Othello starring Aldo Billingslea and Matthew Radford Davies

Prague Shakespeare Company 
Othello
by William Shakespeare
Directed by Guy Roberts and Rosie Ward

Prague, Venice & Edinburgh – July and August 2026 – Dates and Times TBA
Performed in English
75 Minutes

Prague Shakespeare Company presents OTHELLO by William Shakespeare directed by PSC Artistic Director Guy Roberts and Rosie Ward, starring Aldo Billingslea as Othello, Matthew Radford Davies as Iago, Rosie Ward as Desdemona, Carolyn Johnson as Emilia, and Jim Johnson as Brabantio alongside emerging professionals from Prague Shakespeare Company’s 2026 Summer Shakespeare Intensive. 

OTHELLO, is an astonishing epic of sweeping passions and murderous ambition – a thrilling meditation on the power of love and the destructiveness of suspicion, all triggered by one of literature’s most seductively manipulative villains. Performed in English. OTHELLO is 75 minutes long

Shakespeare, Classical Theatre, All audiences 12+

Aldo Billingslea (Othello)
Aldo Billingslea is from the San Francisco Bay area and teaches at Santa Clara University where he is the Father William J. Rewak, S. J. Professor of Theatre Arts. He has performed in nine of August Wilson’s ten- play Pittsburgh Cycle and 27 plays by Shakespeare. Aldo has performed Othello in six productions, most recently at San Jose Stage and the California Shakespeare Theatre. Favorite Shakespeare Roles include Polixines at the Folger Theatre; Kent in King Lear at the California Shakespeare Theatre; Cloten in Cymbeline, Theseus in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival; Charles the Wrestler in As You Like It at the Old Globe Theatre. Favorite Contemporary Roles include John Merrick in the Elephant Man at TheatreWorks Silicon Valley; Paul Robeson at Plano Repertory; Frederick Douglas in Splittin’ the Raft at Marin Theatre Company; John Doe in Meet John Doeat San Jose Stage; Pap and Rev in Fat Ham, Doub in Jitney, Avery in Piano Lesson, and Jeremy in Joe Turner’s Come and Gone at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. He is a member of the Board of Directors for TheatreWorks Silicon Valley and serves as the Theatre Program Director for The222.org, which is in its fifth season in Healdsburg, California.

Matthew Radford Davies (Iago)
Matt Davies is an Associate Professor in the MLitt/MFA Shakespeare and Performance program at Mary Baldwin and a professional actor and director of twenty years standing in the UK and the US. An associate director of renowned Shakespeare company Actors From The London Stage, Matt has been touring the States since 1999. He began his graduate studies at UT Austin in 2004 and defended his Ph.D dissertation in the summer of 2012. Earning three fellowships and a graduate teaching award while at UT, Matt also continued working professionally in the city’s vibrant theater community. Alongside UK national acting awards for two new works, Our Boys and Misconceptions, Matt has received numerous B. Iden Payne and Critics Circle awards and nominations for his classical work for Texas theater companies Austin Shakespeare, Hidden Room, and the Chekhov-based Breaking String, of which he is a founding member. Matt has directed both the classics and new works in London, Glasgow, Houston, and Austin.

Rosie Ward (co-Director & Desdemona)
Rosie Ward is an Associate Professor of Theatre at Boston Conservatory at Berklee. Rosie has trained actors in acting, voice, and text at international conservatories, as well as U.S. actor training programs. Teaching credits include: The Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts (UK), Sharjah Performing Arts Academy (UAE), Northampton University (UK), University of Houston (US), and Brigham Young University (US). Rosie has voice coached and acted in various productions at Prague Shakespeare Company, Utah Shakespeare Festival, American Players Theatre, Alley Theatre, Kentucky Shakespeare, AD Players, Main Stage Theatre, Wheelock Family Theatre at Boston University, and the University of Houston. She holds an M.A. in Voice Studies from The Royal Central School of Speech and Drama in London, and an M.F.A. in Acting from the University of Houston.

Carolyn Johnson (Emilia)
Carolyn Johnson is an Equity actress, singer, director and dialect, voice & acting coach with more than 30 years of professional experience. She has been the dialect and vocal coach on numerous productions, most recently for the opera, Dead Man Walking, starring Joyce DiDonato, at both The Teatro Real Opera (Madrid, Spain) and The Barbican/ BBC Symphony (London). She has coached for Houston Grand Opera, Prague Shakespeare Co., The Alley Theatre, Stages Repertory Theatre, Ensemble Theatre, and Main Street Theater among others. Carolyn directs, both professionally and academically, for the stage; most recently, Mauritius for Lamar University and Panto for Stages Repertory Theatre (Houston Press Best Musical Nomination), and regularly performs with theatres in Houston, Prague, Chicago, LA and Philadelphia. Recent roles include A Midnight Clear for Stages Repertory Theatre, (Sr. Bernadette, world premiere) Much Ado About Nothing for Prague Shakespeare Company (Don John), Trevor for Catastrophic Theatre (Sandra), End of The Rainbow (Judy Garland) and Luna Gale for Stages Repertory Theatre (Caroline), for which she won the 2017 Houston Press Best Actress Award. In Chicago, she was a company member of Noble Fool Theatre and Co-Artistic Director of Bugeater Theatre. Carolyn also privately teaches/coaches accents and acting, and works with the online accent resource, AccentHelp.com. She received her BFA in Acting from The University of Nebraska-Lincoln. 

Guy Roberts (co-Director)
Guy Roberts is the Founder and Artistic Director of Prague Shakespeare Company, the professional English language theatre of the Czech Republic, celebrating its 19th year in 2026. He has produced, directed and acted in over 300 productions and his work has been experienced onstage in the United States, Czech Republic, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Spain, Hungary, Austria, Italy, Slovakia, Poland, Qatar, Egypt, and India and he and his productions have been honored with multiple awards and over 100 US theatre award nominations, including many for Best Actor, Director and Production. He recently co-produced, directed and acted in the EU Creative Europe co-production of a multi-lingual Hamlet with PSC, the bremer shakespeare company (Germany), and the Odessa Academic Music and Drama Theatre (Ukraine) that has performed in Bremen, Germany and both the Estates Theatre and Prague Castle in the Czech Republic and celebrated Shakespeare’s Birthday on 23 April, 2025 at the world-famous Gdansk Shakespeare Theatre in Poland. He will be seen next onstage in his production of Macbeth which has been selected to headline the 25th Bharat Rang Mahatosav Festival in India with touring performances in New Delhi, Guntur and Mumbai. In 2016, under his leadership, PSC became the first theatre company in the world to present the entire newly accepted Shakespearean canon (41 plays including Sir Thomas More, Cardenio and Edward III as well as all the sonnets and poetical works) in a single year as part of the historic PSC400 Season.  He is a 2015 recipient of the Tomas Garrigue Masaryk Medal of Honor from the Masaryk Democratic Movement in recognition for his work promoting arts and artistic freedom. In 2014 Guy received the inaugural Sidney Berger Award from the Shakespeare Theatre Association in recognition of his dedication to the works of William Shakespeare. He was named “Honorary Houstonian” at the Houston Press Theatre Awards for his PSC touring productions in collaboration with Main Street Theater Company (MST). PSC/MST productions include Hamlet, An Iliad, Much Ado About Nothing, Twelfth Night, Macbeth, Henry V (Houston Press Theatre Award for Best Director) and Richard III.  Notable Shakespeare roles include Hamlet, Macbeth, Henry V, Iago, Richard III, Edmund, Pericles, Leontes, Jaques, Sir Toby Belch, Sir Andrew Aguecheek, Hector, Romeo, Mercutio, Benedick, Cassius, Claudius, the Bastard, Bottom, Demetrius, Snug, Puck, Dogberry, and Lucio among others for Prague Shakespeare Company with numerous productions in association with the Czech Summer Shakespeare Festival at Prague Castle and with the Czech National Theatre at the historic Estates Theater. Prague Castle productions include King Lear, Hamlet, Richard III, Othello, Romeo and Juliet, Measure for Measure, A Midsummer Night’s Dream (co-directed with Hammed Animashaun), Patrick Doyle’s Shakespeare in Concert as well as Shakespeare’s Globe touring production of Hamlet.  As a producer/director at the Czech National Theatre’s historic Estates Theater his productions include Hamlet, Macbeth, Venus in Fur, The Merchant of Venice, King Lear, As You Like It, The Winter’s Tale, Richard III, Twelfth Night, The Tempest, Much Ado About Nothing, King John, Two Gentlemen of Verona, Measure for Measure, A Christmas Carol, A Midwinter Night’s Dream, Two Noble Kinsmen, Patrick Doyle’s Shakespeare in Concert, Masaryk in America, Julius Caesar, his Trojan War trilogy: An Iliad, Troilus and Cressida, and The Trojan Women (co-directed with Rebecca Greene Udden), and Amadeus. As producer/director/actor he was also responsible for over 100 productions at the former PSC home theatre Divadlo Kolowrat including Hamlet (directed by Tina Packer), Venus in Fur (both Czech and English productions) Much Ado About Nothing, Cymbeline, Henry V, and Twelfth Night among numerous others. Regionally in the United States his work has also been seen at Main Street Theater Company, Houston Shakespeare Festival, Austin Shakespeare Festival and the Huntington Theatre Company. As an actor touring appearances also include the title roles in Richard III on tour to New Delhi and Puducherry, India as part of the 2020 Bharat Rang Mahotosav Festival; Iago in Othello on tour to Ostrava and Brno with the Czech Summer Shakespeare Festival, Letní Shakespeareovské Slavosti; An Iliad in New Delhi and Varanassi, India as part of the 2019 Bharat Rang Mahotosav Festival; Hamlet in  Alicante, Spain and also in Houston, Texas with Main Street Theater Company where he also appeared in PSC touring productions of Macbeth, Twelfth Night, Much Ado About Nothing, Henry V and Richard III; Macbeth and Much Ado About Nothing at the Library of Alexandria in Alexandria, Egypt; Patrick Doyle’s Shakespeare in Concert with Patrick Doyle, James Shearman and Jessica Boone in Doha, Qatar and Orlando, Florida. As a guest director, his PSC Much Ado served as the basis for a Czech version, which he directed and ran for over six years at Divadlo Bez Zabradli in Prague. His new production of An Iliad starring Karel Heřmánek ml premiered at Divadlo Bez Zabradli in September 2021 and still runs in the repertory. His production of Midsummer for the Bremer Shakespeare Company in Germany recently celebrated its six-year anniversary in the repertory and his new production of Macbeth premiered at the bremer shakespeare company in Germany in October 2021. He also recently directed a new English-language production of Hamlet at the Bremer Shakespeare Company that opened to rave reviews in October 2023 and both his Macbeth and Hamlet still run in the bsc repertory. Guy can be seen as fan favorite Uno Nomesta in Amazon/SONY’s TV Series THE WHEEL OF TIME. In addition to his role as Uno in THE WHEEL OF TIME, he can also be seen in Amazon’s HANNA among other TV and film appearances including the feature film MEDIEVAL as well as numerous voice overs for Japanese anime and commercials for director Craig Gillespie (I, TONYA). He also staged the Opera sequences for the feature film CHEVALIER and the SKY-TV series AMADEUS starring Paul Bettany and Will Sharpe. Guy is a longtime member of the Society of American Fight Directors and has choreographed fight sequences and staged violence for over one hundred theatre productions, ballets and operas in Europe and the United States as well as the First National Tour of big! the musical. Guy also travels extensively conducting Shakespeare and Leadership workshops training corporate executives and managers in the art of leadership using essential Shakespearean lessons as a model for dealing with modern-day corporate challenges. Click here to view Guy’s TEDxYouth talk To Lead or Not To Lead: Changing the World with Shakespeare Guy served as Artistic Director of the Austin Shakespeare Festival (USA) from 2001-2007. He received his BFA from Boston University, and is also proud member of Actor’s Equity Association, The Society of Stage Directors, British Equity, and the Shakespeare Theatre Association. Guy resides in Prague, Czech Republic with his wife, the actress Jessica Boone, and is the proud father of Isabella, Rohan, and Landon.