part of the Father in Rupert Goold's production of "Six Characters in Search of an Author" in 2009, the Doctor in "The Masterbuilder" at the Almeida, and Melchior, one of the Magi, in the four part TV drama The Nativity, broadcast on BBC1 in December 2010.

Politics

Shepherd was involved with the Socialist Labour League and its successor, the Workers Revolutionary Party, in the 1960s and 1970s. In a 2012 interview with the World Socialist Web Site, he referred to putting "the dialectic at the heart of the play" but expressed ambivalence towards revolutionary politics today.

Plays

Plays include:

The Incredible Journey of Sir Francis Younghusband (Royal Court Upstairs)
The Sleep of Reason (Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh) 1973
Clapperclaw (BBC Two) 1981
Real Time (directed and devised with the Joint Stock company) 1982
Revelations (Bridge Lane, London) 1983
In Lambeth (Partisan Theatre and Donmar Warehouse) 1989. Published by Methuen.
Comic Cuts (Derby Playhouse, Salisbury Theatre and Lyric Studio, Hammersmith) 1995
Chasing the Moment (BAC1 London) 1995, (revived Arcola, Dalston) 2007. Published by First Writes.
Half Moon (Southwark Playhouse) 1998
Through a Cloud (Birmingham Rep and Drum, Plymouth) 2004), revived Arcola) 2005. Published by Nick Hern Books.
Man Falling Down: A Mask Play (devised and co-written with Oliver Cotton, Shakespeare's Globe) 2005
Holding Fire! (Shakespeare's Globe) 2007. Published by Nick Hern Books

Co-wrote with Keith Dewhurst "Impossible Plays", an account of his years in Bill Bryden's Cottesloe Company at the National Theatre. Published by Methuen.

Filmography

All Neat In Black Stockings (1969)
The Virgin Soldiers (1969)
The Bed Sitting Room (1969)
The Last Valley (1970)
Something to Hide (1972)
Ready When You Are Mr MacGill (TV) (1976)
Count Dracula (TV) (1977)
Escape from Sobibor (1987)
Ball Trap on the Cote Sauvage (1989)
The Big Man (1990)
Shoot to Kill (TV) (1990)
Twenty-One (1991)
The Object of Beauty (1991)
Blue Ice (1992)
Wycliffe (TV) (1993)
No Escape (1994)
Over Here (TV) (1994)
The Scarlet Tunic (1998)
Wonderland (1999)
Charlotte Gray (2001)
The Martins (2001)
Boudica (2003)
A Cock and Bull Story (Tristram Shandy) (2005)
Lipstick (2005)
The Golden Compass (2007)
God on Trial (TV) (2008)
The Nativity (TV) (2010)