IN a piece of theatrical news long-anticipated, the founder of Bell Shakespeare and one of Australia’s greatest actors, John Bell, today announced that he will step aside at the end of 2015 and hand over the reins to his co-artistic director, Peter Evans.

“By the end of 2015,” Bell says, “I will have led the company I founded for twenty-five years. This coincides with my seventy-fifth birthday.”

Bell added that he had had this strategy in mind for some time, which is why he had asked Evans, who first worked with the company in 1996, to join him as co-artistic director. He said he believed Evans would bring a new energy and renewed focus to BSC.

Canberrans will be especially sad to hear the new of Bell’s departure. The very first productions of Bell Shakespeare, “Hamlet” (directed by Bell) and “The Merchant of Venice” (directed by Canberra’s Carol Woodrow) took place in a large tent erected at the National Aquarium in 1991 and the company has never missed a season in the nation’s capital, often premiering its annual season here.

Oddly, it was in a tent show, the 1964 production of “Henry V” in Rushcutters Bay, that Bell first became famous, though he was already well known in Sydney University Dramatic Society and at the Old Tote Theatre, where he played Trofimov in its opening production, The Cherry Orchard.”

With some ups and downs and a welcome break for Bell in the form of a Keating Fellowship that helped keep the fledging company afloat, Bell played to the crowd right across Polonius’s famous genres — “tragedy, comedy, history, pastoral, pastoral-comical, historical-pastoral, tragical-historical, tragical-comical-historical-pastoral.”

Sometimes, as with Barrie Kosky’s notorious ‘King Lear” starring Bell himself, audiences were enraged. Sometimes he didn’t even do Shakespeare, with productions of “The Soldier’s Tale”, “The Servant of Two Masters” and “Moby Dick” showing that his ultimate intent was to give Australia a taste for and of the classics.

But the Bard of Avon was always his favourite. “The Bell Shakespeare mission has always been to keep Shakespeare alive through performances, available and meaningful to Australians of all ages and in all parts of the continent,” he said.

In announcing his departure, Bell paid tribute to the staff, artists, board members, private donors, corporate partners, government partners and audiences in the region of 2.5 million that had helped Bell Shakespeare forward.

He said the company’s work in schools had been particularly significant. As well, he noted, the company been instrumental in launching and fostering the careers of many actors, directors and other theatre makers.

WE might as well give the last word to Bell: “I shall miss walking side-by-side with the Bard on a daily basis; my life has been immeasurably enriched by maintaining a daily conversation with one of the greatest minds of all time – questioning, probing, researching and giving his words breath. If I had my life again, I would choose no other course. I would try to do things better after the lessons I’ve learned, but I can think of no greater privilege than the opportunity to devote one’s life and energy to the works of Shakespeare. And for that I am grateful to all who have made it possible.”