James Kable has been teaching young actors since 1995, when he first started tutoring at QUT. Since then he has taught hundreds of hopefuls the rudiments of the craft.
From 2001 to 2003 he conducted workshops all over Queensland as part of the Queensland Theatre Company's Regional Partnerships Program and was a regular tutor at the company’s Theatre Residency Week. In 2004 he studied method acting under Martin Barter at the Sanford Meisner Center in Los Angeles and in 2005 he became the inaugural full-time acting teacher at the Lasalle College of the Arts in Singapore. Upon his return to Australia, he began teaching and directing for the Australian Acting Academy.
Since 2005 he has been very proud to be an Artistic Associate at Zen Zen Zo Physical Theatre Company, tutoring the interns and the core company in aspects of naturalistic acting, using the Meisner technique as a primary teaching tool.
As an actor, some of the highlights include the roles of Garcin in Sartre’s No Exit, Barney in Summer of the Seventeenth Doll, Oliver in As You Like It and Jimmy Porter in Look Back in Anger, all at La Boite. He has played Verlaine in Total Eclipse, Mortimer in Marlowe’s Edward II, created the role of Nick in the world premiere of Stephen Sewell’s Frightened Heart, Fallen Soul, done both Theseus and Oberon in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, played Pozzo in Polymorphic’s Matilda Award winning Waiting for Godot, done a double-act as a transvestite and an SS captain in Bent and filled the title role in Self. Since the turn of the century, James has performed to critical acclaim as Dave No-Name in Alive at Williamstown Pier and as Hercules’s doomed stepfather Amphitryon in Mad Hercules. In 2008 he played Governor Arthur Phillip and John Wisehammer in the Gold Coast Little Theatre's production of Timberlake Wertenbaker's Our Country's Good, directed by Jennifer Flowers. Last year saw his acting debut for Zen Zen Zo, playing both Alonso and Affogato in a Matilda Award winning production of The Tempest.
His directorial debut was a Matilda Award winning production of Sam Shepard's Fool for Love, at La Boite in 1989. His millenial version of Shepard’s rock musical The Tooth of Crime was one of the critical and box office successes of 1995 and in 1996 he directed Vena Cava's inaugural production, Stephen Sewell’s ferocious political satire/black comedy/rock musical Anger’s Love. He revisited Fool for Love for Hattrick Theatre in 1997. Since then he has gone on to direct several productions for QUT, for the Queensland Theatre Company and a futuristic Faust for the Corrugated Company. In 2006 he directed three plays for Lasalle-SIA College of the Arts: Edward Bond's The Tin Can People, Stephen Sewell's Dreams In An Empty City and David Henry Hwang's Golden Child. In 2010, James will direct Lunch with Vincent River, two one-act plays by Steven Berkoff and Philip Ridley, at Metro Arts in November.