Rob Clare was originally an actor with the Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC). He later became Staff Director at the U.K. National Theatre and associate artistic director of Compass, the major U.K. touring company, for which he directed the first major revival of Amadeus. He was also one of the pioneers of working creatively with inmates within the U.K. prison system, using structured improvisation to develop new and original dramatic material. Becoming increasingly interested in differing approaches to working with Shakespeare’s texts, he completed a doctorate in the subject at Oxford University, and has since become an internationally recognized Shakespeare specialist. He has worked in numerous training institutions within the U.K., and established the M.A. Classical Acting course at The Central School of Speech & Drama in London, which he also led for its first three years. Since resuming his freelance career, Clare has directed and/or taught Shakespeare in Ireland, Austria, Germany, Australia, China and the United States. In India, he directed Hindi productions of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Julius Caesar and Romeo and Juliet.

Before moving to the U.S., Clare worked regularly for almost a decade as a freelance specialist verse and text coach with the RSC’s core acting ensemble, leading annual workshops, and working in and alongside rehearsals for productions of Richard III; Richard II; Henry IV, Part 1; Henry IV, Part 2; Henry V; and Hamlet. In other locations, he has also directed productions of As You Like It; Cymbeline; Twelfth Night; The Merry Wives of Windsor; Love’s Labour’s Lost; King Lear, The Winter’s Tale, Richard III, Pericles and The Duchess of Malfi. He has worked regularly at The Actors Center in New York City, The Academy for Classical Acting in Washington, D.C., and with the acclaimed Steppenwolf Theater Company in Chicago, for whose ensemble he led Shakespeare workshops. While there, he also provided specialized verse and text work for Tina Landau’s production of The Tempest. Current projects include directing Richard III for The American Academy of Dramatic Arts in Los Angeles.

In addition to UCLA TFT, Clare has been a visiting faculty member at USC, CSU Long Beach, CSU Los Angeles, Brown, Yale, The Juilliard School and NYU Tisch School of the Arts.

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