Yale Bulletin and Calendar

April 12-19, 1999

Volume 27, Number 28

Actress to talk about her art
in Maynard Mack Lecture

Actress Claire Bloom, whose career has included starring roles on both stage and screen, will speak on campus as a guest of the Maynard Mack Lectureship at 3 p.m. on Sunday, April 18, in the lecture hall of the Yale University Art Gallery, 1111 Chapel St.

Bloom will hold a "Conversation" with Murray Biggs, adjunct associate professor of English and theater studies. The event, which is open to the public free of charge, is sponsored by Yale's Elizabethan Club. The lecture series honors Maynard Mack, the Shakespeare and Pope scholar who is Sterling Professor Emeritus of English and former chair of the department.

A Londoner by birth, Bloom made her first appearance onstage with the Oxford Repertory Company at the age of 16. Her first major role came a year later, when she played Ophelia at Stratford-Upon-Avon, and her first London appearance was as Alizon Eliot in John Gielgud's production of Christopher Fry's "The Lady's Not for Burning." Her performance in Peter Brook's production of Jean Anouilh's "Ring Around the Moon," led to the role of Teresa in Charles Chaplin's film "Limelight."

Bloom's other films include "The Man Between," "Richard III," "Look Back in Anger," "The Spy Who Came in from the Cold," "Charley," "A Doll's House," "Islands in the Stream," "Clash of the Titans" and "Crimes and Misdemeanors."

Bloom has portrayed numerous Shakespearean heroines at the Old Vic, and has starred in several productions in London's West End. In 1974, she won three major English theatrical awards for her portrayal of Blanche du Bois in the London production of "A Streetcar Named Desire."

She has also been very active on the New York stage, appearing most recently as Clytemnestra in "Electra," and she starred in several Shakespearean productions for the BBC. Her other major television appearances include "Brideshead Revisited," in which she and Sir Laurence Olivier played Lord and Lady Marchmain, and "Shadowlands," which won Britain's BAFTA Award for the best television series of the year.

In addition to serving as a narrator for many leading orchestras, Bloom appears with flutist Eugenia Zuckerman and pianist Brian Zeger in a recital titled "Words and Music"; with her daughter, the soprano Anna Steiger, in a recital titled "Women in Poetry and Song"; and in another recital with Brian Zeger of texts spoken to music by composers Lee Hoibe, Ned Rorem and Robin Holloway.

Bloom's best-selling memoir, "Leaving a Doll's House," was published in 1996.

T H I SW E E K ' SS T O R I E S

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