Creatives

Kirsty Housley Director

Kirsty Housley is a director, dramaturg and writer who specialises in formally bold new work and collaboration.

Recent work as a director includes: Cutting the Tightrope (Edinburgh International Festival & Arcola Theatre); Whole (UK Tour); Rise (Bradford City of Culture), Drive Your Plow Over The Bones Of The Dead (Complicité); Jekyll & Hyde (National Theatre tour, 2024 and 2022); Horse (Matthew Herbert, Edinburgh International Festival and Barbican, as co director); Hope (Clean Break, short film), Extinct (Theatre Royal Stratford East, 2021); The Long Goodbye Livestream with Riz Ahmed (MIF/BAM, 2020), Rich Kids: A History of Shopping Malls in Tehran (Traverse Theatre, Sundance Film Festival and Under The Radar fest NYC); Mephisto (A Rhapsodie) (Gate Theatre, 2019); Tao of Glass (Manchester International Festival and Royal Exchange Theatre, 2019);

Recent work as a dramaturg includes: Public Interest (Commonwealth/ Bradford City of Culture); ECHO (Royal Court/LIFT); Can I Live (Complicite); Avalanche (Barbican Theatre).

Kirsty was the recipient of the Oxford Samuel Beckett Theatre Trust Award for Cue Deadly, a Live Film Project, the Title Pending award for innovation at Northern Stage, and The Stage award for Innovation for The Encounter. She is currently under commission to the Royal Shakespeare Company.

Catherine Willis Casting Director

Catherine Willis’ career started in regional and then West End theatre which led on to 6 years in-house at the BBC working across ongoing multiple series including Waking the Dead and Casualty.  Since setting up her own company in 2006  Catherine has specialised in casting new talent crossing both Drama, Comedy and the dark area in between.

Recent TV series include the award-winning Changing Ends for ITV, A Good Girls Guide to Murder with Emma Myers, C4’s ‘Somewhere Boy’ for Clerkenwell Films, for which Catherine won the 2023 Royal Television Award. Renegade Nell and The Full Monty for Disney+. Recent award winning comedies include Here We Go, The Change and Alma’s Not Normal amongst numerous others.

Previous work you might remember is Dead Set created by Charlie Brooker, Flowers for Kudos with Olivia Colman; BAFTA-winning Detectorists with Toby Jones and Mackenzie Crook; Fresh Meat with Zawe Ashton and Jack Whitehall;

Most recently you might have seen the award winning feature film Ballad of Wallis Island and coming soon is The Witness on Netflix.

Cast

Thomas Arnold Alfred

Thomas’ most recent theatre credits include Complicite’s Mnemonic and Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead; Fanny & Alexander, directed by Max Webster for the Old Vic, The Kids Stay In The Picture, directed by Simon McBurney for the Royal Court, and Oslo, directed by Bart Sher at the National. On screen credits most recently include Knights of the Seven Kingdom for HBO, 3 Body Problem for Netflix and upcoming thriller Maya for Channel 4 as well as BBC’s hit series, Wolf Hall, the BBC 2 series MotherFatherSon with Richard Gere, the hugely popular BBC series War and Peace and the critically acclaimed series Broken, written by Jimmy McGovern. His film credits include upcoming The Julia Set starring Chase Infiniti, also Tom Harper’s The Aeronauts and The Woman in Black: Angel of Death.

Alex Austin Archie/Man

Alex is a performer, script reader and dramaturg from Walthamstow in East London.

Theatre includes: Arlington (Shotput), Macbeth (ETT/Lyric Hammersmith), As You Like It (Shakespeare’s Globe), Olivier Nominated Blackout Songs (Hampstead Theatre), LOVE (Park Avenue Armoury Theatre, New York), Wuthering Heights, The Skriker (Royal Exchange), Ivan and the Dogs (Young Vic), The End of Eddy, Henry The Fifth, The Nutcracker, The Man With The Disturbingly Smelly Foot, How to Think the Unthinkable (Unicorn Theatre), A New and Better You (Yard Theatre), Gundog, Grimly Handsome, Primetime, Yen, Pigeons (Royal Court), Thebes Land (Arcola), Fury (Soho Theatre), Olivier Nominated Barbarians (Bad Physics/Young Vic), Idomeneus (The Gate Theatre), Hope, Light and Nowhere (Underbelly), My City (Almeida Theatre) Telling Tales and Encourage the Others (Almeida Young Friends).

Film and Television includes: Elsinore (Studio Canal), Smashing (Zoic Films), Andor (Disney+), I Hate Suzie (Bad Wolf), Doctor Who, The Mallorca Files, Casualty, Holby City (BBC), The Bike Thief (Roman Holiday Ltd), Blood Out of a Stone (Watersmeet Productions/BFI Flare),  Legacy (Legacy Films), The Christmas Candle (Pinewood Films), The Hooligan Factory (Altitude HF Ltd), The World’s End (Black Pictures Lts), The Swarm (Stray Bear Productions), Liar (Brocess Ltd), Sherlock (Hartswood), The Interceptor, New Tricks, The Musketeers, Misfits (Clerkenwell Films).

Omar Bynon Henry/Killian

Omar is an actor, writer and workshop facilitator from East London who has an array of theatre credits; Duck (Arcola); Julius Caesar (Globe); 2036: Pawn (Bush); Heartfelt, Poet’s Manifesto (Stratford East).

Omar was the lead role in Blue Mist at the Royal Court as well as appearing in THE MERRY WIVES OF WINDSOR & THE SCHOOL FOR SCANDAL at the RSC.

Kyle Cox Beeny

Training: ArtsEd

Theatre credits include: Francois in & Juliet (UK Tour); Wyatt in Crazy For You (Gillian Lynne Theatre & Chichester Festival Theatre); Jack Wright in Treason (UK Tour & London Palladium); Paul Williams in Ain’t Too Proud: The Life and Times of the Temptations (The Prince Edward Theatre); Ensemble in Elf The Musical (The Dominion Theatre); Choir at Olivier Awards (ArtsEd); Dancer in Cowboys and Angels (O2 Academy Brixton); Choir in An Intimate Evening with Kristen Chenoweth (ArtsEd).

Concert credits include: Goose in Cool Rider (The London Palladium).

Workshops credits include: Will in Halls: The Musical (Turbine Theatre) and Dancer in The Greatest Night Of The Jazz Age (The Lost Estate).

Joshua Griffin  Hector

Joshua Griffin trained at RCSSD.

Theatre includes: The Tempest (Globe Theatre); Dear Elizabeth (Gate Theatre); Henry V (Headlong, Globe theatre co-production); Da Vinci Code (Salisbury Playhouse/Mercury Theatre); Fahrenheit 451 (Theatre Peckham, Complicite).

Television includes: Trigger Point, Doctors, Midsomer Murders, Father Brown.

Film includes: Stuffed.

Short film includes: Too Rough, An indirect Message, Repair.

Amanda Hadingue Oona

Theatre includes: The Tempest, Hamlet (Shakespeare’s Globe); The Secret Garden (Regent’s Park); Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead, The Master and Margarita (Complicite); A Christmas Carol, A Very Expensive Poison (Old Vic); The Winter’s Tale, Miss Littlewood, The Duchess of Malf, The Follies of Mrs Rich, The Merchant of Venice (Royal Shakespeare Company); Top Girls, A Pacifist’s Guide to the War on Cancer, Small Family Business (National Theatre); Black Sheep, The Exoplanets (curious directive); The Madness of George III (Nottingham Playhouse); I Am Thomas (National Theatre of Scotland/Told by an Idiot); Tipping the Velvet (Lyric Hammersmith); Ghost Train (Royal Exchange); Playing for Time (Sheffield Crucible); Rising Damp (UK tour); Get Santa!, The Wonderful World of Dissocia (Royal Court).

Television includes: Criminal Record 2 (Apple TV); Murder Before Evensong (Channel 5); Kaos (Netflix); The Emily Atack Show (ITV); Good Omens (BBC/Amazon); The Alienist (Netflix); Flowers (Channel 4); Bad Move (ITV); Casualty, Holby City, Lead Balloon, Doctors (all BBC).

Film includes: Black Pond, The Queen, The Darkest Universe.

Angela Jones Nora

Angela is a recent graduate of LAMDA, and the Spotlight Prize Winner for 2022.

Theatre: Summer 1954 (Bath Theatre Royal); Jekyll & Hyde (National Theatre); Trueman & the Arsonists (The Roundhouse); Lord of the Flies (Leeds Playhouse and Rose Theatre Kingston); The Two Popes (The Rose Theatre Kingston).

Television: Jerk (BBC).

Film: Fantastic Four (Marvel).

Eleanor Nawal Aggie/Woman

Eleanor Nawal is a British-Egyptian actor and writer from South London. As an actor her credits include ‘Urchin‘ for Dream Space/ BBC Films; ‘Spent‘, ‘The Jetty‘ and ‘The Reckoning‘ for BBC; ‘Somewhere Boy‘ for Channel 4; and ‘You Bury Me‘ at Bristol Old Vic, The Lyceum and The Orange Tree. As a writer she was a finalist for the inaugural Screenshot Award for comedy writer performers, and her play in development ‘True Story’ was in the top 10 for the ATG/Platform Presents Playwright’s Prize and recently received Arts Council funding for continued development.