Vessel Dramaturgy: Laura Wyatt O’Keefe @ Edfinge 2018

VESSEL

How far would you go for a cause you believe in? How far is too far? 

There is a woman. Woman is pregnant.  Abortion is still illegal in her country.
There is a man. Man is a journalist. He meets Woman and starts to cover her story. A story that will change the world. 

Irish writer and performer Laura Wyatt O’Keefe, tackles the divisive subject of women’s bodies and women’s rights in a compelling new drama. It is inspired by Ireland’s recent referendum on abortion and real cases of women around the world not receiving medical treatment and support they need in their own countries. Vessel is a timely reminder that globally women are still fighting to gain control of their own bodies and their right to choose.

At its heart a love story, the play tells the story of an Irish right-to-choose activist. While using her own unwanted pregnancy to bring a legal challenge against the government she meets a journalist who interviews her to publicise her campaign. As their relationship develops he worries he is getting in too deep and begins to reconsider his situation.

Vessel uses wit and humour to explore the complexities of love and relationships in modern society, taking in motherhood, fertility, bodily autonomy and restrictive abortion laws in many countries. With campaigns and rallies for women’s rights gathering momentum worldwide, it questions if we can ever separate a woman from her fertility? As a society do we value women as humans or just potential mothers?

What was the inspiration for this performance?

Vessel was inspired by the Repeal the 8th campaign. I grew up in an Ireland where we did not talk about abortion, we did not talk about choice. Abortion was something that was talked about in hushed tones behind closed doors and it was always something that the person would regret. But something started to change around 2010, people started talking, marching, campaigning.

People were unafraid to speak out. 

Vessel started as a play about abortion but its become a play about choice. So much of the theatre I see about women acknowledges and details female struggle and that’s it. Vessel is about exploring what happens after that struggle, what happens to the female character when she has freedom, when she has choice, when she is empowered? As a theatre maker I’m excited by the possibility of female focused narratives not the retelling of female suffering. For women to keep moving forward socially and artistically we’ve got to start telling and listening to stories of female empowerment.

Is performance still a good space for the public discussion of ideas? 

'The right to choose' will always be an incredibly divisive subject. It's a subject entrenched with political and personal views. It feels impossible to separate ourselves emotionally from the subject. But theatre and performance allow an audience to bare witness to the intimate parts of this subject, it allows the audience to sit in the clinic with the characters, to see the affect on their family, to listen to the online trolls.

It allows the audience to see the human behind the issue - to feel, to laugh or cry with them. The audience gets to walk in their shoes but also gets to leave those shoes at the exit when the curtain closes. Or maybe not? Maybe they change along with them? From the safe space to a darkened auditorium. 

How did you become interested in making performance?

My Aunt was a director and I was sent to rehearsals with her because it was cheaper than a babysitter. And then of course, I was given the role of 'child no 10' or something and that was it, I had the bug. 

I don't ever remember deciding to be an actor or a theatre maker, I just was one. When I was in secondary school, I had a meeting with my career guidance counsellor and when I said I wanted to be an actor they told me I would end up very poor and I should look at 'real' career options but it didn't really affect me. I had an incredibly supportive family who never questioned my decisions. 

Is there any particular approach to the making of the show?

Whenever I make a show I ask a lot of questions. I bury myself in research. Normally when I start writing I'm angry about something, I'm angry about the lack of female bodily autonomy or I'm lost - I don't know what I feel about it. So I keep asking questions and keep researching and eventually I reach a point where I know what I need to write. My research for this show started in 2013 when I interviewed Mara Clarke of Abortion Support Network and with people who oppose legalised abortion. And that's how I wrote the show, in the middle of those opinions, the for and against. 

Once the research was done, I went into a room with artists and offered up the script. And slowly through feedback from these workshops, pages of ideas and questions arrived. Then it was my job to write the story that needed to be told. 

Does the show fit with your usual productions?

It does in lots of ways. It's about female-focused social issues but I feel this is the first time I was courageous enough to simply write a story. As a playwright and an artist I normally try to be clever in narrative form and structure. I try to impress an audience with the ingenuity of the presentation of the work but with Vessel I didn't hide behind form or structure, I wrote a story that was honest and simple. I just told the truth of the story. And that was hard as an artist, to be truthful, to not try and distract the audience with theatricality. 

What do you hope that the audience will experience?

I hope they are challenged, that their ideas and opinions about bodily autonomy and theatre are challenged, that they walk out with questions about the play and questions about themselves. 

http://www.underbellyedinburgh.co.uk/whats-on/vessel

‘Laura Wyatt O’Keeffe’s work is fresh, fearless and raw. Vessel is a timely yet timeless play about how we value women and fertility’ Bryony Kimmings (artist and project mentor)

On 25 May a referendum in Ireland produced an overwhelming vote in favour of repealing the 8th Amendment and allowing abortion on request up to the 12th week of pregnancy. Prior to this, each day 9 Irish women travelled to the UK, spending up to €1,000 to be considered as criminals - all in the pursuit of a safe abortion. There is still no firm date for the new legislation to be passed. Incredibly, women in Northern Ireland continue to make journeys to Britain for a procedure that remains illegal there – a country legally and constitutionally part of the UK.

‘The writing is evocative … impressive pulsating atmosphere’ The Irish Examiner on O’Keeffe’s Wish I Was

Laura Wyatt O’Keefe is part of a family steeped in Irish politics - her great granduncle was Michael Collins who fought for Ireland’s independence and brokered/signed the peace treaty with the United Kingdom. As a performer, writer, facilitator, researcher, collaborator and activist she tells stories, in any way that she can – through theatre and site-specific performances, sound and video installations, spoken word and short films. www.lwok.co.uk <http://www.lwok.co.uk>

Vessel is performed by Laura and Edward De Gaetano. It was created with director Christopher Gatt and Laura is working with Bryony Kimmings as a mentor. The show was developed with support from Olivier Award winning Fishamble Theatre Company and input from the British Pregnancy Advisory Service, Abortion Network Support, a GP, solicitor and activist Diane Munday.

Listings information: Vessel
Underbelly, Jersey, Bristo Sq (Venue 302)      
3-27 Aug (not 13)     
13.10 (65 mins)     
£9 - £11 

OTOSOTR Dramaturgy: Anatoliy Ogay & Tatyana Kim @ Edfringe 2018

OTOSOTR

A war story through the eyes of millennials

Underbelly, Cowgate, 66 Cowgate, EH1 1JX (White Belly) @ 18:40

For the first time in the history of the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, a show from the steppes of Kazakhstan by ethnic Koreans whose first language is Russian will be presented at the Underbelly. 

This monodrama is written and performed by Anatoliy Ogay and directed by Tatyana Kim, artists from Kazakhstan whose works are being performed from Eurasia to North America. The premiere of OTOSOTR was first presented in Almaty, Kazakstan with three successful sold-out shows in May 2018 and was highly reviewed by the main media outlets of the country.

The story is an exploration of the phenomenon of war and peace by the new generation and a search for identity by the author through the story of his grandfather, one of the two hundred thousand Koreans who was deported from the Russian-Korean boarder in 1937 all the way to Soviet Kazakhstan.

The story of the oppressed Koreans, known as “Soviet Koreans” or Koryo-saram, is an unknown history fact of a lost nation. OTOSOTR is a unique opportunity to learn about the part for the world that has never been seen or heard before. 

Dates & Times

AUG 2 through AUG 26 (exl AUG 13)— 18:40

What was the inspiration for this performance?

A: OTOSOTR was initially inspired by my grandfather who’s a child of a massive Korean deportation to Central Asia in 1937. His family was deported to Kazakhstan on freight trains… That how you find Koreans from Kazakhstan whose first language is Russian.  I felt an urge to take an interview with and somehow capture his story, my story, the story of two hundred thousand Koreans who end in Kazakhstan in the middle of XXs century. 

Little I knew back then that it was the first step of a 5-year process of creating this monodrama. In the wilds of the research and working with the source material I realized that there is more in common between me and my grandfather, as well as between now and WWII occurrences. 

I think dramaturgically any theatre should raise strong probing questions in their work. Our piece raises a few of them, with the main focus on “who decides to belong side you belong?” 

 

Is performance still a good space for the public discussion of ideas? 

T: While in the show we’re painting the scenes from 70 years, while we’re looking at the main political figures of that time there’s still a disturbing feeling that the history repeats itself in a different form. Nowadays, we’re all tech savvy right and have computers in our pockets that could process thousands of operations at the same time. 

However, I believe it is also the right time to start using our main computer, our brain and its capability to analyze, and learn from our mistakes in the past. Also, a lot of questions arise once the values of those times are put on the scale against today’s values. Words like patriotism, homeland and sense of dignity for your country are confronted with the modern tendency for individualism, globalization and general focus on ephemeral things. 

How did you become interested in making performance?

A: When you have a habit to create, with time it becomes only a matter of time that you dedicate to a certain project. As with any theater show, the conception of OTOSOTR was happening over a 5-year span. 

As I mentioned it started from an interview, continued with some character analysis I did based on my grandfather, some free-writing, first drafts, musical compositions, public readings. It’s important to mention that the work exists in two languages for both of which we held public readings with the feedback sessions. 

It was very important for us to have our hands on the pulse of the both audiences because because those talk-backs would shape the next draft. And while culturally Kazakhstan with it’s eclectic Asian flavor and the Soviet influence is quite different from the West, on the basic level we as humans are still the same, we crave for a good story, we share feelings and emotions and also speak the language of music fluently.

All of these things OTOSOTR is giving to its audience and hopefully we can hear and see more of the stories from the third world countries to better understand the picture of the modern world. 

Is there any particular approach to the making of the show?

Y: The show is from the part of the world that most people know nothing about except for a few things or people from the media. Our goal here is to tell a good story that the audience can connect with. 

However, how you’re telling that story in two different languages, for two different cultures is a different thing. We still want to give not just the flavor but to immerse the audience  in the world of the main hero but without overloading them with names and numbers that might be hard task for the mind that wants to be taken on a journey rather than be trapped in the sea of the unknown. 

At the same time because music is a big part of this show, we made sure that pivotal moments of the plot are being available for the audience to digest. Music is a beautiful language of the soul.  

Does the show fit with your usual productions?

A: It is definitely an unusual production for us at least because it’s our first solo-show. With every project we try to step further and make a stretch into the area that is unexplored by us. We work in different mediums including theatre, filmmaking, music and everything that comes in making those happen. 

Between film shoots, music recording, writing a screenplay there are also rehearsals for OTOSOTR happening. I think it’s a matter of time management and actually putting it on the calendar. We put all 100% of our focus and heart in this work, but at the same time there are several other things of the same importance boiling in the pot. 

Sometimes you get a project from the pot for two hours, sometimes for several days, with OTOSOTR we’re spending the entire month of August and then putting it back till next time, which is in October. The show will be presented at United Solo Theater Festival in New York. 

What do you hope that the audience will experience?

A: “A war story through the eyes of millennials”. The story opens a dialog with my generation for whom WWII narrative as far as the narrative of ancient Greek wars. 

My knowledge about the war comes not only from the books or Hollywood movies, it comes from the person with whom I share an identical name - my grandfather Anatoliy Ogay. OTOSOTR raises universal questions about race, identity and dignity put against the massive beast of the governmental influences. At the same time, the show will help an older generation to understand millennials, and our urge to vlog, follow, run with selfie-sticks, but in reality, just to share and express our opinions freely. 

Anatoliy Ogay traces his grandfather's journey into the depth of WWII incorporating innovative technologies, tenacious textures of contemporary piano music and main artistic intensity of a solo performance — shifting transformations into captivating characters. 

This extraordinary story has already been accepted to the world’s biggest festival of solo performances UNITED SOLO in New York, USA and will follow it’s European premiere in Edinburgh. 

Anatoliy Ogay and Tatyana Kim are artistic and life partners who have been in the entertainment industry for over 10 years working in film, theatre, and music. Their short film “Tragiometry” received numerous international awards around the globe, including Scotland’s TMMF Awards - best director and best actor in 2016. 

Feed Dramaturgy: Ailin Conant @ Edfringe 2018

What was the inspiration for this performance?

When we began working on Feed, it was in the wake of Brexit and Trump and we thought we were going to be doing a piece on echo chambers, fake news, and social division.  The more we researched, however, the more we realised that Feed was actually about capitalism. 

It’s a play about the attention economy and how our focus as consumers—our engagement, our emotional arousal, and the time we spend with our eyeballs drinking in content—is the greatest commodity on the current market. This means that anything that provokes emotion—humour, scandal, outrage, sensationalism—rises to the top while nuance and deep thinking are pushed out the picture. 

Fake news and social divisions are a part of that, but they are a tangential by-product of a much darker and more insidious thing and really only the tip of the iceberg.

Is performance still a good space for the public discussion of ideas? 

I think in this age of highly personalised and curated content, live performance is one of the best spaces for public discussion because A) it’s shared and B) it’s live.  These are two things that are becoming increasingly rare in our hyper-connected-but-disconnected world.

How did you become interested in making performance?

I don’t actually remember because I was so young, but my mum tells me she used to take me to see a touring kid’s Shakespeare company that did cut-down versions of Shakespeare plays when I was in nursery, and that from about age five I started pestering her to let me be in the shows.  

I had to wait until I was eight to join the troupe,

after that I never looked back.

Is there any particular approach to the making of the show?

Every show invents its own new approach, doesn’t it?  With this show, we began with a series of workshops working with professional playwrights and young people to address this itching question about social media: how it was changing our relationship to ourselves and to other people.  

It’s such a vast subject so the real work of this play was about selecting and articulating the subject, something that took us months.  At one point we were working with the Tactical Technology Collective (creators of the sell-out pop-up The Glass Room) to create a joint foyer exhibition, and two days through the discussion and partnership we realised, ‘Ah wait, Feed is about the attention economy, whereas The Glass Room is about the data economy.’  

Don’t worry if that disambiguation goes over your head, we’re still getting our own heads around it after months of researching.  So the process of making this show has been very different to others in that the landscape is constantly shifting; the subject we’re trying to articulate is evolving so quickly and is such a popular discussion point in the current zeitgeist that a significant part of the process has been just trying to understand and keep up with the subject. 

We have to be on top of what is general knowledge, and what is specialist knowledge, all while figuring out how we can apply theatre to bridging the gap between the two in a poetic and engaging way.

Does the show fit with your usual productions?

You might know from our past work, The Fantasist, Nobody’s Home, and The Marked, that we’re passionate about translating internal experiences… using visual theatre to flip the human mind inside-out and show a protagonist’s mental journey through the tangible world.  

In the past we’ve dealt with individualised subjects like bi-polar disorder and post-traumatic stress, but Feed feels like the first piece we’ve ever done that looks at a lived mental experience that almost all of us are grappling with in some way: the onslaught of stimulation from smartphones and social media, and how we are coping with and adapting to our new information landscape.  

What’s surprising is that Feed actually feels like the most neurotic show we’ve made to date.  There’s a certain logic to something like traumatic experience, where there may be a swirl of emotions to navigate but somewhere in there you can find the vulnerability, the humanity, the logic, the root.  The attention economy, on the other hand, is capitalism unleashed on the human mind; it’s addiction, it’s manipulation, it’s deception, and it’s completely devoid of any ethics or monitoring.  

It’s a world in which every human experience is a commodity.  Making this play has made us all feel a little bit less sane.

What do you hope that the audience will experience?

With past shows, we always had a clear goal of increasing empathy for the protagonist (and by proxy, anyone with a similar story or background).  But Feed has been created in reaction to a moment in time when we were experience empathy burnout; when victim-driven news items were flooding our Facebook feeds and we felt ourselves shutting down to the plight of humans living the various crises of our time.  As storytellers, we needed to take a step back and look at the underlying dynamics of the stories of our times.  

We’ve learned a lot in the process about the way we tell our stories to ourselves as a species, and it’s really changed the way we see things, especially the way we take things in.  In a way, it’s been liberating…building Feed has given us just a tiny bit of reflective distance between ourselves and the media around us, and with that some relief from the whirlwind of guilt and rage and titillation and stimulation that it does its best to suck us into.  

I guess, we want people to laugh, we want people to be provoked and slightly uncomfortable, we want people to see familiar things from a new perspective, we want people to fully embrace and grieve the problems of our times…but mostly, in the space of digestion and reflection that follows, we want to share with our audiences that very small gift of a little bit of freedom from the all of the senseless chatter and noise, so that they have the space reconnect to what’s most real and important.

Feed

Pleasance Dome (King Dome), Potterow, Edinburgh, EH8 9AL

Friday 3^rd – Monday 27^th August 2018 (not 15^th), 14:00

The Political Dramaturgy of Smack and Crack: Ed Edwards @ Edfringe 2018

'The history of England jumps off its axis. 2am, 8th July, 1981, 20 cities across England burn.' The night of the Manchester uprising. That night should change everything. Drawing on his own personal experience, Ed Edwards’ script crackles with anger, humour and authenticity as he chronicles the fallout for communities crushed by the heroin epidemic at the height of Thatcherism. Shot through with home truths about the road to recovery this is an epic love song to a lost generation.

What was the inspiration for this performance?

When I was doing three-and-a-half years in jail for drugs offences in the early 1990s, one of the scouse lads on the landing one night made a speech about the 1981 Toxteth riots that went something like this - "We’d taken Liverpool that night, the youth, it belonged to the youth that night, the city did, the cops had to fight their way back into Liverpool. Two years later I’m jumping over the counter of the local offie with an uzi trying to feed a habit.”

I’d always known that you couldn’t buy heroin on the streets of working class districts before the riot and these words stuck in my mind, gradually morphing with my experiences of recovery from addiction, to become this play.

Is performance still a good space for the public discussion of ideas? 

There are obvious class barriers to proper public debate, in that theatre (especially non-musical theatre) tends to be the preserve of the middle and upper classes in Britain these days. However with the budgets required for film, TV and theatre - and the unofficial but effective ban on political drama on Radio 4 enforced by the commissioner for the past several years Jeremy Howe - theatre is still probably the best forum for debate. You only have to look at the work of people like Chris Thorpe to see how effective/inspiring political/discursive theatre can be. 

How did you become interested in making performance?

Before drugs f**ked me up I’d always been interested in theatre since I stumbled into the Arts Theatre in Birmingham and saw a play by some obscure theatre company that I didn’t understand - but it blew my socks off anyhow! I thought ‘I could do something like that’ and decided there and then to become a writer. Even though I hadn’t got a clue about theatre, I’d been in punk bands and I kind of felt it was the next logical step.

Is there any particular approach to the making of the show?

Well after I went to Manchester Uni as a mature student to study drama and did their post-grad diploma in playwriting, I started to do a circus show - partly to earn the money I needed to carry on writing. We’d be going to parks in Hyton in Liverpool and if you didn’t make them laugh they’d invade the stage and nick all your gear. So, I learned how to really ‘put on a show’. 

This coupled with my own hyperactivity meant that I’ve

always seen theatre as a kind of circus, that needs that element of the spectacle to go with any story. So, I suppose I see theatre as a kind of circus really. I’m big on the need to entertain and thrill.

Does the show fit with your usual productions?

I hope so. I’m not directing this one, even though I wrote it to direct myself, so I do think it has that potential element of circus about it and I think Cressida (Brown - the director) will be keen to exploit that as well as the more serious political/emotional messages.

What do you hope that the audience will experience?

Thrills And Spills And Emotion And Enlightenment About The Need For Revolution! 

The Political History of Smack and Crack

Paines Plough’s ROUNDABOUT @ Summerhall, 

Friday 3^rd – Sunday 26^th August 2018 (not 7^th, 14^th, 21^st), 17:30

A Dramaturgy for Life: Tim Hardy @ Edfrige 2018

HINT OF LIME PRESENTS
A SUBSTITUTE FOR LIFEWritten by Simon Brett
Directed by Alison Skilbeck
Starring Tim Hardy
August 1 – 27
12.35 (50 mins)
ASSEMBLY HALL
Books are good enough in their own way, but they are a mighty bloodless substitute for real life.Robert Louis Stevenson

Never have Robert Louis Stevenson’s words rung more true as they have for Francis Kenworthy. Born to affluence in the middle of the nineteenth century, Francis has always used his love of books as a means of insulating himself from real life. 

But literature offers no protection when a family accident forces him to confront the savage and visceral reality that life can bring.  The seeds of tragedy have been sown long ago in Kenworthy’s brutal Victorian upbringing, but can he escape the violent outcome that seems inevitable?
What was the inspiration for this performance?I was sent the play by Simon Brett. The motivation of the piece is an exploration of the profound effect our childhood can have on who we turn out to be, but in this instance with an extremely unusual and tragic outcome.

Is performance still a good space for the public discussion of ideas? 

Yes, without doubt. Particularly because audience and actor are together in the same space, and often get the opportunity to exchange the views the pay has brought about. Even if this is not the case, all an act of theatre needs is 'two boards and a passion'. 

Therefore a piece of work can be mounted very quickly in response to a particular event, whereas film and telly take much longer to assemble. One example Arthur Miller's 'The Crucible' was put on within a very short space of time in response to the Communist witch-hunt that was escalating, and played a significant part in the dismantling of 'The House of Unamerican Activities' committee leading the persecution.

How did you become interested in making performance?

I have been an actor - leaving RADA in 1963 - all my working life.

Is there any particular approach to the making of the show?

I relied entirely on where the text took me, and where my director guided me. I try to enact each moment of the story truthfully, and let the audience do their job; which is to come to their individual conclusions as to the nature of the man I am representing and the meaning of our story.

Does the show fit with your usual productions?

This character is unlike anything I have ever played before.
What do you hope that the audience will experience?

An absorbing story of a man who- like us all - had goodness in him, great humour, but in his case also something dark and in a way beyond his own control. I hope the audience will walk away having been in every sense entertained.

A Substitute For Life is the story of a damaged man who has found comfort in a life of solitude and certainty.  When his world is invaded, everything comes tumbling down. 

Exploring the themes of how childhood trauma reverberates into adulthood and how emotional suppression will eventually find its outlet, it is a baleful, sometimes darkly humourous and quietly told tale of what can happen when the unexpected arrives and self-protection strategies fail spectacularly.

Tim Hardy, whose performance in Nic Young’s Trials of Galileo received 5 star reviews at the Edinburgh Fringe in 2015, plays Francis Kenworthy in Simon Brett’s riveting one-man play, directed by Alison Skilbeck.

Tim Hardy’s long and varied acting career includes seasons at the RSC, including Peter Brook's Marat/Sade in London and New York, Simon Gray's Melon at the Haymarket Theatre, and Peter Hall's Lysistrata in the West End and Athens, as well as many tours of the US in Shakespeare with Actors From The London Stage.  Hardy’s two one-man shows, The Trials of Galileo by Nic Young, and At the Mountains of Madness by H.P Lovecraft, both for Icarus Theatre Company, tour extensively throughout the UK, Eire, and America. He also sang the lead bass roles in small-scale opera for Music Theatre London throughout the ‘90s. At the RADA Festival last year he played Andrew Borden in Lizzie’s Play, and sang the role of Robert Browning for the Marylebone Festival last July. His TV work includes Jesus in The Son of Man for American television, Galileo in Days that Shook The World, Eastenders, Midsomer Murders, and Casualty 1909. Films include Captain Corelli's Mandolin. Tim trained at RADA, where he has been an Associate Teacher for 20 years, directing Shakespeare and serving on the Admissions Panel

After Oxford University, where he was President of the O.U.D.S. and played Edgar (‘dignified’ – Oxford Mail) and Leontes (‘callow and splenetic’ – Oxford Mail), Simon Brett’s first job was as Father Christmas in a department store. He then spent ten years as a radio producer (producing, amongst other things, Just A Minute, I’m Sorry, I Haven’t A Clue, Lord Peter Wimsey and the first episode of The Hitch-Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy). After two years as a television producer, he became a full-time writer. He has published over a hundred books, many of them crime novels, including the Charles Paris, Mrs Pargeter, Fethering and Blotto & Twinks series. His stand-alone thriller, A Shock to the System, was made into a feature film, starring Michael Caine. Simon’s writing for radio and television includes After Henry, No Commitments and Smelling of Roses. Bill Nighy plays Charles Paris in the Radio 4 adaptations of his books. In 2014 Simon was presented with the Crime Writers’ Association’s top award, the Diamond Dagger, and he was made an O.B.E. in the 2016 New Year’s Honours ‘for services to literature’.


Alison Skilbeck acted with Simon Brett at Oxford University and during that time they performed together at The Oxford Revue at The Edinburgh Fringe.  This year she returns to Edinburgh following her acclaimed productions of Mrs Roosevelt Flies to London at Assembly in 2016 and The Power Behind The Crone Assembly 2017, both as a director of A Substitute for Life, and as a performer with her critically acclaimed solo show Are There More of You?, also at Assembly.  Her enormously varied stage career has taken her to the West End and all over the UK, and on tour to the USA and Europe: early on she created roles in six Ayckbourn premieres at Scarborough. television work includes Sherlock Homes, The Beiderbecke Affair, Miss Marple, Head Over Heels, Doctor Who, Soldier Soldier, Midsomer Murders and Call The Midwife. Her many radio roles include Polly Perks in The Archers, until the character was killed off! Two recent projects have been Wimpole Street, the award winning web series, and the pod cast sitcom series Wooden Overcoats.  

Alison has directed extensively throughout her career, notably Shakespeare at RADA, where she has been an Associate Teacher for over 20 years. She last directed Tim Hardy in Days of Cavafy by Gerald Killingworth at the King's Head