Walter van Dyk

Walter van Dyk (born 20 May 1961) is a British actor, singer, narrator and photographer.

Early life

Van Dyk is the son of Dutch composer Rudi Martinus van Dijk and the Montessori educator Jeanne Elisabeth Anna Koning. Born in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, van Dyk was educated at Hull High School in Hull, Massachusetts in the United States, and later studied acting with Uta Hagen at the Herbert Berghof (HB) Studios in New York and at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts in London. He later studied singing at Trinity College of Music in London.

Career

Walter van Dyk

Walter van Dyk has appeared in several Olivier Award winning and nominated shows in London's West End. He will be next performing A Kurt Weill Cabaret with Liza Sadovy as part of the Dallas Symphony Orchestra's SOLUNA Festival "Coming to America" series in the United States in May 2015. In December 2014 he played the King in the Watford Palace Theatre production of Sleeping Beauty directed by Brigid Larmour. He finished filming the feature film The Carrier which will be released in 2015, and performed "O Moon of Alabama: A Kurt Weill Cabaret" alongside Liza Sadovy at Birmingham Repertory Theatre on March 22nd, 2014. Walter opened at Watford Palace Theatre in February 2013 as Charles Mowbray in the Ronald Harwood play Equally Divided directed by Brigid Larmour. He performed in the world premiere of an American play called Insufficiency by Carl Djerassi at the Riverside Studios in London, and played the roles of the Marquis de Tarapote and the Old Prisoner in Garsington Opera's production of Offenbach's La Périchole directed by Jeremy Sams in July 2012. Walter opened at the Lyric Theatre in the Hong Kong Arts Festival in February 2012 and on September 22nd, 2011 at the Rose Theatre in Kingston upon Thames in The Importance of Being Earnest with Jane Asher directed by Stephen Unwin. He appeared in 2011 at the Old Vic Theatre in London as Herr Schwarz in Georges Feydeau's A Flea in her Ear alongside Tom Hollander directed by Sir Richard Eyre.

Van Dyk made his first professional American stage debut in March 1980 at the American Repertory Theatre in the ART's inaugural production of A Midsummer Night's Dream playing Snug, the joiner later transferring to the Wilbur Theatre in Boston with Cherry Jones. Since then Van Dyk has worked on both sides of the Atlantic. London West End theatre includes the London Evening Standard Award nominated Enter the Guardsman with Janie Dee directed by Jeremy Sams at the Donmar Warehouse, the Open Air Theatre, Regent's Park in A Midsummer Night's Dream directed by Michael Pennington, the Duke in Two Gentlemen of Verona directed by Rachel Kavanaugh, and the role of George Ketteridge in the Olivier Award nominated production of Cole Porter's High Society. Van Dyk appeared in the USA in 2005 in the Yellow Barn Music Festival production in Amherst, Massachusetts of Peter Maxwell Davies Eight Songs for a Mad King. In the Netherlands, he appeared with his own ensemble, Van Dyk & Company, in a production of songs by Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht.^[1]

Van Dyk's work for television includes the lead role of Pieter in the BBC Screenplay Can't Stop me Dreaming directed by Bernard Rudden (1992), and roles in The Detectives, Birds of a Feather, Framed, The Basil Brush Show, London's Burning and Love Hurts. Van Dyk most recently appeared with Channing Tatum and Jamie Bell in Kevin MacDonald's latest film The Eagle (2011) released in the UK March 18th, 2011. He played the role of Thoolen in the movie Incognito with Irene Jacob and Jason Patric.^[2]

Van Dyk has made a specialty as narrator of classical chamber music. In June 2015 he will read once again the poetry of Mark Strand in Haydn's Seven Words of Christ on the Cross which he did initially with the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields and will now do again in the Peasmarsh Chamber Music Festival. He recently played the Devil in June 2014 in Stravinsky's A Soldier's Tale with Edward Fox and Matthew Sharp at the North Aldborough Chamber Music Festival, and narrated the entire work for the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic's Ensemble 10/10. Last August he performed The Seafarer, translated from the Anglo-Saxon by Charles Harrison-Wallace, in a musical setting by Sally Beamish, at the Lincolnshire International Chamber Music Festival broadcast on BBC Radio 3. In 2007 he toured the production of Igor Stravinsky's A Soldier's Tale as the Narrator with the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields at Wilton's Music Hall in London and throughout the UK. He has performed at the Aldeburgh Festival, the Cheltenham International Music Festival, and in the United States for Collage New Music in Boston as well as with the Peabody Trio in Chicago, San Francisco, and Boulder, Colorado. Other festivals include Music for Salem in NY, the Yellow Barn Music Festival in Vermont, and the Portland Chamber Music Festival in Portland, Maine.^[3]

References