#Kate burton professional#
#Kate burton free#

I loved acting, but I resisted the profession. His failure with the citizens at the end of the first half, she takes personally. There's a bit of narcissism in her for sure. To a cruel war I sent him.' She prepared him to be a great fighter and is very ambitious for him and for herself. The first thing I say is 'I was pleased to let him see danger where he was like to find fame.

There is no reference to Coriolanus's father. Volumnia is such a force and she's totally a single mother. The mothers in Shakespeare are few and far between. What makes her such a great character to play? Joan Marcus Your character Volumnia is this ambitious, pushy mother. Jonathan Cake as Caius Martius Coriolanus and Kate Burton as Volumnia.

#Kate burton free#

Plus, I mean, free Shakespeare in Central Park. You feel like you're carrying on a tradition.

#Kate burton professional#

For some of those kids, that's their first professional experience. When you see all those kids, the soldiers and citizens, you wonder, 'there might be an Oscar winner in that group!' That's what's fantastic about the Public-they take the cream of the crop from Juilliard, Yale, Brown, NYU, and move them up. What makes Shakespeare in the Park so special? It's been a labor of love, a labor of family, and thrilling to bring this play to American audiences again. So one of the thrills for me was sometimes I'd be sitting in rehearsal and I would look at the Arden and it would reference my father playing those moments in 1953. The definitive text for anybody who is working on a Shakespeare play is the Arden, which is very, very dense but it tells you what everything means and about production history. For me personally, my father was a very famous Coriolanus at the Old Vic. How has it been brought to life, and what does it mean to you?Ĭoriolanus is especially interesting because it doesn't get done that often in the United States, it gets done a lot in England. Even though it's Shakespeare, the play isn't well known. Here, Burton talks with T&C about her journey to the stage, why Coriolanus is so relevant today, and the best advice she ever got from her father. Kate Burton as Vice President Sally Langston in Scandal.

The play has not been performed at Shakespeare in the Park since 1979, when Morgan Freeman played the title role (and a 25-year-old Denzel Washington played a minor part). Burton plays Volumnia, the bossy mother who encourages her son toward greatness-and great danger. This summer, Burton-a three-time Tony and Emmy nominee-returns to her classical roots, starring in the Public Theater's Shakespeare in the Park production of Coriolanus, one of the bard's lesser known tragedies. Ellis Grey and Vice President Sally Langston, respectively.)

She began her career in theater, but many fans know her from longtime roles on the Shonda Rhimes blockbuster shows Grey's Anatomy and Scandal (she played Dr. The call to acting came in her twenties, and Burton has never looked back, forging her own path separate from her family's fame. Initially, Burton never wanted to be a professional actor, thinking she might go into international diplomacy instead. Richard Burton and his daughter Kate Burton at the Sherry Netherland Hotel in New York, September 1973.