Directing

Recent work includes the musical Armour: a herstory of the Scottish Bard by Shonagh Murray (Òran Mór/Traverse Edinburgh/Ayr Gaiety/OneRen); Who Pays the Piper by Jen McGregor (A Play A Pie and a Pint, Òran Mór); a fully actor-muso production The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee (Royal Conservatoire of Scotland BA Musical Theatre); Brecht’s The Visions of Simone Machard (Hackney Empire and tour); Part of the Picture, a play-with-songs, based on interviews with North Sea oil workers (as writer and director, Pleasance Theatre, Edinburgh); A Little Night Music and Big Fish (Royal Conservatoire of Scotland MA Musical Theatre at Assembly Music Hall, Edinburgh); Gianni Schicchi (Opera Bohemia, Scottish Tour); N. C. Hunter’s play A Day by the Sea and the UK premiere of Adam Guettel’s song cycle Myths and Hymns (both Finborough Theatre, London); two large-scale multi-artform collaborations as lead artist for RCS Junior Conservatoire, Curiouser and Curiouser (inspired by Lewis Carroll’s Alice novels) and The Yellow Club (after Twelfth Night); the Kander and Ebb revue The World Goes Round and a devised musical, The Great Exam Cabaret (both Wild Cabaret, Glasgow); L’Antologia di Spoon River, a devised, promenade performance in a ruined monastery, and Stefano Benni’s play Astaroth (both for Rapallo Festival, Italy); La Traviata (UK tour); La bohème (Clyde Opera Group); A Midsummer Night’s Dream (Blenheim Palace Gardens); Someone Who’ll Watch Over Me (Upstairs at the Gatehouse) and Judith: a parting from the body (Pleasance, London). I also directed large-scale community productions of Henry IV part one and Henry IV part two (York Shakespeare Project).

ASSISTANT DIRECTING

As an assistant director, I’ve worked for the Young Vic Theatre London, the Haymarket Theatre Basingstoke, English National Opera, Scottish Opera and Opera North, assisting directors including Benedict Andrews, Phyllida Lloyd, John Adams, David Pountney and John Fulljames.

NEW WORK

I have worked in the development of both new plays and new musicals. I was a member of the script reading panels of the Bush Theatre, Soho Theatre, Theatre 503, the Royal Court Young Writers’ Programme and the King’s Cross New Writing Award. I read new musical libretti for the Donmar Warehouse, and was Literary Associate (musical theatre) for the Finborough. I’ve worked with individual writers to develop plays, on behalf of various theatres, and independently. I’ve directed staged readings for various theatres around London, including the Bush Theatre, Theatre 503, the Arcola and RADA. In 2006 I curated The Watershed Series, a mini-festival of staged new-play readings for the Union Theatre, Southwark.

I have a keen sense of dramaturgy, informed partly by having been a member, as a writer, of the Royal Court Young Writers’ Programme, tutored by Simon Stephens (2003-4). I later received Creative Scotland funding to join two years of weekly workshops with BML (Book Music Lyrics) in London (2021-2023) working as a lyricist on projects with a number of composers. I’ve also been a member of the MMD Scottish Musical Theatre writers’ lab.

THE REST OF THE TIME

Over the years I’ve also worked as the receptionist of a methadone clinic; as a PA in the Department for the Environment in Westminster; as a kitchen boy for Pizza Hut; as a marker for GCSE RE exam papers; as the tour manager for an amazing experimental choir (The Shout); and as the sound operator for the UK tour of a play that turned out to have been stolen (when we did ‘track changes’ on the Word document, it was entirely plagiarised, with just the character names, title and author’s name changed. The person responsible was a former Arts Council officer, and there was quite a lot of financial fraud going on too, and they got caught and went to prison).

BACKGROUND

I grew up in Poole, Dorset, which is exactly in the middle of the south coast of England. After school, I was a member of the National Youth Theatre in London, and worked in a primary school in the Middle East for a year. I studied BA (hons) English and Philosophy (University of York, 1999-2002), then did an MA in Directing for Theatre (Goldsmiths College, London, 2003). More recently I did an M.Ed Learning and Teaching in the Performing Arts (Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, 2019). I was awarded Fellowship of the Higher Education Academy in 2012, and Senior Fellowship in 2020.