Brian Cox on Lear: An Evening for Academy FellowsSpecial EventIn-Person
Monday, Dec 01, 2025
5:30 p.m.
St. Bernard's School
4 East 98th Street
5:30 p.m. - Program Starts
Our partner, St. Bernard's School, is hosting this event.
Brian Cox has portrayed many tyrants, but none more seismic than King Lear. Years before taking on the role of Logan Roy, the powerful patriarch, Cox played King Lear at the Royal National Theatre and kept a journal—later published as The Lear Diaries—capturing the artistic, emotional, and political struggle of bringing Shakespeare’s most devastating play to life.
Join us for a conversation between Cox and Columbia University’s Julie Crawford, a leading scholar of Shakespeare and early modern literature, as they revisit Lear’s questions about power, aging, family, and the cost of truth. They’ll explore what this role taught Cox about Shakespeare’s craft more broadly—how the plays work on actors, and how they continue to challenge, unsettle, and renew themselves in performance. Expect insights that deepen not only our understanding of Lear but of Shakespeare’s theatre as a whole. A Q&A with Fellows will follow.
Teachers can purchase up to two tickets and they include entry, light bites, and drinks. Early Booking Exclusively for Academy Fellows* through November 11.
Teachers can purchase tickets (light bites and drinks included) for $10—each a $60 value.
(We hope, but don’t insist, that your guests be teachers.) Space is limited!
*You are a Fellow of The Academy for Teachers if you have been accepted to, and attended, an in-person master class.
Presenters
Brian Cox is an Emmy Award–winning Scottish actor. He was born on June 1, 1946, in Dundee, Scotland, to Mary Ann Guillerline Cox (née McCann), a spinner, and Charles McArdle Campbell Cox, a shopkeeper and butcher. His father was of Irish ancestry, and his mother was of Irish and Scottish descent.
Cox first came to attention in the early 1970s with performances in numerous television films. His first major break was as Dr. Hannibal Lecter in Manhunter (1986). Although the film was not a significant box-office success, Cox’s career prospects and popularity continued to grow. Through the 1990s he appeared in nearly twenty films and television series, as well as making numerous guest appearances. More recently, Cox has had roles in several major films, including The Corruptor (1999), The Ring (2002), and X2: X-Men United (2003). He was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire in the 2003 Queen’s New Year Honours List for his services to drama.
Julie Crawford is Mark van Doren Professor of Humanities at Columbia University. She has published widely on authors ranging from Shakespeare and Milton to Aemilia Lanyer and Mary Wroth, and on topics ranging from the history of reading to the history of sexuality. She is the author of Marvelous Protestantism and Mediatrix, and is the new editor for the early-seventeenth century volume of The Norton Anthology of English Literature. Currently, she is serving as the general editor of the Oxford Handbook of Margaret Cavendish, and is working on two books: one on gender and resistance theory in Renaissance literature, and the other on Milton’s Paradise Lost for the Core Knowledge Series.