William Seaward

William Vincent Seaward is a director and actor. He was the co-founder and director of The Strolling Theatricals, a theatre company based in the United Kingdom.

Early life
Born in London to two barristers, Martin and Siobhan Seaward, he is the eldest of 4 siblings. He attended Francesca Cabrini Primary School until 1993, then Margerate Roper Primary School until his secondary education at selective catholic establishment, The John Fisher School, where he quickly developed an aptitude for the dramatic arts. He continued there for Sixth Form, achieving good grades and narrowly missing out on becoming Head Boy. After taking a gap year to teach English in South America, he went on in 2005 to study a joint degree, English literature and History of Art at the University of York. After a year attempting to break into professional London Theatre, he returned to academia by beginning post-graduate study in Social Anthropology at Robinson College, Cambridge in 2009, where he made a series of big splashes in the world of Cambridge Drama. This stretched to writing and directing Silent Cannonfire - billed as 'the world's first ever silent pirate play' - which played to success at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe after a sell-out run at the ADC Theatre. He also directed the 2010 Footlights Pantomime, The Pied Piper.

Career
A "bona fide campus legend" he used the university setting to quickly become a prominent figure in the university's societies based in the arts.

Within PantSoc (the University of York's Pantomime Society) he directed and performed in Peter Pan...tomime, a student pantomime which satirised reality television. The show was a widespread success, attracting record audiences for the society, and with Will giving "the performance of the evening." Will also appeared in other pantomimes within PantSoc, including "Cinderella", "Robbin' Hood", "Aladdin" and even returning after his degree to help "Jack and the Beanstalk" which he co-wrote with Timothy Pearson and Nicola Carter.

The Strolling Theatricals
William co-founded the Strolling Theatricals in 2006, a small drama company to take shows to the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. It was with this company that William developed his signature Bouncy Castle Experiment, where he edited and performed Shakespeare pieces entirely on a bouncy castle, usually for comic effect. The concept reportedly formed while in Argentina, when Seaward was considering how to stage Waiting for Godot while at a children's party. It proved to be a difficult venue in which to present a Shakespearean play, with difficulties arising from the use of wooden swords, and entrances by the actors proved to be problematic - as Seaward described the problem, "When people enter, the actors already on stage tend to fall over". Nevertheless, he directed Bouncy Castle Hamlet and Bouncy Castle Macbeth in 2006 and 2007 respectively, receiving mixed, but predominantly positive reviews from critics. Bouncy Castle Macbeth was listed among the top 100 best acts to see in Edinburgh. They recently appeared on Britain's Got Talent however, they were not well received. In summer 2008 Will acted and starred in another Bouncy Castle Experiment production, Bouncy Castle Dracula, which was not particularly well received by reviewers.

The Stealth Fantasmic
In 2009 William began performing a comedy show entitled Ballad of the Skull Fairy, as part of a comedy duo called The Stealth Fantasmic with friend Marc Vestey.

Acting style
William has been compared to Brian Blessed, due to his size and stage presence both physically and vocally. He is also famed for making notoriously bad puns, usually involving mistranslating English words and phrases to a foreign language. A typical example would be:

Control? Why that's Spanish for 'with a troll!'