The Richard Burton Company is the Royal Welsh College’s own
in-house theatre company. It is made up of undergraduate and
postgraduate actors, stage managers, theatre designers and musical
theatre performers in their final year of training at the Royal
Welsh College of Music & Drama. As one of Wales’ most prolific
repertory companies, the Richard Burton Company stages fifteen
productions each year ranging from classic plays to contemporary
drama, new writing and musical theatre.
The college’s undergraduate actors have spent two years
developing their skills before joining the Richard Burton Company
for a season of public performances in their final year. They are
joined by actors from the one-year postgraduate programme. The
stage managers and theatre designers will have worked on a number
of productions in the first two years, before taking senior
production and design roles in their final year while the musical
theatre performers will have undergone an intensive year of
postgraduate training at the College before staging their own
productions. The Richard Burton Company is also fortunate to be
able to work with some of the country’s most exciting professional
directors.
The College has a reputation within the profession for producing
highly skilled, confident and versatile performers and
practitioners. In a unique environment which accurately reproduces
the practices and conditions of professional theatre, the company
provides a perfect platform for emerging artists to hone their
skills prior to entering the professional industry. The company has
developed a reputation for engaging and captivating productions
performed across a range of venues at the College and beyond.
The Richard Burton company features students form the following
courses:
- BA Acting (Year 3)
- BA Stage Management & Technical Theatre (Year 3)
- BA Design for Performance (Year 3)
- MA Acting for Stage Screen & Radio
- MA Stage & Event Management
- MA Design for Performance
- MA Musical Theatre
Many productions also feature musical contributions and
compositions from students on the College’s undergraduate and
postgraduate music courses.
Richard Burton (1925-1984)
Richard Walter Jenkins was born in Pontrhydyfen near Port
Talbot. His prodigious talent and early love of words and
literature were nurtured by his teacher and mentor Philip Burton,
whose name he later adopted.
After winning a wartime scholarship to study English at Oxford
University, he established himself as one of the greatest
Shakespearean actors of his day, receiving notable acclaim for his
performance in Henry IV at Stratford in 1951, and later
for Hamlet, Coriolanus, and Othello at the Old Vic. Although
theatre was his first love, he was courted by Hollywood and his
debut in My Cousin Rachel (1952) led to the first of seven
Academy Award nominations for films including The Robe
(1953), The Spy Who Came in From the Cold (1965) and
Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf (1966).
A very public affair with co-star Elizabeth Taylor attracted
unprecedented publicity for 20th Century Fox’s Cleopatra
(1961), and their turbulent relationship and jet-set lifestyle set
the template for the modern celebrity-obsessed media culture.
Burton’s later work included some notable performances including
the film Equus (1976), and a famous narration for Jeff
Wayne’s retelling of H.G. Wells’ War of the Worlds
(1978).
In 1984, Burton died suddenly at his home in Céligny,
Switzerland. He was 58. He was buried in a red suit with a copy of
the Collected Poems of Dylan Thomas.
In 2011, Richard Burton’s daughter, the actress Kate Burton,
opened the Richard Burton Theatre at the Royal Welsh College of
Music & Drama and gave her permission for its resident company
of actors to be known as The Richard Burton Company.