About

Passion in Practice is about approaching Shakespeare with fresh eyes.

We play Shakespeare as simply as possible, without any great conceptual frame placed between participants and the play, and approach our work with honesty and great passion.


We are writer led, allowing the text to guide our approach to performance. Using the versions closest to Shakespeare, the First Folio and Quarto forms, and by respecting the verse, we find new ways to fully embody the scope and scale of Shakespeare’s words.

Focusing on the silent stage directions Shakespeare wrote into his scripts we use physical exercises to release the emotional core of the language. Creating dynamic ensembles, we mimic the working relationship Shakespeare’s actors had.

We want to explore afresh to what extent we can let Shakespeare and his words direct us.

Ben Crystal
Ben Crystal is an actor and writer. He studied English Language and Linguistics at Lancaster University before training at Drama Studio London. He has worked in TV, film and theatre, including the reconstructed Shakespeare’s Globe, London. He is a narrator for RNIB Talking Books, Channel 4 and the BBC. He co-wrote Shakespeare’s Words (Penguin 2002) and The Shakespeare Miscellany (Penguin 2005) with his father David Crystal, and his first solo book, Shakespeare on Toast – Getting a Taste for the Bard was published in 2008 (Icon). He regularly gives talks about the Bard workshops on performing and speaking Shakespeare around the world. He lives in London and online at www.bencrystal.com

Dan Winder
Daniel Winder is a London based director and producer working in theatre and film. For Iris Theatre in Covent Garden he directed; Romeo & Juliet, Wind in the Willows – Alan Bennett, Alcestis – Ted Hughes/Euripides, The Mysteries – Tony Harrison & Murder in the Cathedral – T.S. Eliot. In September Dan also directed Iris’ second opera, Purcell’s Dido & Aeneas. As a visiting director with the Vienna English Theatre he recently directed a touring version of Macbeth, as well as directing King Lear, Macbeth, Hamlet, and Romeo & Juliet in Styria in Austria. www.danwinder.com