Professor Michael Barclay
Director of Drama and Theater Arts and Professor of Drama
Professor Michael Barclay
Dr. Michael Barclay earned his undergraduate degree in Speech and Drama and English at the University of Natal. He earned a post graduate degree in Education, specializing in Drama and English at the University of Cape Town. His doctoral degree in Theatre Arts is from Royal Holloway College, University of London. His doctoral thesis was on the English Stage designer Charles Ricketts R.A.
Dr. Barclay has taught at Universities in South Africa, North America and in The United Kingdom. He regularly lectures at prestigious institutions in the U.S.A., Europe and in the United Kingdom, on Oscar Wilde; the English stage designer Charles Ricketts & his partner Charles Shannon, Vienna 1900, Art Nouveau, 1890's Book Illustrators, Elizabethan and Jacobean theatre & playwrights.
He has appeared on R.T.E .television and lectures regularly at the Royal Academy in London and on 'The Course' at the Mayfair Library. He has also taught at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London and has lectured widely for NADFAS on a range of Theatre and Art History topics. Dr. Barclay supervises senior drama students who study at Shakespeare’s Globe in London.
He is a consultant for many museums in the United Kingdom and U.S.A. on the theatrical designs of Charles Ricketts and on the English artist Charles Shannon, such as The Ashmolean Museum, Oxford University; The Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge University; The Fogg Art Museum, Harvard University, The South African National Gallery in CapeTown and The Hugh Lane Gallery of Modern Art in Dublin.
Dr. Barclay has directed many productions in the United Kingdom and abroad. He continues to direct a wide range of British, American and European plays at Richmond, staging works by Jean Cocteau, Heinrich von Kleist, William Shakespeare, Sophocles, Aeschylus, Oscar Wilde, Peter Shaffer, Harold Pinter, Liz Lockhead, Jean Racine, Jean Anouilh, Jean-Paul Sartre, Anton Chekov, Henrik Ibsen, August Strindberg, Christopher Marlowe, John Webster, Jean Genet and Craig Raine, Patrick Marber and Christopher Hampton.
Courses Taught
- FYS103 Changing Stages
- THR 105 Fundamentals of Performance
- THR 206 Beginning Directing
- THR 358 Britain's Classical Tradition in Theatre
- THR 359 Contemporary British Theatre
- THR 401 Classical Acting Styles
- THR 403 Modern Acting Style and Technique
- THR 320 World Theatre
- THR 310 Modern Drama
Publications
- Michael Barclay Published widely on Oscar Wilde, Charles Ricketts, Charles Shannon and Edward Gordon Craig in Apollo, Theatre Notebook and a variety of Exhibition catalogues for The Barbican Art Gallery, The Carlisle Museum and Art Gallery, The South African National Gallery and The Museum of The Book in The Hague.
- Dr. Barclay has also published articles on contemporary interpretations of Ancient Greek Drama.
