Brendon Burns

Head of Applied Theatre & Community Drama

A director, lecturer and facilitator, Brendon has 30 years’ experience leading major participatory and educational theatre projects in the UK, Europe and in West Africa. He trained as an actor at the Arts Educational School, London and later completed postgraduate research degrees in both Theatre in Education and Rhetoric. Previous posts include artistic director of Solent Peoples Theatre, Indefinite Article and First Draft Theatre and associate director posts at Proteus Theatre and The Haymarket, Basingstoke. As a playwright, he has written numerous original plays and adaptions, including the first conventional theatre adaptations of Margaret Attwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale and Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World. Brendon is a member of Stage Directors UK, a research associate of the Centre for Oratory and Rhetoric at Royal Holloway, University of London, and a fellow of the RSA.

Burns, B. (2018). The dynamics of disagreement: facilitating discussion in the populist age. Education & Theatre Journal, 19, 124-131.

Burns, B., (2020). There will be disagreement! Theatre, democracy, and the most important skill we can teach our children. Education & Theatre Journal, 21, 10-15.

Burns, B (2021). Theatre for Democracy in Prentki, T. and Abraham, N. eds., 2021 The applied Theatre Reader. Second edition ed. London; New York: NY Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group.

Burns, B (2021). Dialogue is Fundamental: The Techne of Drama Facilitation. In Choleva N. (ed.) (2021). _"It Could Be Me – It Could Be You" - Drama/Theatre in Education methodologies and activities for raising awareness on human rights and refugees. Athens: UNHCR/TENet-Gr.

Gillian Knox

Lecturer

Gillian is a highly experienced devised performance maker and artist, having worked in the sector for over 15 years. She is a founder member of the critically acclaimed Pigeon Theatre, which specialises in experimental, site-specific and interactive works and was an associate artist at Manchester’s Greenroom Theatre. Gillian’s current research is practice-led and focuses on applying documentary and verbatim techniques to creating fictive performances. Gillian believes that the best way to learn is through actually making work, enhanced by a firm understanding of critical theory and current practice and consolidated by critical reflection.

Sharon Nash

Lecturer

Sharon has worked extensively in formal and informal educational contexts for over 20 years, using theatre as a tool for empowerment and to promote learning and advocacy. As a facilitator, she has undertaken major projects for organisations including BBC Raw Stories, Hampshire County Council and the Hampton Trust. Her work has taken place in a variety of community settings including prisons, young offender institutions, pupil referral units, areas of urban deprivation, mental health units, sheltered accommodation and teenage mother and baby units. She has also co-directed a two- year storytelling project in Jasikan, Ghana that later toured to schools in the UK. Her experience offers real-life insight into how theatre and drama can be used to inform, present, represent or make a difference and how this can lead to meaningful employment after graduation.

Lisi Perry

Lecturer

Lisi has been a practising dance artist for over 25 years and is the founder and artistic director of COLLISION. She has worked with choreographers and companies including Scottish Dance Theatre, Motionhouse Dance Theatre and Jasmin Vardimon, touring and teaching regionally, nationally and internationally. Lisi directs and choreographs work in theatre and unconventional non-theatre spaces, including large-scale projects on beaches, in museums, police stations and parks, and has even involved JCB diggers. She encourages students to be fully engaged with a range of methodologies and approaches, whether they are familiar or unknown, and to immerse themselves in all aspects of their study.

Rosemary Berkon

Teaching Fellow

Rosemary is an actor, voice coach and community facilitator. She trained as an actor at ALRA and as a voice coach at The Royal Central School of Speech and Drama. As an actor Rosemary has toured nationally, performing at venues such as HOME theatre, The Leeds Playhouse, Theatre 503, The North Wall Arts Centre and Manchester Opera House. With a passion for new writing and outreach she has worked as a performer and facilitator to create original work that emphasises community engagement with various theatre companies including Odd Arts, Papatango, Quantum Theatre and Byteback Theatre.

She brings her experience as a performer and facilitator into her teaching, alongside her experience as a private coach, which sees her work with many different voices encouraging confidence and communication. She currently works with clients in preparation for auditions, public speaking (that has included TEDx talks) and at other drama schools.

Rosemary is fascinated by accents, how speech is made and the social implications of teaching this to actors. She is a member of The Voice and Speech Trainers Association, passionate about cutting-edge pedagogy and aims to work with a sense of community and inclusivity in her studio spaces.

Rosemary understands the resilience required to sustain a career in the theatre industry, she endeavours to share with honesty challenges from her professional experience and also her hopes for the future of the creative arts.

Dr Sam McKay

Lecturer

Samuel works across a number of exciting fields in the arts and culture sector, in recent years with organisations like Leeds Playhouse, Pockets Theatre, Chol Theatre, fairandfunky, Faceless Arts, Front Room Productions, and Red Ladder Theatre. He trained in Community Drama at LIPA (2014), before achieving an MA at Durham University in Culture and Difference (2015). He now holds a PhD from the University of Leeds (2019), where his research developed philosophies of applied theatre practice.

His main interests and experience lie in applied theatre and community arts, site specific theatre, queer theatre, and the development of new shows. He has led a significant amount of projects with refugees and asylum seekers, schools and young people, and developed innovative creative projects for older people. Beyond this he has skills and experience in project management, directing for non-traditional spaces, marketing and audience development, creative outreach, and monitoring and evaluation processes. He continues to make creative work with communities across the north of England and generates new ways of thinking through his research.

Samuel leads and delivers a number of modules that look to develop professional skills that will foster sustained work and employment beyond graduation, alongside their acting and performance skills as they relate to applied theatre practice. Some of these modules are project based, for example Theatre in Education, where he prepares students to work with young people in Merseyside in the delivery of their own participatory performances.

McKay, S. (2019) Dislocating Applied Theatre: Crossing the Borders between Practice and Context. PhD thesis, University of Leeds.

McKay, S. & Bradley, J. (2016). How does arts practice engage with narratives of migration from refugees? Lessons from ‘utopia’. Arts and Communities, Special Edition Arts, Activism and Human Rights, 8(1-2), pp.31-46.