About
I am a Movement Director, Movement Coach, Director, Actor and Theatre Maker
My work with movement for actors, is both technical and imaginative. By freeing the body, and opening up the breath, the actor is free to make their own choices, in response to text, character or to make their own theatre.
The core components of my practice are Pure Movement (from Trish Arnold and Siguurd Leder) and Ecole Internationale de Theatre, Jacques Lecoq. I deliver my work as individual classes, workshops, classes in Drama Schools, and as Movement Direction on Professional Productions.
The actor is at the heart of my work.
I have been working in theatre since 1976. I trained in Ballet (RAD, Intermediate) and then went on to study Drama and English at Bristol University and at Jacques Lecoq 1976-8. I have a PG Cert in HE, and am a Senior Fellow with HEA.
I studied with Trish Arnold for 13 years, learning the repertoire of movement training for Actors known as Pure Movement. This training uses the work of Sigurd Leeder to develop an actor’s body for creativity and release, and teaches them techniques to open out their expression.
I have researched The Chorus in Greek Theatre, and have led workshop productions and site specific events at Cambridge University, The Pompidou Centre Paris, National Theatre Studio, and Lima in Peru.
As a Movement Teacher I work with students and actors to develop their creativity and enable them to make choices that they can use for character or playtext. As a Head of Movement at several Drama Schools and at the Stratford Festival Theatre Ontario in Canada, I have developed a system of movement training that combines technique with the imagination and enables actors and students to connect to breath and to text and to intention.
As a Movement Director I work collaboratively with Directors to find the language and the physical world of their productions.
My work as a theatre maker/director starts with a physical approach to text and to situation and seeks to build a language and story with the actors.
I believe actors are wonderful at movement and at moving: the spirit of play and of working with joy and curiosity develops physicality. Always. It is important to find the actor's way of moving through working with them.
My book “Physicality and Acting- Movement Training as a Catalyst for Change” will be published by Bloomsbury Methuen