In Stratford you either turn into an alcoholic or you better write.

I was nourished and nurtured at Stratford as a very young actress. They guided me and forgave me!

I'm from Stratford, East London. I can get down and dirty. I just roll my sleeves up and get on with it.

I was stage-struck from an early age. I just loved the language. We lived quite near Stratford so I would cycle and watch the plays.

I belonged to Stratford Children's Theater when I was a boy growing up in Manchester. Even then, I was always doing character parts.

I buried my dad the day I started Craig David's tour. Buried him, got on this tour bus in Stratford, and hit the road. Mixed emotions.

And it is a very beautiful idea, and possibly true, that a common man from Stratford with a common education was able to write these plays.

I remember spending time in Stratford growing up with all that company running round and putting on silly hats and just having fun all the time.

Shakespeare's frequent horseback journeys from London to Stratford, and from Stratford to London, must have made him familiar with the county of Oxfordshire.

Naturally, any time that our national team beats Australia is pleasing but the first time we beat them in 10 years at Stratford in 2005 was a day I'll never forget.

The thing that I had saved up for myself and wanted most to bring off was a fully fledged professional production of Hamlet at the Royal Shakespeare Theater in Stratford.

James Agate, a great critic of the day, advised me that the way to learn your job properly was to learn Shakespeare, so I went to Stratford. It really sorts out the men from the boys.

Believe it or not, Jack Lemmon was my inspiration. I saw him in 'Mr. Roberts' at the Stratford theater. I was just 21 or 22 at the time and I thought some day I would like to be an actor.

When I saw Paul Scofield do 'Love's Labor's Lost at Stratford,' that's when I saw the potential of the level of truth that could go on up there on a stage. I said, 'This is what I want to do.'

The first play I ever did was with Michael Langham, Brian Bedford, and Colm Feore, at Stratford Festival. That was my first professional job, and I got to work with Garland Wright and so many great artists.

My parents have always been incredibly supportive, driving me back and forth to Stratford and so on. They realised from an early age that I wouldn't go into medicine because I couldn't do biology and chemistry.

I did do some Shakespeare on film, it's really difficult. It's really interesting, because I was doing a series in Canada called 'Slings and Arrows' and it was about a company based around the Stratford Festival.

In actual fact, I doubled 'Twelfth Night' and 'The Avengers'. I was going backwards and forwards to Stratford. I played matinees Wednesday, matinee and evenings Saturdays, and the other days of the week, I was filming in Elstree.

I think that was very important to Bacon... personally. I think he went to great efforts to get a house for the Stratford man, to make it so difficult for us to prove that it was Francis Bacon, because it is very difficult to prove.

I always kind of dreamed locally - I never really ever dream that I would be south of the border; I dreamed about being a theatre star in Toronto, and maybe I'd do Stratford and regional stuff. I always thought it would be a slow growth.

When I was at Stratford, the very first thing that I was commissioned to work on was trying to make a musical out of the documentary material about the General Strike, which was the next big historical event in England, after the First World War.

I used to drive up from theatre in Michigan to Stratford, Ontario to watch every show. I idolized the actors from Stratford. I was very influenced by them because they would come down and work at my theatre and get time on their American Equity union cards.

Two of the first plays I saw after I arrived in Britain were 'King Lear' in Liverpool, and 'Antony and Cleopatra' at Stratford. One was produced with hardly a backdrop and the other with gigantic scene changes. I was impressed by what connected the two: the words and their life beyond the stage.

I started singing about three years ago, I entered a local singing competition called Stratford Idol. The other people in the competition had been taking singing lessons and had vocal coaches. I wasn't taking it too seriously at the time, I would just sing around the house. I was only 12 and I got second place.

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