University News Last updated 11 March
Get to know who is driving Royal Birmingham Conservatoire in this weekly feature, Meet the RBC leadership team.
Vice Principal Acting Professor Stephen Simms brings two decades of experience as a professional actor to RBC working at the Royal Shakespeare Company and in the West End.
His vision would be for RBC to be recognised as the number one world-leading Conservatoire for the work that it does, and one day he hopes to deliver a beautiful and bespoke creative working space that Acting staff and students truly deserve.
What are the core skills or areas of expertise that you bring to RBC?
I spent the best part of 20 years as a professional actor before I came into education, where acting was my sole income. I worked nationally and internationally for companies like the Royal Shakespeare Company and Declan Donnellan’s Cheek By Jowl Theatre Company, performing in Tokyo, Buenos Aires, Rio de Janeiro, Paris and Los Angeles.
I spent some years performing in the West End, and made some feature films including my first film, Kenneth Branagh’s Oscar-winning Henry V. I also played the lead in a French cinema release called Rêve de Siam (Siamese Dream).
I always used to enjoy being at the Chichester Festival Theatre in the summer. I toured extensively in the USA at one point, when I got to perform in Memphis Tennessee, the home of Elvis Presley, and Appleton Wisconsin, home of Harry Houdini. It’s these skills as a professional actor that first brought me into the Conservatoire.
What have been your highlights since you started at RBC?
The highlights have to be working with students – sometimes the little break-throughs people make in a studio can be so fulfilling to witness and help facilitate. I’ve had so many laughs and good times directing student productions – I really believe you can’t learn unless you’re feeling positive and are enjoying what you are doing.
Recently I’ve been focused on making new devised work, and helping teach students how to do this for themselves. It has been wonderful to see students I worked with creating their own work when they graduate, and getting recognition from audiences and in the national media for the great quality and originality of that work.
What have been the most challenging issues that you’ve had to discuss and take a view on so far?
Apart from taking our teaching online when Covid hit us all, which was both incredibly challenging but also very rewarding as staff excelled themselves in their inventiveness to overcome what at first seemed an impossible task, I think the ongoing search to find a permanent home for the Acting courses that sit within Royal Birmingham Conservatoire has been the most challenging part of my job for the last few years. We’ve moved around several different places, and our academic staff have been incredibly supportive to the students to help guide them through these changes. One day, I hope we will be able to deliver for staff and students the beautiful and bespoke creative working spaces that they truly deserve.
What are your ambitions for RBC?
I would like us to be recognised as the number one world-leading Conservatoire for the work that we do.
What do you do outside of the role when you are not working?
I’ve just handed in a PhD that I’ve been working on part-time for the last five years, and frankly that hasn’t left much time for anything else. I enjoy hiking - I always get lost and frightened by cows - and like the challenge of film photography.
Modern and contemporary art excites me, and I am a big music fan, mainly indie rock and roll and swampy gothic blues, but I’ve currently got a big teenage crush on Orville Peck. Best of all, I enjoy babysitting my son’s two little children.