About Edward's Boys

Since 2005 Edward’s Boys (of King Edward VI School, Stratford-upon-Avon, a state grammar school, also known as K.E.S. and “Shakespeare’s School”) have been performing rarely-seen plays from the repertoire of the early modern boys’ companies. In the sixteenth- century, these boy acting companies grew out of the humanist grammar school and choir school systems, performing at the royal court and the private houses of the aristocracy, before coming to prominence in the emergent commercial theatre of the 1570s-1580s and terminating in the early 1590s. The companies later enjoyed a resurgence around the turn of the seventeenth-century, from the re-founding of “Paul’s Boys” in 1599, who disbanded c.1606, until the Children of the Queen’s Revels were assimilated into the Lady Elizabeth’s Men in 1613.

The impetus for the Edward’s Boys project grew initially out of Perry Mills’ involvement with Michael Wood’s BBC series In Search of Shakespeare and subsequent workshops on the Elizabethan Boy Player developed with Professor Carol Chillington Rutter of the University of Warwick. Now providing an exploration of contemporary performance possibilities, productions by the company do not pretend to be able to recreate “original practices” – whatever that phrase may mean. Rather the aim is to make the play work for today’s audience. The text is trusted and cherished rather than apologized for and consequently only ever lightly cut or edited.

Edward’s Boys have toured extensively, by invitation, to many venues over the years. For example, the universities of Oxford, London, Warwick and Cambridge, to Middle Temple Hall, Inner Temple, the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse at Shakespeare’s Globe, the RSC Swan and The Other Place theatres, and to Genoa, Italy, and, in particular, Montpellier, France.