Playwright & Producer
BACKGROUND
I began working in theatre as a freelance stage manager and tour manager in the early 1990's, training in stage management at the
Royal Academy of Dramatic Art from 1991-93. Plays I've worked on include; The Taming of the Shrew, Hayfever, The Woman In Black,
The Glass Menagerie, Women on the Verge of HRT Get Away, Lucky Sods, Lonely Hearts, Dracula, Passion Killers, Gym & Tonic, Bouncers,
La Ronde, Joan of Kent and The Gift. I also worked on The Joe Longthorne Show, the illusion show Mystique, several summer variety seasons, numerous charity galas, plus 17 top pantomimes around the UK with a host of famous faces at venues including; Hull New Theatre, Inverness Eden Court, Sunderland Empire, Darlington Civic, Dartford Orchard, Leicester De Montfort Hall and Billingham Forum. The various companies I have worked for include; The Royal Opera, Hull Truck, Richmond's Orange Tree, Kent Rep, York Theatre Royal, Qdos Entertainment, International Artistes, Great Escape Theatre Company, Theatre of the Wheel and Duggie Chapman Associates. I have company managed productions at the Assembly Rooms during the Edinburgh Festival and tour managed a number of top tribute bands on tours to arenas, concert halls and leading theatres, which included 4 months in the West End with Abba Mania. I have also worked as a production & stage manager on a number of touring plays & shows including the Funny Guys tours with Cannon & Ball.
In 2008 I formed my own professional theatre company, Planet Rabbit Productions, in my native Yorkshire. My intention for
Planet Rabbit was to take affordable professional theatre to smaller communities throughout the north. Shortly after forming Planet Rabbit I began writing plays myself, originally so I could personally tailor plays for Planet Rabbit to produce; writing something suitable for our regular audiences to enjoy, as well as managing the budget by keeping the cast sizes small, creating achievable touring sets and removing the licence fee applicable when using someone else's writing. We also staged the work of Sue Townsend, Eric Chappell, Noel Coward, Arnold Ridley and others. From 2008 - 2016 Planet Rabbit staged and toured 23 plays and 4 events.
In 2017 I was keen to get my own plays seen by a wider audience. Touring beyond our usual Yorkshire, Lancashire, Lincolnshire & Derbyshire would be difficult, therefore I decided to film some of the plays and distribute them to film festivals, have independent screenings and release them on DVD. Also hoping other theatre companies might see them and be interested in staging the plays themselves. Therefore Xanadu Films was formed and the plays began to be filmed.
As a fan of radio plays I also became keen to record some of my plays as radio plays and distributing these online and on CD, again to reach a wider audience. Rabbit Radio Playhouse was then dreamt up and the first radio play will go in to production soon, with plans to do some live readings of these in front of audiences - which is something we have previously staged with Planet Rabbit.
From October 2014 to December 2019 I also ran a small boutique acting agency, representing a small group of actors who I had previously worked with. This was shelved at the end of 2019 to allow me to free up time for other projects, although we had secured some nice tv commercials and stage production offers through this agency.