About
“One of Britain’s leading poetry and prose performers” - The British Council
Since leaving the Royal Shakespeare Company, Ruth Rosen has established a unique international reputation for her solo shows and dramatized readings. She has appeared at many major national and international festivals and theatres and in venues ranging from Wembley Stadium to the Oval Hall in Moscow. She has given performances in many countries including America, Russia, Canada, Europe, Malaysia and South Africa.
Ruth's solo shows and dramatized readings, which she has devised and researched herself, are based on the work of a wide range of writers and other personalities. These include John Keats, Virginia Woolf, Charlotte Brontë, Lou Andreas-Salome, William Blake, Turner, Burne-Jones, James Joyce, Gandhi, Emily Brontë, George Sand, Ted Hughes, Elizabeth Bishop, Anna Freud, the Russian poet Anna Akhmatova and Scottish poet W.S. Graham.
Her collaboration with Harold Pinter and W.S. Graham became the formation of a rare and inspiring trio.
Rosen's extraordinary career includes her human rights work for the ANC during the apartheid era with South African protest poetry, alongside her work on behalf of Soviet dissidents. She was the first person to give a public reading of Ahkmatova's Requiem, the manuscript of which had just been smuggled out of Russia. At the time of Perestroika, the British Council sent Rosen to take "poetry parcels" to Russian audiences to bridge the cultures between the two countries.
She has done innumerable readings on the Holocaust. These include the annual Commemorations of the Liberation of Auschwitz; "Speak the Unspeakable" with Harold Pinter (eyewitness accounts of the Holocaust); the annual "Warsaw Ghetto Uprising" tributes at the Adelphi Theatre; and readings from the great writers of the Holocaust - Primo Levi, Elie Wiesel, Paul Celan and Aharon Appelfeld.
Her reviews and resume alone are worth reading.