Bill Homewood

Bill Homewood is an English television and stage actor and singer. He worked on several BBC Children's television series in the 1970s and 1980s, and was subsequently known for his work in the Royal Shakespeare Company, in the West End, on tour, and his recordings of audiobooks. He is also a published poet.

Homewood attended St Albans School, winning a scholarship to Gonville and Caius College Cambridge, but choosing to take up a scholarship to the Guildhall School of Music & Drama in order to study Opera and Spanish Guitar. He qualified in 1969 with two diplomas: AGSM in Singing, AGSM in Teaching.

Early career

After training, Homewood joined the Salder's Wells New Opera Company of Sadler's Wells at the London Coliseum (later the English Opera Company) as a principal, playing opposite John Tomlinson as Historian in Elizabeth Lutyens's Time Off, and performed in concert and oratorio. He also travelled in solo cabaret (songs with guitar) across Britain and started his television career on BBC Children's Television where he became a regular in such shows as Watch, Multi-Coloured Swap Shop, Saturday Superstore, Rainbow and So You Want to be Top?. He was well known as "The Backwards Man", owing to his unusual ability to speak (and sing) backwards, demonstrated in his regular performance as Ron Gad in The Adventure Game for the BBC. Also for the BBC he played Blondel in The Talisman and Player King in Hamlet with Derek Jacobi in the title role.

Homewood also worked as Examiner in (Classical Spanish) Guitar at the Guildhall School of Music & Drama and ran a Saturday guitar school in West London – though his performing career was veering from Music towards Theatre.

Theatre directing

In 1990 he directed Romeo & Juliet starring Roland Gift at Hull Truck, which transferred to London (Shaw Theatre) and New York (Stony Brook Theatre). His other American directing credits include the musical Naughty Marietta at the Sundome in Phoenix, Arizona, the opera The Secret Marriage at the Eastman Theatre, NY and Noises Off at Florida Atlantic Theatre, Florida. In 2006/7 he directed Macbeth and Shakespeare: Les Feux, Les Artifices (in French) at the Conservatoire Nationale de France in Montpellier.

Radio and audiobooks

Homewood's radio drama credits include Captain Hook in Peter Pan (PBS Radio, US) and Saturday Night and Sunday Morning for BBC Radio. He has record several audiobook CDs for companies such as Naxos, including Les Misérables, The Three Musketeers, The Hunchback Of Notre Dame, The Man In The Iron Mask, Tom Jones, King Solomon's Mimes, She, Gargantua & Pantagruel, Shakespeare's Lovers (with Estelle Kohler) and the Zorro series. Homewood's Count Of Monte Cristo for Naxos is an evergreen audiobook best-seller.

In 2016 Ukemi Audiobooks released Great French Poems, a solo album in which Homewood performs 35 classics, delivering each poem first in French and then in his own English translation.

Visiting academic appointments

In 1979 Homewood was made Honorary Citizen of Austin, Texas. He has held several visiting appointments in conservatories and universities, including Visiting Fellow in Theatre at Lancaster University, Dean of the British American Drama Academy and has been twice Eminent Chair in Theatre at Florida Atlantic University.

In 1983 he founded the Shakespeare text course at RADA, London. In the 1980s Homewood founded and devised the Shakespeare On Stage (SOS) program in Missouri and Ohio, for Young Audiences Inc.. SOS was based in Kansas City, and used actors from the Missouri Repertory Theatre for educational outreach work.

His many other guest academic appointments have included Temp Head of Music at Thomas Huxley College in Ealing, London, Acting Director of the Opera Department at the Eastman School of Music, New York, Visiting Professor of Shakespeare in Montpellier at both the Université Paul Valéry and the Conservatoire Nationale de France. Since 1980 Bill Homewood has taught occasional workshops in Shakespeare and Audition Technique at the London Actors Professional Centre.

Homewood's publications include Theatrical Letters – 400 years of English-speaking Theatre History, in the words of the actors themselves; foreword by Sir John Gielgud, Marginalia Press 1995, Under The Blue – Selected Poems by Bill Homewood, Mimosa Books 2015 Poésies – Poèmes et Chansonnettes by Bill Homewood (in French), Mimosa Books 2017. Homewood's translation of St Exupéry's Terre Des Hommes (Land Of Men) was released in 2016 on Ukemi Audiobooks. His innumerable other writing credits include many commissioned screenplays and playscripts, including Kafka's The Trial, premiered at the Young Vic Theatre, London in 1993, starring James Wilby.

• 2005 Independent Newspaper Audiobook of the Year for his recording of KING SOLOMON’S MINES for Naxos AudioBooks
• 2010 Sunday Times Audiobook of the Year for his recording of THE RED & THE BLACK for Naxos AudioBooks
• 2012 AudioFile Earpohones Award for his recording of SHE for Naxos AudioBooks

From 1975 to 1995 Homewood worked regularly with the Royal Shakespeare Company, including The Hollow Crown (directed by John Barton) and Pleasure & Repentance (directed by Terry Hands) in London, Stratford-on-Avon and on tour in the US and Europe

Touring Theatre

West End and London theatre

West End Musical