Roger Sansom was born in Worcester.  He has been a Logos committee member for over ten years. He became involved through the Shakespeare reading groups that Kenneth McClellan used to hold at various places, including his home. Roger's parts for Logos include Gayev in The Cherry Orchard, Manders in Ghosts, York in Richard II, Chasuble in The Importance of Being Earnest and Dorante in The Social Climber

He has been in the theatre for forty years, having started as an assistant stage manager at Barrow (where Bryan Hands was stage director).   Other theatres where he has worked include Bristol, Belfast, Bognor and Brighton.  A disproportionate number of rep towns started with B because all young actors worked their way through the list of theatres when sending job letters, and hopefully offers came in before too long.  Barry followed Barrow as an engagement after a few years.

Roger first directed in Northern Ireland, having initially gone to Belfast to play the police officer 'The Man In The Raincoat' in The Creeper, and stayed for the tour of Richard II - giving an inexperienced performance in the lead role, but fulfilling an early ambition by doing so. 

Photo: Claire Grogan

He went back to Ulster regularly over a long period (coinciding with the start of the Troubles in the late '60s and early '70s), also touring as Shylock, Julius Caesar and Macbeth, as well as playing Serjeant Buzfuz in Pickwick and Gerald in Time And The Conways.  (During a rehearsal of the last-named, very English, Priestley play at the Arts Theatre in Belfast, the theatre manager shouted to the cast to evacuate the building and a bomb exploded in the street just as they were running out.)

Roger has played Shakespeare in the open air three times, as the Earl of Douglas in Henry IV, Part One at the Ludlow Festival, and more recently as Holofernes in Love's Labour's Lost at various places, and as Leonato in Much Ado About Nothing for the Guildford Shakespeare Company.

He has broadcast and appeared on television, including six segments of the political programme On The Record, in which he played John Major imagined as making up his mind about calling the 1997 election!  As himself he competed in a Channel 4 Shakespeare quiz in 1994 and won the title Bardbrain of Britain.