Biographies

Cast

Allyson Ava-Brown

Theatre credits include: The Swallowing Dark (Theatre 503), The Wiz (Birmingham Rep and West Yorkshire Playhouse),Moonshadow in Concert (Royal Albert Hall and on tour),Les Miserables (Queens Theatre), London Road (National Theatre Studio),Julius Caesar, The Tempest  and Antony and Cleopatra (RSC and on tour), Hairy Fairies (Fick! Productions), Simply Heavenly (Trafalgar Studios),Les Miserables (Dennmark tour), Passports to the Promised Land (Nitro Theatre Company), Rent (Olympia, Dublin),The Villains Opera and Honk (National Theatre).

Television credits include: Casualty, Doctors, Bear Behaving Badly, EastEnders, Sea of Souls, Kerching!, Holby City, Secret Diary of a Call Girl and The Wrong Door.

Allyson won the Mobo Award for Best Unsigned Act in 1998 and was nominated for Best Actress for The Swallowing Dark (Theatre 503) in the 2011 Off West End Theatre Awards.

James Clyde

Theatre credits include: Hamlet (Young Vic), The Illusion (Southwark Playhouse), Twelfth Night (National Theatre), Macbeth (Globe), Twelfth Night, Comedy of Errors, Days of Significance, Romeo And Juliet (RSC),  Jane Eyre, Ying Tong, After Mrs. Rochester, Dreaming (West End),  As You Like It, Macbeth, A Taste Of Honey, The Tempest, Misfits, The Candidate, Tobaccoland, Hedda Gabler (Royal Exchange), The Caucasian Chalk Circle (Shared Experience), Single Spies (Watermill), Absolute Beginners (Lyric Hammersmith),  A Model Girl (Greenwich Theatre), School For Wives (Nuffield), I Just Stopped By To See The Man (Octagon), The Lucky Ones, The Eleventh Commandment, A Going Concern (Hampstead),  All For Love, A Hard Heart (Almeida), Hated Nightfall, Wounds To The Face (Royal Court), The Castle (Riverside), The Ecstatic Bible (Adelaide Festival), Scenes From An Execution (Barbican), Mr Thomas, Resistance (Old Red Lion), Jack’s Out (Bush Theatre) The Gentleman From Olmedo (Gate), Home Free (Finborough), The Art of Random Whistling (Young Vic).

Film credits include: Anonymous, Croupier, The Honeytrap, Boudicca, Cheese, Your Night Tonight, Prick Up Your Ears, Glitch. 

Television credits include: Leonardo (Series 2), Above Suspicion, New Tricks, London Bridge (Series 3 & 4), The Bill, Mr Thomas, Between The Lines, Back Up, Made In Heaven, The Stairwell, Cluedo, Maigret, In Suspicious Circumstances, Mick Soft Presents.

Claire-Louise Cordwell

Claire-Louise trained at Rada.

Theatre credits include: Beautiful Thing (Royal Exchange), The Swan, There is a War, Burn / Chatroom / Citizenship  (National Theatre), Ecstasy (Hampstead and West End) Oleanna (York Theatre Royal), Orphans (Paines Plough), The Frontline (Shakespeare’s Globe), Othello (Frantic Assembly), Torn (Arcola), Dirty Butterfly (Young Vic), Days of Significance (RSC and Tricycle), Stoning Mary (Royal Court), Compact Failure (Clean Break)

Film credits include: Stuart: A life Backwards, Freshments and The Curry Club.

Television credits include: Call the Midwife, Casualty, Doctors, The Bill, Law and Order, Day of the Triffids, Bad Girls, EastEnders, Trial & Retribution, Jane Hall's Big Bad Bus Ride.

Radio credits include: Jailbird Lover, The Interrogation, Do you Like Banana Comrades?, YT & The Soprano and Lacy’s War.

Claire-Louise has been nominated for Best Supporting Performance in the 2012 Theatre Awards UK.

Veronica Quilligan

Veronica made her acting debut at the Royal Court Theatre in A Pagan Place for which she won the Plays and Players Most Promising Newcomer Award.

Theatre credits include: The Way of the World, Romeo and Juliet, The Tempest, Spring Awakening, Other Rooms Other Voices (National Theatre),  Dancing at Lughnasa (Phoenix Theatre and Garrick Theatre), The Key Tag, From Cockney to Toffs, The School Leaver (Royal Court), Looking At You Revived, Please Shine Down On Me Again, Zigomania, Loved (Bush Theatre), Salome (Gate Theatre and Riverside), The Riot Act, High Time (Field Day Theatre Company, Derry), Faith Healer (Traverse Theatre), Colours (Abbey Theatre, Dublin) and Rosmersholm (Almeida Theatre).

Film credits include: Malachi’s Cove, Candleshoe, My Zinc Bed, Momento Mori, The Wildcats of St Trinians, Call At Corazon, Angel, The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne, Hostage and Maria’s Song.

Television credits include: Peak Practice, Rough Justice, The Wild Duck, City Sugar, The Vanishing Army, Tears Before Bedtime, Red Shift and The History Man.

Veronica has just completed her MA in Theatre Direction at Birkbeck Universty of London. She was Resident Assistant Director at the Finborough Theatre from September 2011 to March 2012. At the Finborough Theatre she directed Autumn Fire and most recently directed Listening at the Tristan Bates Theatre.   

Dale Rapley

Theatre credits include: The Lady in the Van (Hull Truck, UK tour), The Tempest, King Lear (AFTLS, US tour), Mother of Him (Courtyard), The Merchant of Venice, Holding Fire (Shakespeare’s Globe), Heartbreak House (Palace, Watford),  A Model Girl (Greenwich Theatre), Professor Bernhardi, Rose Bernd (Arcola), Mamma Mia! (West End), A Midsummer Night’s Dream, High Society (Regent’s Park),  A Midsummer Night’s Dream (RSC), Six Characters Looking for an Author (Young Vic), The Circle (Oxford Stage Co), Eden End, Arms and the Man (West Yorkshire Playhouse), Private Lives, Virtual Reality, A Word from our Sponsor, Dreams from a Summer House, Rocket to the Moon (Stephen Joseph, Scarborough), The Ignoramus and the Maniac (White Bear), Company (Library Theatre, Manchester), Lady into Fox, A Christmas Carol (Gloria and Lyric Hammersmith), Flora The Red Menace, The Artifice, Playing With Fire (Orange Tree), Safe Sex (Contact, Manchester), Philoctetes & The Tempest (Cheekby Jowl).

Film credits include: Mein Prinz Mein König, Mary’s Date, Au Pair and Paper Mask.

Television credits include: Anna und die Liebe, Poirot, Doctors, Spooks, Silent Witness, Aquila II, EastEnders, Casualty, Julia Jekyll and Harriet Hyde, For Valour: The Peter Townsend Story, Between The Lines, The Vision Thing, Birds of A Feather and Medics

Radio credits include: The Country Wife, Plenty and Professor Bernhardi

Tom Turner

Tom trained at the Webber Douglas Academy.

Theatre credits include: Bedroom Farce (New Wolsey, Ipswich), The Little Hut (Rose Theatre, Yvonne Arnaud, Greenwich Theatre and Theatre Royal Windsor).

Film credits include: Fused, Morris: A Life With Bells On and the forthcoming Welcome to The Punch.

Television credits include: Hollyoaks Later, EastEnders, Attachments, Henry VIII, Doctors, Catwalk Dogs, Identity, Casualty, Hotel Babylon, Waterloo Road, Tati’s Hotel, New Tricks, Torn and Footballers Wives.

Tom is the co-founder of Dogtooth Theatre Company who produced Ezra Goddens' Play This (Hen and Chickens Theatre and Pleasance, Edinburgh). He is also writer and performer alongside Marny Godden with the cult comedy group The Grandees, whose comic plays and sketch shows include The Box of Cricks, The Grandee Way and The Grandees. They perform regularly on the London circuit and at the Edinburgh Festival.

Paul Woodson

Paul trained at Guildhall School of Music and Drama where he received the Gold Medal.

Theatre Credits include: Close The Coalhouse Door (Northern Stage and on tour), Nativities (Live Theatre Newcastle), Young Pretender (Edinburgh and on tour), The Merry Wives of Windsor (Shakespeare’s Globe), Three Sisters (Lyric Hammersmith / Filter), As You Like It (Palace Theatre Watford), Romeo and Juliet (Shakespeare’s Globe and on tour), We That Are Left (Watford Palace Theatre).

Television Credits include: Eternal Law and Day of the Triffids.

Alan Westaway

Theatre credits include: The Duchess of Malfi (Old Vic), The Faith Machine (Royal Court), The Winslow Boy (Salisbury Playhouse), Rabbit (Trafalgar Studios & E59st Theatre, New York), Singer (Tricycle Theatre), Romeo and Juliet, As You Like It (Regent’s Park), Sexual Perversity, Twelfth Night (Crucible, Sheffield), John Wayne Principle (Nuffield Theatre, Southampton and Pleasance Theatre), Julius Caesar (Royal Exchange, Manchester), The King of Prussia (Chichester Minerva Theatre), The Clandestine Marriage (Watermill, Newbury), Barefoot in the Park (Watford Palace and Royal Northampton), Pera Pelas (The Gate), Faithful Dealing (Soho Theatre), Revenger’s Tragedy, The Pelican (Orange Tree), Merchant of Venice (Library Theatre, Manchester), Blue Remembered Hills (Terra Firma Theatre Co), Wonderland (Major Road Theatre Co).

Television credits include: The Borgias, Case Sensitive, Holby City, Skins Series IV, Peep Show, Silent Witness, Casualty, EastEnders, Two Pints of Lager and a Packet of Crisps, Doctors, The Ricky Gervais Show Pilot, Headless, The Bill, The Hello Girls, Peak Practice, In Tandem.

Film credits include: Honour, Land of the Blind, D-Day, Stratosphere Girl, Little Scars, Doubleheart Beat, Virtual Sexuality, Deb, Sleeper, To Sleep.

Alan is also a writer and has TV and film projects in development with Working Title Films, The BBC and Primal Pictures.

Creative Team

Patrick Prior – Stage Adapter

Patrick Prior is an Associate Writer at Theatre Royal Stratford East. His first play, Fattty, was performed at Theatre Royal Stratford East in 1988. Since then he has gone on to write three political farces for the theatre, Revolting Peasants (also produced by 7:84 Scotland) Blackboard Bungle and Cut and Trust. Patrick is also a battle-scarred veteran of no fewer than seven Theatre Royal Stratford East pantomimes, Robin Hood, Mother Goose, Red Riding Hood, Jack and the Beanstalk, Hansel and Gretel, Dick Whittington and Red Riding Hood 2. His other Theatre Royal Stratford East shows are The Late Shift (with the Flying Pickets) The Lodger, The COHSE Show, The Drowned Princess and 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, Then Like My Dreams, Two Women and The Graft.

Other stage work includes Dracula (The Brunton Theatre), A Child of the Jago (Festival Hall), Baywatch Cymru (The Sherman Theatre, Cardiff), The Turn of the Screw (New Wolsey, Ipswich), Yours Truly, Jack the Ripper (The Edinburgh Festival, Wimbledon Theatre, The Space and on tour), On Our Way to Lisbon (The Glasgow Citizens, The King’s Theatre, Glasgow, The Arches, Dundee Rep, Wimbledon, Adam Smith Theatre, The Riviera Hotel, Las Vegas and on tour), The Man Who Left the Titanic (Yvonne Arnaud), The Haunters (Yvonne Arnaud, Wimbledon, Adam Smith Theatre, Ellen Terry Theatre and on tour), Dracula the Panto (Yvonne Arnaud, The Space and on tour), Jekyll and Hyde (Yvonne Arnaud), The Bonzo Dog Doo Dah Band Changed My Life Forever! (Yvonne Arnaud, Adam Smith Theatre, The Brunton, Georgian Theatre and on tour). Patrick has also co-produced the last seven shows with the Isosceles Theatre Company.

TV and Radio credits include: The Hardest Wee Man in the World and The Dizzy (BBC Radio Four), The Video Man (Channel Four) Ha Ha Ha Bonk (Initial TV).

Patrick has also written Could This Be Thistle’s Year? A book about Glasgow, novels Mina and Bloodlust:Vampire on the Titanic, The Mostly Ghostly Theatre, a ‘Big Book’ commissioned by the Theatre Royal Stratford East’s Education Department for the London Festival of Literature and is now used as a teaching aid in East End schools. His other prose work includes articles and poetry for arts magazines.

Lisa Goldman - Director

Lisa is a director, dramaturg and writer. She was Artistic Director and joint Chief Executive of Soho Theatre (2006-10) and the Red Room (1995-2006). Her book The No Rules Handbook for Writers was published by Oberon Books this year and is already being reprinted. Plays recently developed and directed include: Inheritance by Mike Packer (Live Theatre); For Soho Theatre;  Shraddha by Natasha Langridge winner of theMeyer Whitworth Award 2010;  This isn’t Romance by In-Sook Chappell Verity Bargate Award 2007 (and Radio 3 The Wire); Leaves of Glass and Piranha Heights by Philip Ridley;  Baghdad Wedding by Hassan Abdulrazzak, winner of George Devine Award and Meyer Whitworth Award 2008 (and Radio 3 Sunday Play); A Couple of Poor, Polish-Speaking Romanians by Dorota Maslowska which Lisa co-translated with Paul Sirett;  Everything Must Go and Behud by Gurpreet Kaur Bhatti, runner-up Index on Censorship Award 2010;  For the Red Room includes writing /directing  Hoxton Story; Kay Adshead’s  Animal, Bites and The Bogus Woman (Bush/Traverse/ international tour), winner of Scotsman Fringe First,  Manchester Evening News Awards (also Radio 3 Sunday Play); Judy Upton’s Sunspots, The Shorewatchers House and Know your Rights; Parv Bancil’s Made in England. Lisa also commissioned and produced Anthony Neilson’s The Censor (Duke of York’s -  Writers Guild Award and Time Out Live Awards Best Play 1997) and Stitching (Bush/ Traverse/ international tour Time Out Live Award Best Production, Herald Angel Award and The Stage Best Performer 2003).

Jean-Marc Puissant  - Set & Costume Designer

Jean-Marc designs sets and costumes for theatre, opera and dance. Several productions he has designed were nominated and won Laurence Olivier, South Bank Show, Critics Circle and TMA Awards. He gave talks about his work at the Victoria & Albert and Guggenheim museums.

Theatre credits include: Menier Chocolate Factory (Pippin), Curve (All My Sons), Finborough Theatre (His Greatness), Edinburgh Festival (The Irish Curse).

Opera credits include: Royal Opera (Aida), Santa Fe (Madame Butterfly; Pearl Fishers), Scottish Opera (Chinese Opera), Royal Academy (Poppea).

Dance credits include: Royal Ballet (Tryst; DGV: Electric Counterpoint; Jewels), New York City Ballet (Klavier; Carillons), American Ballet Theatre (VIII), Birmingham Royal Ballet (Seasons; Take Five), Pennsylvania Ballet (Swan Lake), Rambert (Elsa Canasta; Gran Partita), Phoenix Dance Theatre (Nopalitos; Paseillo) and San Francisco Ballet, Dutch National, Mannheim Nationaltheater, Grand Théâtre de Genève and Opéra du Rhin.

Future design commissions include world premieres for Royal Ballet and Royal Ballet of Flanders.

He trained at the Motley Theatre Design Course and studied Art History &  Archaeology in La Sorbonne, Paris. He also studied ballet at the School of Paris Opera and Conservatoire Supérieur de Paris. He joined Birmingham Royal Ballet and Stuttgart Ballet. Jean-Marc is on the Board of Directors of Dance Umbrella Ltd.

Visit Jean-Marc's website.

Mike Gunning – Lighting Designer

Theatre credits include:  The Resistable Rise of Arturo Ui  and The Alchemist (Everyman, Liverpool), You Like It, The Snow Queen, Here and The Second Mrs Tanqueray (The Rose), The Wizard Of Oz (Royal Festival Hall), The Jew of Malta and Aunt Dan and Lemon (Almeida), Julius Caesar and School for Scandal (Barbican Theatre and international venues), Medea (Broadway), Tales From the Vienna Woods (National Theatre),  Asylum and Hansel & Gretel (Kneehigh), Shakespeare; The Man From Stratford (Ambassador Theatre), Kafka’s Monkey, Joe Turner’s Come and Gone, The Brothers Size and Eurydice (Young Vic).

Opera credits include:  Il Trovatore (Royal Opera House), Dido & Aeneas, La Traviata (Deborah Warner); Il Trovatore,  Ernani, Rigoletto, St John Passion, Tristan and Isolde and La Bohème (ENO); and Manon Lescaut, Fedora, Madame Butterfly and L’elisir D’amore (Holland Park Opera). 

Dance credits include: Boy Blue (Barbican)

Matt McKenzie – Sound designer

Matt toured with Paines Plough before joining the staff at the Lyric Theatre Hammersmith in 1979 where he designed the sound for several of their productions. Since joining Autograph in 1984, his designs include:  Vertigo (Guildford), the opening season at the new Soho Theatre and several subsequent productions including Baghdad Wedding, Shraddha; After Miss Julie, Days of Wine and Roses (Donmar); Iron, People Next Door (Traverse); Deep Blue Sea, Relatively Speaking (Bath); Three Sisters on Hope Street  (Liverpool Playhouse); Inheritance (Live Theatre, Newcastle); The Giant, Enlightenment, No Naughty Bits (Hampstead); 5/11, The Master and Margarita, The Seagull, Heartbreak House (Chichester); Two Gentlemen of Florence (Boston); in the West End: Made in Bangkok, The House of Bernarda Alba, Journey's End, A Madhouse in Goa, When She Danced, Misery, Things We Do for Love, Long Day’s Journey Into Night, Macbeth, A Life in the Theatre, Three Days of Rain, Butley; for Sir Peter Hall Lysistrata, The Master Builder, A Streetcar Named Desire, Amadeus (and Broadway).  Sound Supervisor for the Peter Hall Seasons at The Old Vic and The Piccadilly and sound for The Seagull, The Provok’d Wife, King Lear, The Misanthrope, Major Barbara, Filumena, Kafka’s Dick. RSC includes Family Reunion, Henry V, Hamlet, The Lieutenant of Inishmore, Julius Caesar, A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

Musical work includes Angry Housewives (Lyric Hammersmith), The Bells are Ringing (Greenwich), Love Off the Shelf (Nuffield Theatre Southampton), Oklahoma!, The Music Man, Funny Girl, Carousel, How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying, Putting It Together, She Loves Me, Singing in The Rain (Chichester), Tutti Frutti (National Theatre of Scotland), Oh! What a Lovely War!, Sweeney Todd, Company, Into the Woods, Merrily We Roll Along (Derby Playhouse), Forbidden Broadway, Blues in the Night, Tango Argentino, Love Story (West End), Matthew Bourne’s Car Man (West End and international tour), Shall We Dance (Sadler's Wells). Matt is an Associate for Chichester Festival Theatre.

Bret Yount - Fight Director

Bret Yount’s recent theatre credits include A Clockwork Orange, Shalom, Baby! Graft, Two Women and The Harder They Come  at Theatre Royal, Stratford East; POSH at the Duke of York’s; The Country Wife at Royal Exchange, Manchester; Soul Sister at the Hackney Empire; The Alchemists and A Streetcar Named Desire at the Liverpool Playhouse; The Physicists and The Recruiting Officer at the Donmar Warehouse; Moon on a Rainbow Shawl, Double Feature and Men Should Weep at the National; Death and the Maiden and Absent Friends at the Pinter Theatre,  A Delicate Balance, Children’s Children, The Knot of the Heart, House of Games and Ruined at the Almeida; Choir Boy, Belong, In Basildon, Wastwater, Clybourne Park and POSH at the Royal Court; Much Ado About Nothing and Anne Boleyn at Shakespeare’s Globe; Macbeth at Liverpool Everyman; Inheritance and Faith and Cold Reading at Live, Newcastle; Bedroom Farce on tour; Elektra and Annie Get Your Gun at the Young Vic; Shraddha at Soho Theatre; Too Much Pressure, Babylone and Behud at the Belgrade, Coventry; The Caretaker at Liverpool Everyman/Trafalgar Studios and World Tour; The Harder They Come at Playhouse Theatre; and The Lover and The Collection at the Comedy Theatre. TV includes Against All Odds and Blue Peter. Film includes Troy, Young Hearts Run Free and Shades of Beige.

Kate Sagovsky – Movement Coach

Kate trained at Oxford University (BA English); Central School of Speech & Drama (MA Movement Studies); and Laban (Diploma Dance Studies).

In 2011 Kate was resident as a Movement Practitioner at the Royal Shakespeare Company: she worked as movement director on The Homecoming and Mojo, and provided additional company movement support for the other productions in the season. Through 2010-12 she was also Associate Movement Director to Struan Leslie for ESKA: English Skies (Southbank Centre) and GVE/The Matthew Herbert Big Band (The Barbican; Glastonbury Festival). Other work as movement director includes Amphibians (Offstage Theatre); 2nd May 1997 (Nabokov/The Bush); The Unspeakable (Tristan Bates); This Much Is True (Theatre503); Song for Eurydice, Macbeth (YMT: UK).

In addition Kate is a Director-Choreographer for dance-theatre works which have been performed around the UK and internationally, including at The Metropolitan Arts Centre (Tokyo), Westminster Abbey, The Cambridge Arts Theatre, The Place, ICA, and The Edinburgh Fringe Festival.

Kate has worked as a guest lecturer in actor-movement in a number of drama schools, including AFDA (Cape Town, SA), Central School of Speech and Drama, and LAMDA. She is also an Education Associate Practitioner for the RSC, in which role she was Director (Mentor) for This Poor Trash of Venice: Othello (Royal Shakespeare Theatre).

Edda Sharpe – Dialect Coach

Theatre credits for the RSC include: Twelfth Night, The Tempest, Comedy of Errors, The Homecoming; Dir. David Farr, I’ll be the Devil; Dir. Ramin Gray, The Price; Dir. Helen Leblique.

Theatre credits for the West End include: The Pajama Game; Dir. Simon Callow, Art; Dir. Matthew Warchus, Peggy Sue Got Married; Dir. Kelly Robinson, Cooking With Elvis; Dir.Max Roberts.

Regional and Touring productions include; Headlong Theatre’s Rough Crossing; Dir. Rupert Goold, Bolton Octagon’s The Price; Dir. Roxanna Silbert, Queen’s Theatre Hornchurch’s Two; Dir. Matt Devitt,and Shirley Valentine; Dir. Carlonine Eves,The Crucible Theatre’s All Teeth ‘n Smiles; Dir. Anna Mackmin and Graeae’s A Lovely Sunday for Creve Couer; Dir. Jenny Sealey.

Film and TV credits include: The Door with Helen Mirren; Dir. Istvan Szabo,  A Little Trip To Heaven; Dir. Baltasar Kormåkur, Ant and Dec’s Saturday Takeaway, Gordon Ramsay’s Cookalong, The Gorillaz.

As well as her work in this country, Edda is Head of Voice and Dialect at the Shaw Festival Theatre in Canada and has worked on over 100 productions there over the past fifteen years.

Edda’s ground breaking first book, How To Do Accents (co-written with Jan Haydn Rowles) was published by Oberon Press in Oct 2007 and is a National Theatre best seller. Their second book, How To Do Standard English Accents was published this September.

Edda is also in great demand as a voice and communication coach delivering high level communication skills training to the business sector. Her currentcorporate and public sector clients include; Hiscox, Aviva, CNN, The Metropolitan Police and The Ministry of Defence.

Tom O’Brien – Assistant Director

Tom trained at the Arts Educational Schools London. Most recently he directed Judy, The Righteous which was performed at the Trafalgar Studios and The King’s Head Theatre, and was assistant director on ‘Thoroughly Modern Millie’ at The Watermill Theatre, Newbury.  His previous directing credits include: First and Last (Tristan Bates Theatre), Christmas is Miles Away by Chloe Moss (Hen & Chickens Theatre), Out of The Kitchen (Waterloo East Theatre) and Word To The Action - an evening of Shakespeare monologues (Nell of Old Drury).  He was Associate Director on Little Women (LOST Theatre). Assistant Director credits include: Merrily We Roll Along (Clwyd Theatr Cymru), Ruben Guthrie (New Wimbledon Studio), Buried Child (Upstairs At The Gatehouse) and for Action To The Word; Romeo & Juliet (Camden People’s Theatre), A Clockwork Orange, Constance & Sinestra and The Cabinet of Screams and Titus Andronicus (C Venues, Edinburgh). Tom is Co-Artistic Director of TREMers a cross genre theatre company based in London and is a member of the Young Vic Directors Program.