About Me
I’m a child of the 90s. Old enough to remember the hope that Blair’s 1997 election brought to the working classes and the Y2K panic; young enough to believe we can still change the world. I was a precocious and opinionated child and I’m an indignant and emphatic adult. I loved attention and making my ideas heard. My parents sent me to ballet classes with the hopes of solving at least one of those problems.
Through dance I found my way into acting and music and spent most of my youth performing in Musical Theatre. I would have continued in Musical Theatre at drama school had I been accepted. As it turns out, a BA in Acting was the making of me.
After graduating from Italia Conti Academy of Theatre Arts in 2012 I worked primarily as a performer in fringe productions alongside the typical actor “money jobs” of call centre work and waitressing. I became apathetic when paid performance work was out of reach and profit-share became unsustainable long-term. I basically left the industry for eighteen months and found two joys- writing, through writing poems for greetings cards- and working with animals, during a support job at a veterinary practice. Now writing is part of my work and I have two pampered cats, some things don’t change.
Personal circumstances encouraged me to return to the North East from London in 2015, where I worked as a facilitator for lots of theatrical organisations, including Stagecoach Theatre Arts, Pauline Quirk Academy and Konflux Theatre In Education. Teaching allowed me to continue in the arts and develop my skills as an educator
In 2016, I was offered the role of Youth Theatre Officer at The Georgian Theatre Royal in Richmond, North Yorkshire. (If you haven’t heard of it, The Georgian is a beautiful and historically valuable little theatre which functions mostly as a receiving house and a museum of theatre history.) I had five wonderful years at The Georgian, where taught weekly classes in Acting and Musical Theatre to students aged six to adult. I also taught outreach in local schools and developed a network of FE and HE partners. It was my aim to produce one performance per year per class, with at least one other performance opportunity yearly.
With the help of an excellent team and hardworking students, we produced 35 shows, 19 of which I both wrote and directed. At a small venue, everyone mucks in; which meant I also got experience working backstage, FOH and in the programming/marketing depts. I often describe this time as my apprenticeship as a Theatremaker. In 2019, I co-founded The Butler Company- intended to be a profit-share company for adult actors, with the long-term goal of creating a repertory company. After months of preparation, our first production ( a reworking of Blithe Spirit) was due to open in April 2020, when the global pandemic struck and stopped us in our tracks
Now…
During the national lockdowns of 2020/2021 I was able to focus more on the creation of work for adult casts and audiences and so founded Hellcat Theatre, to distinguish this from my work with young people, as it tends to be far less child-friendly. Zoom allowed me to teach online for a number of FE and HE institutions regardless of location and I found that I was drawn to working with adults in more formal educational settings. In 2021, I moved to Harrogate with my partner and decided to go freelance. I’m also part of the RTYDS under Natalie Ibu at Northern Stage.
Working freelance allows me to write, direct, educate and (occasionally) perform as well as study remotely for my MA in Theatre from Guildford School of Acting. Being in Harrogate means I’m ideally located between Leeds, Newcastle and Manchester and can travel for work. My work is often political, darkly comic and generally grounded in realism. Music and movement are integral to productions I stage and I tend to favour simplicity when it comes to set and costume design.
The story- what it means and what we should learn from it- is at the centre of everything I do. If you like the sound of this, I’m available for work and happy to start those conversations. Check out my CVs and links below for more info.