I have worked as a professional Actor/practitioner for over twenty-five years with numerous commercial theatres, arts organisations and television companies including the Royal Opera House, Barbican, Northampton Playhouse, BBC, Granada, Tiger Aspect and London Weekend Television. I have also worked as a company member in various community arts base practice/ projects, these include Nottingham Playhouse, Tranter Theatre and Contact theatre in Manchester, London Bubble, Rent-a-Role in Plymouth and Committed Artists theatre company, New York. As a founder member of Prussia Lane production company, a co-operative of performers, writers, filmmakers, designers, and dancers I am critically engaged in the exploration of interdisciplinary approaches in the creation and realisation of performance projects.
My research explores issues of resistance, adaptation and exchange in theatre. This focuses on participatory arts practice, black British performance and pre-modern popular performance and their contemporary applications, specifically mask,minstrelsy, pantomime, burlesque/neo burlesque,cabaret, pierrot, hip hop theatre and revue.
I am a core scholar of the Musical Theatre and All That Jazz network funded from the Arts and Humanities Research Council which brings together an international group of scholars to exchange ideas about connections between musical theatre and jazz in dialogue with practitioners and industry workers, developing new approaches and practices at the intersection of forms and understandings. I was an integral researcher/collaborator on a three-year comparative study of popular theatre in London and Berlin, 1890-1939 a joint research project between Goldsmiths, University of London, and the Freie Universitat Berlin.
I am committed to creative learning and equality of opportunity and as a member of British Actors Equity was a member of Equity's equalities committee, elected by my fellow actors. My forthcoming monograph 'Nation and Race in West End Revue 1910-1930' is due to be published in 2021.
Course leader and Senior Lecturer in Drama
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