Paul Shearman

I’m an international actor and playwright who believes theatre matters most when it tells the truth — especially the uncomfortable ones. My newest solo play, The Last Audition, is a world-touring work that examines aging, caregiving, and identity through a fictional Shakespearean actor confronting the fear of losing independence, relevance, and freedom.

The character is not experiencing memory loss. Instead, the play lives in the pressure space around memory — what it represents, what it protects, and what is at stake when others begin to decide your future for you. The emotional terrain is deeply informed by lived experience. Like many families, I’ve witnessed how caregiving reshapes relationships, responsibility, and dignity, long before any diagnosis arrives.

Trained at Stella Adler Studio of Acting and having worked across the U.S., China, and the U.K., I bring decades of stage experience to conversations about aging, creativity, autonomy, and the role of storytelling in facing fear honestly. As a guest, I speak candidly about caregiving, artistic identity after 60, and why theatre, and Shakespeare in particular, becomes most urgent when freedom feels fragile.