Alex is a London-based musical comic, comedy director & facilitator.
As a musical comic, he was a Brighton Comedy Award Finalist in 2021, So You Think You’re Funny Semi-Finalist in 2022, and he was a Sketch Off Semi-Finalist in 2023 in sketch double act ‘The Extra Virgins’. His comedy sketches on Instagram and TikTok have over 2.5 million views.
He also co-founded The Bean Spillers, an improvised comedy musical based on audience gossip, with whom he performs regularly around the UK.
He also works with numerous stand-ups, character comedians and clowns as a comedy director, (including fellow ArtsLab alumni Claire Parry and Andy Watts!), and recently directed his first comedy short film. He co-wrote and co-directed new multi-pathway musical ‘Runesical’, in partnership with beloved video game ‘Runescape,’ which had successful runs at the Edinburgh Fringe in 2022 and in Cambridge & London in 2023.
He is an Associate of the National Youth Theatre of Great Britain and workshop facilitator at the egg Theatre in Bath.
Charlotte Hobbs is a Bristol-based actor and writer. She will start MA Acting at East 15 Acting School in October 2020.
“I am currently writing a lot of my own work and I have a real interest in comedy, femininity and the complexity of relationships.
I am most inspired by female writers, especially those from working class backgrounds. I also admire shows that focus on the writing and keep everything else simple, I really enjoy seeing how they cleverly interweave so much history and subtext within small pieces of dialogue.”
Claire Parry is an interdisciplinary theatre-maker/writer/performer/director/musician.
She trained in physical theatre at Jacques Lecoq. She has a particular penchant for clowning; accordingly she has two solo clown shows, Intolerable Side Effects and Boorish Trumpson, which will be going to Prague Fringe in October and Edinburgh Fringe 2021.
Claire is also working on an ensemble physical theatre piece called Cache Cache with Lecoq-trained company HOKA, which has a residency in Normandy in November and will be showing at Theatre 13 in Paris in March 2021. She also regularly directs for the outdoor multi-rolling, multi-instrumental Shakespeare company, Three Inch Fools.
Claire says: “I am (unsurprisingly) a huge fan of multidisciplinary work that has a strong physical element. When I write my hit clowning musical (which is a very real plan) you will probably notice I am also quite inspired by Stephen Sondheim.”
Dale Edwards is an early-career director. He has previously worked as an assistant director at The Royal Exchange and Bolton Octagon. He was shortlisted for the JMK Award 2022 with the play Hang by debbie tucker green. Current work includes an ACE DYCP project and a commission for Dukes Lancaster Blast Festival.
Eleanor Webster (she/they) is a Welsh queer writer and theatre-maker living in Manchester. Her work is highly collaborative, and her training is grounded in devised work. Their work is often inspired by mythology, family and queer identity.
Emily is a Theatre Director and Dramaturg, originally from the North East. Emily predominantly works in new writing and makes cheeky, adventurous work centred around community, hope and class politics.
She is currently Resident Director on the UK Tour of SIX: The Musical, and was previously Laboratory Associate Directior at Nuffield Southampton Theatres.
Previous work includes: Fledglings (Nuffield Southampton Theatres); Alcatraz (VAULT Festival); Cheer Up Slug (The North Wall); ITCH (The North Wall, Roundhouse, Green Man Festival) and Border Control (Theatre 503, Norwich Arts Centre, Roundhouse).
Emily is also a script reader for the Bruntwood Prize, teaches at Identity School of Acting and was a member of the Mayor of London’s Creative Freelancers: Shaping London’s Recovery Task Force in 2021.
Emma is a Trinidadian and Jamaican Actor and Playwright from East London.
For stage, Emma has been a participant at Royal Court, Soho Theatre, Lyric Hammersmith and Oval House writers programmes. Plays include Funeral Flowers which was performed at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival 2018 and won the Scotsman’s Fringe First Award and the Filipa Bragança award for best female solo performance.
As an actor, she took part in CRASH, the ArtsLab summer residency in 2012, and was subsequently cast in our production of Catriona Kerridge’s Fast Track in 2014. Emma returned to The North Wall as a writing mentor for the 2022 Catalyst residency.
Spotlight
Acting Rep: Wendy Scozzaro at Felix de Wolfe
Writing Rep: Kat Buckle & Stephanie Thwaites at Curtis Brown
Emma James is an actor, poet and producer born and raised in London.
She has had an in-depth level of acting training at Rose Bruford College of Theatre and Performance (3 year BA Acting ),The Actors Class, The Lyric Young People Company and Anthony Meindl’s Actors training.
She has gone on to perform in a number of brilliant theatre projects across London including ; Start Swimming (Young Vic), Human Emotional Process (Arts Theatre West End), Kings (The New Diorama) and 17 (The Vaults) and film work with Four One Nine Pictures.
She has gone on to co – found SCRIPT_ED, a new writing platform for film and theatre with her collaborator Aimee Cassetari, they have gone on to produce an Arts Council funded R&D for I Aint Dumb written by Tom Wright and are currently working producing short film.
Emma wants to make more brave, honest, playful work for stage and screen that looks at the complexities of life using movement, poetry and bold exciting text.
Fran has worked across screen and stage, as a [Senior] Casting Assistant and Casting Director.
Based in London, her screen credits as a Casting Assistant include; International Emmy-nominated Dreaming Whilst Black for BBC and A24, Luna Carmoon’s debut feature Hoard, House of Spoils with leads Ariana DeBose and Barbie Ferreira for Blumhouse, and the BAFTA-nominated short form programme How To Be A Person.
Her first Casting Director credit was for the short film, Octopus, which screened at the 2022 BFI Flare Festival. Coming from a predominately theatre background, Fran has also been lucky enough to assist on stage productions for The Bush, Young Vic, Lyric Hammersmith and Regent’s Park Open Air, and has recently cast Selina Thompson’s R&D Twine for the Yard Theatre.
Georgina (she/her) is a musical theatre graduate of the University of Winchester.
She has been involved in several workshops for new musicals, including Mermaids at The North Wall, as well as Just Be(e) by Carl Bosticco and Matt Randall, and A Little Patch of Green by Emily Garsin and Anna Shields.
Georgina has an interest in new British musical theatre writing, especially by female and non-binary theatre makers, as well as specialising in legit and Golden Age musical theatre. Her most recent performance was as ‘George’ in Godspell at the Theatre Royal Winchester.
Hannah is a writer from Oxford, currently living in Bristol.
Her work focuses on the issues present in the lives of herself and those around her, exploring these in a dramatic, insightful and thought-provoking way. She has written two full length plays: In My Country, developed at Catalyst 2022 exploring female South Asian friendships, and THE FUTURE IS BEIGE, a dystopian play set in a “post-race” world. She has also written a short audio play, Chances, about the process of getting diagnosed with cancer.
She is currently studying an MA in Drama Writing at Bristol Old Vic Theatre School, which finishes in July 2023.
Jenny trained as an actor at LAMDA. In 2022 she was part of Broken Silence Theatre’s writing programme Hive, and The Living Theatre Whitwell commissioned her to adapt Jane Austen’s novel Emma for their main house summer show.
Previously she has been part of a writing group run by Margaret Perry, and worked writing, directing and facilitating with youth theatres. Catalyst was her first residency.
