Institute Of Psychoanalysis Awards Honorary Fellowship To Actor Simon Russell Beale

Main Category: Psychology / Psychiatry
Article Date: 28 Jun 2009 - 1:00 PDT

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Joining a prestigious group including Anish Kapoor and Bernardo Bertolucci, acclaimed Shakespearean actor Simon Russell Beale was welcomed as an Honorary Fellow of the Institute of Psychoanalysis at a presentation on Sunday 21 June 2009. The award was made in recognition of Russell Beale's "contribution to psychoanalysis through his exceptionally thoughtful work as an actor, especially in major Shakespearean roles and through his reflections on them."

The Honorary Fellowship title is given by the Institute on those who are at the forefront of their own field and have by their work contributed to psychoanalysis, either directly or indirectly. It was presented to Russell Beale after his lecture on Shakespeare: Without Memory or Desire, given as the Institute's Ernest Jones Memorial lecture, on 21 June 2009.

Presenting the Fellowship, the Institute of Psychoanalysis' President, Michael Brearley, said, "The Honorary Fellowship is one way we have of recognising that people in other fields contribute to our analytic thinking. Psychoanalysis has always been more than a developmental psychology and a form of therapy. From its beginning, it has interacted with and cross-fertilized with other disciplines including the arts. Freud took many examples from literature and especially drama; his understanding of the inner world of the individual was informed by culture."

Russell Beale is currently performing in The Bridge Project's acclaimed productions of The Winter's Tale and The Cherry Orchard, directed by Sam Mendes, at London's Old Vic. The Bridge Project is an unprecedented three-year transatlantic partnership uniting The Old Vic with Brooklyn Academy of Music and Neal Street Productions.

The Ernest Jones lecture is held every two years to commemorate the Institute's founder Ernest Jones, a psychoanalyst who was one of the key proponents of psychoanalysis in the UK in the early twentieth century and the Institute's President until 1944.

SIMON RUSSELL BEALE is an Associate Artist of the Royal Shakespeare Company, National and Almeida Theatres. For the RSC performances include Konstantin in The Seagull and Ariel in The Tempest. For the National Theatre he played Hamlet, winning the Evening Standard Best Actor Award, the lead in Humble Boy (also West End) and George in Jumpers (NT and on Broadway). Performances of Vanya in Uncle Vanya and Malvolio in Twelfth Night at the Donmar Warehouse and the Brooklyn Academy New York won Best Actor at the 2002 Olivier and Evening Standard Awards as well as a Village Voice Obie. Simon starred in Spamalot on Broadway and in the West End. He is part of Sam Mendes new British/American Theatre Company called the Bridge Project and will appear in A Winters Tale and The Cherry Orchard at the Brooklyn Academy, on an International Tour and at the Old Vic Theatre in London throughout 2009. Television work includes A Dance To The Music of Time for which he won the 1997 Royal Television Society Award and the BAFTA Best Actor Award. He worked on the film The Gathering, was Narrator for The Firebird of Florence at the Barbican Hall, The Stravinsky Promenade at the Royal Albert Hall, was the Reader in an evening of music and poetry Auden and Britten for the Societe Philharmonique de Bruxelles, and was one of the Narrators on Façade for the Nash Ensemble.

Source
Institute of Psychoanalysis