REVIEWS ARCHIVE - NEW ADDITIONS

I've added some new reviews from the 70's and 80's which I found in the archives of Glasgow University's newspaper, The Guardian

Laurance Rudic was born into a musical and theatrical family in Glasgow, appearing in his first play when he was eight, and at sixteen starring in a BBC Wednesday Play, The Boy Who Wanted Peace. 

At the age of seventeen, while training as an actor at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music & Drama, his experience of alternative approaches to dramatic performance with the iconoclastic theatre artist, Lindsay Kemp, led to a lifelong fascination with holistic acting processes.  

In 1972, he joined Giles Havergal’s recently formed ‘Glasgow Citz’, and as a regular member of that internationally renowned company for over twenty-five years, he had ample opportunity to begin exploring his fascination with creative approaches to acting. During his time with the company he played a great variety of roles in Glasgow, at the Edinburgh Festival and on international tours.  

Amongst much other theatre, TV and film work, he has worked with John McGrath’s 7:84 Scotland, appearing in the original productions of McGrath’s Blood Red Roses, and Ena Lamont Stewart’s, Men Should Weep. He was a leading member of Sir Ian McKellen’s company at the Royal National Theatre, playing Trofimov in Mike Alfred’s production of The Cherry Orchard; and touring with them in Europe and America. At the Mermaid Theatre he played the Cook to Glenda Jackson’s Mother Courage, and with TAG Theatre he played the name role in their dramatisation for the Edinburgh Festival of Alasdair Gray’s novel, Lanark.

He has also travelled extensively, investigating other cultural approaches to theatre in order to enrich and expand his life experience – for example, studying classical performance arts in South India, and working with Tibetan refugee performers in the Himalayas at the invitation of the Dalai Lama’s private office. 

Intent on continuing with process in dramatic storytelling, he was awarded a Ford Foundation grant to observe the work of the dying breed of epic improvising storytellers from Upper Egypt. At the same time, he began a long-term residency with an Egyptian theatre group based in Cairo. There, he ran regular classes and workshops based on his own experience of holistic awareness. 

In 2006, he was commissioned by Glasgay Theatre Festival to create a solo work, using stories from his life as actor and traveller. And God Created…was a return to the spontaneous storytelling and character-acting of his childhood. This unscripted and unrehearsed presentation was raw and stripped-back; driven by a simple need to dynamically communicate directly with the audience in shared time and space. 

In 2008, he was again invited by Glasgay Theatre Festival, this time to direct and feature in the European premiere of a Tennessee Williams short play, The Parade. Although this work was scripted, from the outset the actors were encouraged to inhabit the moment throughout rehearsals and into performance, so that no two nights were ever the same.

At present he is creating a new work about his life in Cairo which will focus on his experiences of living through the Egyptian revolution. It will also cover themes of loneliness and timelessness in the mind of the traveller.