Xander Wins Bath Young Actor of the Year Award

Many congratulations to Xander Spencer Jones on winning the Bath Young Actor of the Year Award (senior category) on Friday.

The highly prestigious competition, organised by the Mid-Somerset Festival, saw Xander explore a theme of ‘The Self Unseeing’ through a range of extracts from Tom Stoppard’s classic play ‘Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead’ in which he gave a poignancy to Rosencrantz’s confusions about the nature of death, to the existential despair of Hamlet in his ‘O that this too solid flesh would melt’ soliloquy. Janine Diamond, one of the Award adjudicators, commended him on his ‘really brave interpretation of such a canonical text.’ His performances throughout were expressive and character-driven and the extract from ‘My Family and Other Animals’ was a thoughtful shift in tone in which he created an excellent contrast between the eccentric characters.
 
Xander started acting when he was 11.  A regular on the KES stage, Xander was one of the eponymous leads in last year’s Romeo and Juliet, and before that played Mowgli in The Jungle Book. He is currently in rehearsal for the Year 12 production of The Red Shoes a fun, lively and at times brutal reimagining of the classic Hans Christian Andersen story offering a captivating tale about obsession and dance!

Commenting on his award, Mrs Tamblyn, Acting Head of Drama at KES, said: "We are all very proud of the brilliantly talented Xander Spencer-Jones on being awarded Bath Actor of the Year.  Xander's confidence and technique has developed over the past few years and we are sure he will continue to achieve great things in the world of Theatre.  From Mowgli to Romeo....what next?"