John Sessions
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
John Sessions (born January 11, 1953 in Largs, North Ayrshire) is a Scottish actor and comedian. He is best known for comedy improvisation in television shows such as Whose Line Is It Anyway?.
Contents |
[edit] Early life
Sessions was born John Gibb Marshall and spent some of his earliest years in Kempston, Bedford. He changed his name when he became a performer as there was already a John Marshall on the Equity register.
He graduated with an MA from the University of Wales and later studied for a PhD from McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario, Canada, although (contrary to common assumption for many years) he did not complete the doctorate [1]. From later interviews and references in his work it appears this latter period was an unhappy one.
He attended RADA and in the early 1980s held small roles in films including The Sender (1982), The Bounty (1984, with Mel Gibson and Anthony Hopkins) and Castaway (1986). Not appearing particularly comfortable in these roles however, he played to his strengths in improvisation and comedy with his one-man stage show Napoleon which ran in London's West End for some time in the mid-1980s.
[edit] Whose Line Is It Anyway? and other improvisation
Sessions and Stephen Fry were the only two regular panellists on the original radio broadcast of Whose Line Is It Anyway? in the late 1980s. When the show, still hosted by Clive Anderson, made the transition to television, Fry departed from regular appearances, but Sessions remained the featured panellist for the first several seasons. A gifted impressionist (he also voiced characters for Spitting Image), he drew heavily on his extensive literary education and developed a reputation for being "a bit of a swot", being able to quote extensive passages of text and make endless cultural and historical references. His ready ability to switch between accents and personae meanwhile allowed his career in improvisation to flourish.
By 1989 he was starring in own one-man TV show, John Sessions. Filmed at the Donmar Warehouse in London, the show involved Sessions performing before a live audience who were invited to nominate a person, a location and two objects from a selection, around which Sessions would improvise a surreal performance for the next half hour. This series prompted two further one-man TV outings in John Sessions' Tall Tales (1991) and John Sessions' Likely Stories (1994), although these were increasingly pre-planned rather than improvisational and ultimately Sessions grew weary of this kind of performance (as did the viewing public). More successful was Stella Street (1997 to present), a surreal "soap opera" about a suburban British street inhabited by celebrities like Michael Caine and Al Pacino, which he conceived with fellow impressionist Phil Cornwell, the two of them playing several parts in each episode.
[edit] Recent work and appearances
Increasingly Sessions has returned to formal acting, with parts ranging from James Boswell (to Robbie Coltrane's Samuel Johnson) in the UK TV series Boswell and Johnson's Tour of the Western Isles (1993) to Doctor Prunesquallor in the BBC adaptation of Gormenghast (2002). He has also appeared in some Shakespeare films, playing Macmorrow in Kenneth Branagh's Henry V (1989), Philostrate in the 1999 film of A Midsummer Night's Dream, and Salerio in 2004's The Merchant of Venice, with Al Pacino and Jeremy Irons.
In between appearing in regular film and TV roles Sessions has made appearances on Have I Got News For You and, more recently, as a semi-regular panellist on QI. Sessions was one of four panellists, including the permanent Alan Davies, on the inaugural episode of QI, in which he demonstrated his effortless memory of the birth and death dates of various historical figures (while simultaneuously and apologetically deeming the knowledge of such facts "a sickness").
On radio, Sessions guested in December 1997 on the regular BBC Radio 3 show Private Passions, presented by Michael Berkeley, not as himself but as a 112-year-old Viennese percussionist called Manfred Sturmer, who told anecdotes (about Brahms, Clara Schumann, Richard Strauss, Arnold Schoenberg and others) so realistically that some listeners did not realise that the whole thing was a hoax. Other Sessions creations appeared on Berkeley's show in subsequent years.
Sessions made a guest appearance in a special webcast version of Doctor Who, in a story called Death Comes to Time, in which he played General Tannis. He also appears in the BBC series Judge John Deed as barrister Brian Cantwell on an occasional basis.
In 2006 he presented some of the BBC's coverage of The Proms, and featured in one of the 2 Jackanory specials, voicing the characters and playing the storyteller in 'Muddle Earth'.
[edit] External links
Categories: 1953 births | Living people | Doctor Who actors | Gay actors | LGBT people from Scotland | McMaster University alumni | Natives of North Ayrshire | Scottish comedians | Scottish film actors | Scottish stage actors | Scottish television actors | Scottish voice actors | Whose Line Is It Anyway? contestants | University of Wales Alumni
