Alex J Lyon

Education

About me

Versatile, creative, funny character actor; very well-read, highly inventive and imaginative, with a huge voice, inherited from my RSM great grandfather. I have been performing in lots of site-specific and living history projects since 1988, I have developed my own side show about the Plantagenet Succession, devised and toured a one man show about Shakespeare, and I make my own no-budget (so far) films, most recently Macbeth.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=niehNE_5eb8&t=4629s
Acting experience:
I have a bachelor's degree (second class honours) in drama and writing. I've studied at the Academy Drama School.

Most of the acting (and directing) I've done - and what I'm proudest of - has been up close, improvised storytelling, playing first person historical characters in living history events; I'm very good at thinking myself into a situation and playing it for all it's worth. The format has been fast, vital, one-use-only, blink and you'll miss it, and goes from the level of the lord of the manor rallying his tenants to fight for the king, the the vicar delivering the eulogy to the scullion quietly looking the audience in the eye and telling them why he is so scared.

I have spent ten years at The Clink Prison Museum which (aside from the box office) is an exercise in constant storytelling.

I've done several shows with Phantasmagoria and, while the format of these has varied, the work has always been starting off with a historical character and a story and then finding my own way to tell the tale - writing and performing my own script.

When I was a very young actor, I did a season at Avebury Manor playing Elizabethan city comedy and Commedia del Arte.

In 2005, I wrote and performed a one man show in which an actor looked back on his career working for William Shakespeare - one actor, forty characters - it was immense fun.

I've done film and telly, both as myself and as an extra, and have enjoyed both; more recently I had the walking and talking part of 'Joshua's Father' in Azrael. I love the artifice and legerdemain of both film and telly, and of concentrating on producing good work in front of a camera.

I have done open air Shakespeare with the Dulwich Players, and would love to do Theatre in the Round, because that's where I started as a teenager - but as FOH!

My experience *of* acting is that I love doing it, and I only feel that I'm properly using all the bits of myself when I'm doing it. I work hard, but enjoy that - it never feels like hard work.

I made my own film of Macbeth as a test of myself; to see if I could cast, design, contrive and direct it, and to see it I could act the part of Macbeth - to see if I could make my work sufficiently intelligent to be coherent, and sufficiently inventive to remain interesting over so big a part. If I didn't think it worked, I naturally wouldn't mention it; you may see the results here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=niehNE_5eb8&t=4633s
Additional skills:
I write really well - I write scripts and stories (and I know how stories work) - I've written much for the historical literature for my day job, including our museum guide book.

I make films - most recently Macbeth - produced on a budget that rarely even exists.

I can juggle three balls, cook, light a fire from scratch, change a tyre, build things from wood (I built my own bed, and spent a couple of summers building half timbered houses). I'm practical.

I train at London Community Boxing.

I've seen every one of Shakespeare's plays (except Pericles), I can hand sew really neatly, and I draw cartoons.

Industry awards:

I should coco! I got nominated for an acting award at college, but didn't get it! I've my bronze, silver and gold from LAMDA (I got a nice commendation for the gold one).

Additional information:

I began working in theatre at the age of 16 at the Stoke Vic Theatre in the Round. Even though I have worked at the Hackney Empire as a techie for 30 years (and have worked more panto there than anyone living) I am still much more interested in non-conventional performance spaces.

For the last eleven years my day job has been as tour guide, researcher and box office manager at The Clink Prison Museum; this has provided ample scope to keep inventive and spontaneous. I am very familiar with English History and so find it easy to get into period idiom and attitudes.

Skills

Languages Spoken	French
Accents/Dialects	Australian, Eastern European, English - England North West (Liverpool, Manchester, Lancashire, Cheshire), English - General, English - London, English - Manx, English - Midlands, English - Northern England, English - Southwest England, English - West Midlands (Shropshire, Birmingham, Brummie), French (Standard International), German, Irish, Italian (Standard International), Middle Eastern, Northern Irish, Russian, Scottish, Scottish (Edinburgh), Scottish (Glaswegian), Spanish (International Spanish) Acento Neutro, Swedish, Welsh, Yiddish
Vocal Types	Baritone
Organisations / Memberships	Equity (UK)