Michael Boyd, 68, Who Invigorated the Royal Shakespeare Company, Dies

Read the full obituary in The New York Times.

Michael Boyd, who led the Royal Shakespeare Company as artistic director from 2002 to 2012, a decade in which he stabilized the organization while undertaking ambitious projects including a heralded New York residency and the mounting of the un-Shakespearean hit show “Matilda the Musical,” died on Thursday at his home in London. He was 68.

Mr. Boyd’s relationship with Theater for a New Audience went back years. Jeffrey Horowitz, the company’s founding artistic director, noted that in 2007 Mr. Boyd had invited the group to bring its “The Merchant of Venice” to Royal Shakespeare’s Complete Works Festival, at which all of Shakespeare’s works were presented at Stratford-upon-Avon.

“Michael Boyd’s generosity had a huge impact on TFANA,” Mr. Horowitz said by email. As for “Tamburlaine,” the 2014 production, he said, “Michael created an extraordinary sense of community in the acting company, instilling a passion for discovering and communicating what was living in Marlowe’s text now rather than being didactic about meaning.”