ELSIE PIDDOCK SKIPS IN HER SLEEP – THE COMPANY
MARTINA CLARKE – ELSIE PIDDOCK
Martina has played Ethel in The Young Visiters for Paddock Productions, Puck in A Midsummer Night's Dream for The Rude Mechanical’s Theatre Co. (American tour), The Snow Queen for Working Space Theatre (Schools tour), Hamlet in Hamlet (all-female) for Resuscitation Theatre, Mandy in The Religious Wars for BBC SCR, Rowena in The Pipe Manufacturers Blue Book for Riverrun Productions. She graduated in 2004 from ACT, Brighton.
Helen Day trained at the ltalia Conti Academy, ARTTS International and with the National Youth Theatre. Her theatre credits include 'Julia Pastrana' and 'The False Corpse' (world premiere) both at Theatre Royal, Brighton; 'Tarzan' at the Dubai International Festival; 'Romeo and Juliet' in Singapore; 'Big Bear Little Bear' and 'At Home with the Harfwits' both for Channel Theatre Company; 'Shakers' at the Mansfield Palace Theatre and 'Ovo', the central show at the Millennium Dome. She has also worked as a dancer in various pantomimes and fashion shows, and regularly works as a voiceover artist in radio commercials. She is a founder member of Dodgy Totty theatre company.
Samuel Dutton trained at the Arts Educational London School of Drama where he was awarded the D'Oyly Carte Scholarship and La Trobe University in Melbourne, Australia. His theatre credits include for the Norwich Puppet Theatre: The Selfish Giant & Pinocchio, for the Cherub Company: The Life of Edward II & Brundibar, for Shakespeare 4 Kidz: Macbeth & Twelfth Night, for Two Colour Theatre: The Master Forger, for The Puppeteers' Company: The Crystal Slipper, for Parasol Theatre: Pinocchio & Hansel and Gretal and for the Globe Players: Rumpelstiltskin & A Midsummer Night's Dream. Elsie Piddock is Sam's first show with The Paddock.
Christopher is best known for his performance as the loveable but dim policeman, Reg Deadman, over six series of Goodnight Sweetheart with Nicholas Lyndhurst on BBC TV. In the theatre he has worked regularly in the West End (Democracy at Wyndhams), for the RSC (Henry VI and Richard III), the Royal National Theatre (Dinner) and the Royal Court (Talking to Terrorists). Chris also directs and writes and is currently working on his own adaptation of Goldoni’s Mirandolina for a tour of Sussex village halls and restaurants next spring.
Michi worked in jewellery-making, building, environmental campaigning and Japanese translation before opportunities arose to pursue her lifelong passion for the fiddle. Particularly devoted to the old-time music of the southern Appalachian mountains, she travels far and wide to learn from favourite influences and take part in musical gatherings. She played fiddle in the Knots of May band for five years, at the same time starting an old-time band, String Side Up. She currently plays with the ceilidh band Malarkey, and hosts a monthly old-time jam session.
Kate studied Classical Indian Music for three years with a Master Tabla player at Dartington College of Arts. At the same time aged 17, she became the lead singer and percussionist for The River Bottom Nightmare Band, touring the West country. She later formed Big Sugah, writing and co-arranging their first album.
Susannah has worked in a variety of art forms, including a ten-year career as an opera singer in which she performed principal roles in many of the world’s leading opera houses. She is now a writer and director, whose first novel was published by Black Swan in 2004 and second novel will be published by Doubleday in February 2006. Her music theatre piece, the regina monologues, commissioned by the Covent Garden Festival in 2001, has toured extensively to music and literary festivals across the UK, and other recent commissions for theatre pieces have included a piece on conscientious objection to war for New Kent Opera’s 2003 season, and a fifteen-minute play in reaction to the war on Iraq for Brighton-based theatre company ‘Theatre and Beyond’. As a director, she has also worked for Glyndebourne Festival Opera, New Kent Opera, and in 2003, semi-staged Verdi’s Falstaff for Mark Elder and the Halle Orchestra. She has recently led a three-month education project on Mozart’s Cosi Fan Tutte for AS students in music and dance as part of an education project for the new Sage Gateshead Music Centre in Newcastle and the Samling Foundation, culminating in a performance of a youth version of the opera. Her site-specific play, Red All Over, which she also directed, was recently premiered in Pelham House as part of the Lewes Live Literature Festival, with support from Arts Council England, South East.
Ellan Parry is a freelance designer and devisor for theatre and live art. She was the 2005 winner of the Jocelyn Herbert Award for stage design and shortlisted for the Linbury prize the same year. Recent projects include The Race (Gecko, London International Mime Festival, and international tour – Total Theatre Award Winner), Rituals Before The End of Time (collaboration with Martina Seitl and Christer Lundahl, The Place, Resolutions Season), Incipient Impediment (Lady Inert, National Review of Live Art, Glasgow), Dr Ox and Billy Holiday (Brian, Battersea Arts Centre), After Haggerty (directed by Kirsty Housley, The Finborough), Sudden Silence (Penny Black and Ellen Hughes, The Arcola), Jacques & His Master and Hell is Empty (Allgood Theatre, The White Bear and The Space) and Falling Angel Rising Ape (Imagina Dance Theatre, Edinburgh – Fringe Review Best Dance Award). Ellan was a founder member of the art and performance collective The Society of Wonders; projects with the Society include The State of Mind of Ghosts (Chelsea Theatre, Live 05 Season), Sap (The Nightingale Theatre, Brighton Visions Festival), Bellerophon (Carn Marth Quarry, Cornwall) and Pig Man Joe (The Marlborough Theatre, Brighton). Earlier this year she was artist in residence at the Tou Scene arts centre in Stavanger, Norway. Ellan trained at Wimbledon School of Art.
Kitty trained at Laban and on the MA Movement Studies programme at the Central School of Speech and Drama. Movement Directing credits include: Teddy in his Rucksack (Quicksilver Theatre), Taikonaut! (BAC), Lark Rise to Candleford (Shapeshifter/ Finborough Theatre), Goblin Market (Southwark Playhouse) and Physick Lies-A-Bleeding (Concordance/Apothecaries’ Hall). Credits as Choreographer include: The Canterville Ghost (Southwark Playhouse) Music Hall Madness (tour) and Falling Angel, Rising Ape, (C Venues, Edinburgh) winner of the Fringe Report award for best dance work. Other theatre credits include: Assistant Movement Co-ordinator, Tom’s Midnight Garden (Birmingham Stage Company), and Assistant Director, Sweetpeter and Little Angels (Polka Theatre/Company of Angels).
Kitty is an associate artist with Shapeshifter and our next project, King Arthur, will play at the Arcola Theatre this autumn.
Mark is a graduate of the Central School of Speech and Drama. Between 1985 and 1995 he was a Stage Manager and Production Manager in many theatrical environments, from repertory to small scale touring; working on shows like Miss Saigon and Me and My Girl in the West End; Tour Managing the Kirov Ballet and Moscow Classical Ballet throughout the UK; Stage Managing the UK tour of Oklahoma!; and too many fringe shows to list.
In 1995 he joined Apollo Leisure as a Production Manager, primarily touring large-scale musicals around the UK. He traded as a freelance Production Manager under the banner Ideal Production Services between 1997 and 2001, working in both the corporate and theatrical sectors working all over the world. Between 2001 and 2005 Mark headed up the Stage Management and Technical Theatre Course at LAMDA, one of the most renowned training programmes of its kind. In 2005 he returned to freelancing primarily undertaking project based work in and around Sussex. Mark lives in Lewes with his partner Pat, and their daughter Jessica.
