The Creative Team
| Alison Andrews | Olwen Fouéré | Maurice O’Connell |
| Jane Arnfield | Nicola Gartland | Bruno Roubicek |
| Richard Bliss | Cinzia Hardy | Ian Scott |
| Zoe Bottrell | Anna Hedworth | |
| Jo Cundall | Sandra Johnston | |
| Kay Easson | Tony Nielson |
Creative Team Biographies
Alison Andrews (Director)
Alison is an original member of the European Player’s Dialogues Project.
She has a varied background in theatre both in experimental performance as a writer and director, and in theatre for young people through development work. She has created work for small scale touring and site specific theatre work with A Quiet Word, an association of artists based in Leeds.
She has a strong association with the North East, having studied at Newcastle University, undertaken a range of projects with Northern Stage and taught on the new MA in Performance course at the University of Northumberland.
Since 2002, she has been Performing Arts Officer in the Yorkshire office of the Arts Council, with responsibility for Street Arts, Circus, Carnival and interdisciplinary work, including science and art collaborations. She is on the board of the Informal European Theatre Meeting, a network of performing arts organisations.
Jane Arnfield
Jane Arnfield has appeared for Northern Stage in Animal Farm, 1984, The Ballroom of Romance, The WaspFactory, Twelfth Night, Not I, The Snow Queen, Smirnova’s Birthday, The Golden Bird and Manifesto for a New City. Co-productions with Northern Stage and international collaborators include Out of Nothing and One Day 49 with Le Styx Théâtre, Paris and Homage to Catalonia.
Jane has worked with Quarantine on three pieces; Frank (with Northern Stage), Something a Taxi Driver in Liverpool Said and most recently Geneva, a one-woman show in co-production with Northern Stage and Quarantine.Jane is a core member of the David Glass Ensemble performing The Hansel andGretel Machine and the Red Thread Trilogy in London and throughout south East Asia. Jane is also a team leader and facilitator for The Lost Child Project working in Cambodia, The Philippines, Indonesia, Vietnam, Thailand and Brazil.
Other theatre credits include: Imogen in Cymbeline (Globe Theatre, London and New York), Buried Alive (Hampstead Theatre), The Cherry Orchard, Demons and Dybbuks and The Black Dahlia (Method and Madness/Mike Alfreds), and How to Live (Volcano).
Richard Bliss
Richard has recently left Northern Stage to develop independent projects in the visual and performing arts. Richard has helped to create various festivals and events including Pride on Tyne, Queerbeats and the annual lesbian and gay pantomime. Richard is currently working with Sally Ann Norman to create an artist led crazy golf course and has recently completed research for the Liverpool theatres working with Dixon Raines.
Richard previously worked with Cinzia Hardy at Northern Arts/Arts
Council North East. This is his first project with the European Players.
Richard has previously worked in PR and Marketing for various organisations
and agencies, and for the last 10 years has specialised in work in
the Arts.
As a performer Richard tours his own show “Dick Bliss in the Lounge” and he is a board member of Monster Productions and balletLorent.
Zoe Bottrell
Zoë is the Director of Culture Creative Ltd (www.culturecreative.co.uk) a project and production management company based in Northumberland. Having developed and managed a number of site specific indoor and outdoor projects from Chelsea Flower Show, Show Gardens, large scale outdoor landscape lighting project Northumberland Lights, contemporary visual arts exhibition at Belsay Hall, Picture House and sporting events. Zoë is very experienced in dealing with site-specific venues, productions and events.
Zoë has worked in the cultural field for over 15 years and in the North East for over 11 years.
Jo Cundall (Northern Stage)
Jo Cundall was born in the midlands and has moved steadily further North as she has got older. She graduated from Sheffield Hallam with a degree in English Literature and Film Studies in 2002 and moved to Newcastle soon after. She has worked at Northern Stage since 2003, beginning as a temporary Administration Assistant before forging the new role of Participation & Programming Co-ordinator for herself! Jo is responsible for the management and administration of the Northern Stage Performance Group. She completed an MA in Cultural Management in 2005 and likes gardening, holidays and eating.
Kay Easson
Kay Easson has worked in libraries for almost 20 years, after having graduated from St Andrews University in 1987. She has previously worked in school and public libraries and has been Librarian of the Lit & Phil for almost 7 years.
The Lit & Phil’s involvement in the Novocastrian Philosophers’ Club has given her the opportunity to be part of a truly exciting and innovative theatrical experience, which delights in the ever fascinating and eccentric world of the Lit & Phil.
Olwen Fouéré
Born in Ireland of Breton, Olwen is an Irish/French actor and theatre artist whose work occupies a central position in contemporary Irish theatre and crosses the boundaries of many art forms. She has performed with most major theatre companies in Ireland and the United Kingdom. She is an Artistic Director of Operating Theatre (with composer Roger Doyle) and an original member of the European Player’s Dialogues Project.
Her work with Operating Theatre work includes her ground-breaking solo performances of "The Diamond Body"(1984-87) written by Aidan Mathews and "The Pentagonal Dream"(1986) written by Sebastian Barry. She appears in the performance installation "Here Lies", created in collaboration with director Selina Cartmell and presented in Galway, Dublin and Paris, which maps Antonin Artaud's 1937 journey through Ireland. Fouéré has also performed extensively at the Abbey theatre and at the Gate Theatre, Dublin, where she created the role of Salome in Steven Berkoff's production of Oscar Wilde's Salome, which toured internationally. She has played several major theatre roles in the UK with the Royal National Theatre, the RSC, ESC and the role of Rosaura in Life is a Dream directed by Calixto Bieito at the Edinburgh Royal Lyceum, Barbican and BAM, New York ('98-'99). She has performed several pieces by Samuel Beckett, most recently "Lessness" (Gare StLazare) and "Catastrophe" (Barbican/Gate Beckett Festival 2006).
Her many stage performances include the central roles of Hester Swane and the Mai in the world premieres of "By the Bog of Cats" and "The Mai", both of which were written for her by Irish playwright Marina Carr. Her most recent appearance was as Maeve in the "The Bull" by Fabulous Beast at the Barbican last February.
Her film appearances include "Hard Shoulder” by Mark Kilroy, "Saltwater" by Conor Mc Pherson and Space Truckers with Dennis Hopper and Charles Dance.
Nicola Gartland
Nicola is originally from the North East and studied at Derby School of Fine Art, specialising in painting and site-specific sculpture. After graduating she spent some time travelling, following her keen interest in different cultures.
Upon her return to Newcastle Nicola joined xsite architecture, taking on the role to help develop a new brand within the company called ‘xsite culture’. xsite was launched 6yrs ago as an architecture company with a keen interest in the arts and since then it has taken on many arts venues, arts projects and has collaborated with numerous people working in different mediums. Since the start of 2007 xsite culture has won a variety of projects including a large scale sculpture trail on the Tyne, the design of Dott 07 festival while also taking on community and voluntary projects.
Cinzia Hardy (Producer)
Originally a dancer and choreographer, Cinzia now works as a freelance arts consultant, dance science researcher and independent producer of arts projects, based in Northumberland. Cinzia co-ordinated and managed the Year of the Artist Project for Arts Council North East 1999 – 2001. Prior to this she was with the LIFT Festival (London International Festival of Theatre), where she worked as a freelance project manager. In 1991 she established theatre company European Players in order to produce touring theatre in English in Italy. Other projects she has produced and managed include: DIALOGUES - an artists’ exchange project between Irish and British artists; Festival Director for I CELTI IN SCENA, the first Festival of Irish Culture in Rome, in collaboration with the Embassy of Ireland in Rome and the Universita III of Rome; TRANSLATIONS PROJECT – a South African/Irish collaborative arts project taking Brian Friel’s play Translations and reinterpreting it between the two continents.
Anna Hedworth
Anna is originally from Newcastle upon Tyne, she returned in 2005 to join xsite architecture having completed her Architecture studies at Edinburgh College of Art. Specialising in Art and Architecture for her final years developed her interest in the cross over of the two disciplines.
Alongside Nicola she has taken on the role of developing 'xsite culture'.
Sandra Johnston
Sandra Johnston is an original member of the European Player’s Dialogues Project and a visual artist living in Northern Ireland making site-responsive actions and installations since 1994. Currently a Lecturer in Time-Based Art at the University of Ulster, Belfast, and previously (2002/2005) she held an Arts Humanities & Research Council Fellowship post, which involved researching the concept of “Trauma of Place”-exploring how artists can make creative interventions within spaces associated in public memory with violent events. This research was instigated in the post cease-fire political climate in Northern Ireland, and then extensively explored in many different international contexts.
Recent projects continue to generate possibilities, for responding directly to the functions and sensitivities of a wide range of public locations. Each action is unique to the resources and incidents of the place it is derived from, based on periods of intensive observation, a collage of absorbed behaviour develops. Or often as a reaction to hospitality offered to the artist from strangers, these works unfolding as subtle collaborations based on trust.
Tony Nielson
Tony was born in Walker and has lived and worked in Newcastle for most of his life. Early in his career, while still at school, he was in the BBC’s When the Boat Comes In and Tyne Tees The Paper Lads. After leaving college in 1981 he moved back home where ever since he has just about managed to survive by working with almost all of the theatre companies in the area. He presented the BBC 2 educational programme Watch for 5 years and in 1998 became a founder member of the Northern Stage Ensemble where he worked for the next 8 years.
His first feature film The Other Possibility will be released next year and he is soon to appear in Northern Stage’s production of Our Friends in The North.Maurice O’Connell
Maurice O’Connell, born in Dublin and wasan original member of the European Player’s Dialogues Project. Since 1992 he has exhibited, performed, and realised projects throughout Ireland, UK, Europe and USA, working with new audiences for theatre, art and architecture in the public realm. Maurice’s work crosses the boundaries between performance and gallery practice. He often creates work over a period of time, involving public dialogue and has described himself variously as a ‘cultural activist’ and an ‘Audience Behaviour Theorist’. He has exhibited regularly at the Irish Museum of Modern Art including ‘Tribal Field Project’ aimed at involving young people. He is best known for his innovative work at Project in Dublin and his participation in’ Conversations at the Castle’ as an invited artist to the Arts Festival of Atlanta in 1996, as part of the Olympic Games. Now based in Cornwall, he is a lecturer at University College Falmouth, project co- coordinator for Penryn Community Development Trust and Director of the Ministry of Ulterior Motives.
Bruno Roubicek
Bruno’s first work as a performer was with English New Dance Theatre at Dance City in Newcastle after graduating from The University of Newcastle upon Tyne in Politics and East Asian Studies. He wrote a Masters thesis on Traditional Chinese Theatre and has performed with companies including Trestle Theatre, The David Glass Ensemble, London Bubble, Red Shift and The Almeida Theatre, London.
Bruno has just finished a long collaboration with Forced Entertainment, helping to devise Bloody Mess‚ and The World in Pictures. He has been touring with these two shows around the world for the last four years and is very excited to be returning to the city where he started his career.
Ian Scott
Current projects include the design of the set and lighting for Suspect Culture’s Futurology at the Brighton Festival and the lighting design of a mobile cinema in a 6 metre high wedge of cheese which is currently touring European festivals to promote the forthcoming Pixar movie: Ratatouille.
Recent theatre credits include: Correa nel Seno Amato (Wilton’s Music Hall), The May Queen (Liverpool Everyman), Dancing at Lughnasa (Lyric, Belfast), The 39 Steps (Criterion Theatre), Blasted (Graeae), Flat Stanley (West Yorkshire Playhouse), Europe (BITE/Dundee Rep), Knots (CoisCeim Dance Theatre) and Sinner (Stan Won’t Dance).
Ian is an Associate Artist of Suspect Culture and European Players, a regular collaborator with the pioneering theatre company, Graeae and an original member of the European Player’s Dialogues Project.
The Northern Stage Performance Group
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