SALT: A Community Play for Poole

Tamsin grew up in Dorchester and did her work experience at the then Poole Arts Centre before going off to train at University of Birmingham and the Lecoq school of theatre in Paris.

Alongside Angel Exit she has worked nationally and internationally as a freelance performer for the last 20 years.

Work includes War Horse (West End) and seven shows at Northampton Royal and Derngate. Tamsin works as a deviser, movement director and director and regularly directs shows at Arts University Bournemouth with the 3rd year acting students.

She now lives near Gillingham and loves making work in Dorset.

Lynne is from another coastal town, Portsmouth, but has lived in London for 25 years.

She works regularly for the education & community department at The Old Vic, has many years of experience working with people living with dementia for Ladder to the Moon.

Lynne works regularly in outdoor interactive theatre, project management for creative science public engagement projects, and as a roleplay actor.

Other companies Lynne has worked with include Platform 4, Hoodwink, Gobbledegook, and Stuff & Nonsense.

Lynne studied drama at The University of Manchester and has a Masters in Performance from Goldsmiths College, University of London.

Formed by, Tamsin Fessey & Lynne Forbes, graduates of the Ecole Lecoq, Angel Exit’s work is all created through a highly collaborative and playful process and involves a shifting ensemble of artists.

Angel Exit have been working in the South West since 2007, under the artistic direction of Tamsin Fessey and Lynne Forbes. Our shows include: The Black Curtain, Moonfleet, The Secret Garden, The Ballad of Martha Brown, Otto and the Robin, The Drive, toooB, Book Club for Super-Spies, and The Fairy Tale Forest. We are associate artists at Lighthouse, Poole.

In addition to our main productions we have created outdoor work for festivals including Gallycrows (Inside Out). We have also been commissioned to devise, perform and manage a number of science public engagement projects including: Five commissions for Einstein’s Garden, Green Man Festival, Plant Family Croquet and Strictly Spice (Royal Botanical Gardens, Kew), a project for Imperial College & The National Museum of Computing and Magnificent Women and their Revolutionary Machines (Women’s Engineering Society).

All our shows have very different stories and are created for different types of audiences, but what our work has in common is a strong emphasis on storytelling through physical ensemble theatre, using the European traditions of clown, chorus, melodrama, and buffoonery.

We are passionate about making new work and telling stories that we find interesting, touring from rural to West End venues, performing in non-theatre spaces, creating shows for family audiences, interactive theatre, and working with communities.

‘An enviable reputation for vivid and unusual work appealingly laced with oddball comedy.’ The Stage ‘The company has evolved a distinctive style,
hugely entertaining, visually stunning and choreographically astonishing.’ FTR

Directors Tamsin and Lynne are also freelance performers who have worked in the West End and internationally, and with a host of regional theatres and touring companies: www.angelexit.co.uk

tooB is at Little Angel Theatre 14 – 16 August and Polka Theatre 19 – 27 August.

Stephanie Dale writes for stage, radio, and large-scale theatre. She has penned some of the U. Ks largest community plays including: Spinning the Moon, Dorchester Community Plays Association, 2023, The Chester Mystery Plays, Chester Cathedral, The Witches’ Promise, Birmingham REP, A Time to Keep, Dorchester Community Plays, co-written with David Edgar.

Stephanie’s adaptation credits include a national tour of Persuasion, Theatre 6, London, National tour, 2018/9. Alice in Wonderland, Theatre in the Quarter, 2016. Moonfleet, Bristol Old Vic Theatre School and South West Tour, 2016.

She has written numerous plays for BBC RADIO FOUR, the most recent being Losing Paradise, available on BBC SOUNDS.

Stephanie has over 20 years’ experience teaching in Universities across the U.K. In 2018, she founded and ran the MA in Playwriting at Bristol Old Vic Theatre School. She also works as a dramaturg, most recently on Blanket Bann, Chalk Line Theatre, Southwark Playhouse, May 2023.

For more information, go to www.stephaniedale.org

Sophia studied Theatre Arts at Bretton Hall.  She is a designer and maker for theatre, opera and interactive performance for children.  She has just designed The Worst Princess (Full House Theatre).

This summer she’s making art with children at Worthing Hospital. Soon she returns to Opera Up Close (Peace At Last) and Little Angel Theatre (The Bed).

In 2022 Sophia designed Chasing Dots (MishMash Prods & Royal Northern Sinfonia, Sage, Gateshead), Catch A Sea Star (Seaglass Arts), Handa’s Surprise (Little Angel Theatre), Jina and the STEM Sisters (HMDT) and London Rhymes.

Other recent productions include Maanika & the Wolf (Polka Theatre), My Mother Said I Never Should for the Crucible & fingersmiths, Paper Aeroplane for Half Moon Theatre and Spitalfields Music (Musical Rumpus).

Other companies incl. Southbank Centre,  Barbican, ZArts, Trestle Theatre, Royal & Derngate Theatres, Nottingham Playhouse, Theatre By The Lake, Unicorn, ENO education, Regents Open Air Park Theatre, Theatre Rites, Kali and English Touring Opera.

www.sophialovellsmith.co.uk

I have been playing and singing at folk clubs and festivals for over 25 years using mainly the concertina, melodeon or guitar to accompany myself. My repertoire is drawn from the great collections of traditional folk songs, sea shanties, ballads and music hall songs. Other songs have been learnt directly from singers such as Walter Pardon, Peter Bellamy and Tony Hall. I also write and perform many of my own songs, Row On, Heaven’s a Bar, The Trampwoman’s Tragedy and Courting Round Dorset to name a few.

Other artistes including The Yetties, Pint and Dale, Dave Webber and Anni Fentiman, Chris Roe and Phil Callery of the Voice Squad also sing my songs. Many of my songs and stories are inspired by my native county Dorset, giving them a West Country flavour. Tim has produced a wealth of original songs that can be heard throughout the play, all directly influenced by his extensive knowledge of Dorset’s history and the folk songs that have carried it’s stories through time.

Tom Sharkett is a producer and composer who has had a long and varied career in the music industry.

Released in 2022 via Optimo Music, Sharkett’s debut EP ‘Futuro’ was written with an intentionally blind use of the half-broken equipment and synthesisers he had amassed during his time in bands, creating electronic music with a punk ethos.

As well as forming one third of the Mancunian trio, WH-Lung he’s released remixes for labels such as City Slang and Sonic Cathedral.

His monthly show on Soho Radio, ‘Inside the Outside’, which shares a name with his club night at Todmorden’s Golden Lion, is a blend of darkdisco, EBM, cosmic dance, and new wave that shapes Sharkett’s DJ sets.

Tom has produced an exciting range of original music for SALT that we can’t wait for you to hear

Award winning lighting designer Sherry Coenen works across the UK and US. She has a BFA in Lighting Design from the University of Miami and is a member of APLD.

Theatre includes: I Want My Hat Back Trilogy (Little Angel Studios – winner of TYA Design Offie 2023), Spitlip’s Operation Mincemeat (New Diorama Theatre, Southwark Playhouse and Riverside Studios – nominated for Knights of Illumination award 2019 & winner of Best Musical Production Offie 2023), Frankenstein (Beatbox Academy at BAC, Knights of Illumination winner 2019), The Singing Mermaid (Little Angel Theatre), Izindava (UK Tour), Brigitte Aphrodite’s Parakeet (Paines Plough Roundabout, Summerhall, Edinburgh Festival Fringe), Christopher Brett Bailey’s This is How We Die (UK Tour), The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole Aged 13¾ (Queen’s Theatre Hornchurch), Skin Tight (Park90), CELL (UK Tour), Conquest of the South Pole (Arcola), These Trees are Made of Blood (Arcola), Brrr! (UK Tour), 5 Guys Chillin’ (Kings Head Theatre), Anton Chekhov (Hampstead Theatre)

I trained as a Theatre Designer and also have an MA in Printmaking from Camberwell College of Art, London. I now live and work in Dorset.

I am a visiting tutor at the Arts University Bournemouth for BA Costume and BA Performance Design and Film Costume. As a freelance artist I lead art workshops in schools and community settings, design and run workshops where I can for theatre, create sculptures and large scale artworks for festivals and spend as much time as possible in my studio with my treasured etching press. I think on a grand scale, inspired by the light and colour of the natural world around us. My latest series of prints explore landscape and its relationship with our imagination, and perhaps the stories it may inspire.

I am interested in making work that is responsive and gentle, plays with light, music and our emotional response to our surroundings

Nancy Beardall has been making costumes professionally for over twenty-five years. Her work has been seen on stage at the Royal Opera House, English National Opera, Vlaame Opera in Belgium and Fondazione Teatro La Fenice, Venice to name but a few.

Nancy has an MA in Historical Costume, and specialises in men’s dress, both military and civilian.

Based in Bournemouth, she operates under the trading name 19th Century Tailoring.

In recent years she has been a Visiting Tutor at the Arts University Bournemouth teaching the BA Costume students.

Working with the students has been an eye-opening experience which she has thoroughly enjoyed as it has re-invigorated her passion for costume creation.

As a theatrical, dance and empowerment photographer, I am interested in driving social change through work that promotes mental health, equality and gender issues.  Belief in the power of the image is central to my PhD research at Arts University Bournemouth.  As well as my personal and commercial practice,  I support The Shine Project to empower and support teenage lives, delivering wellbeing courses in secondary schools.

My multi award-winning personal project “Asking For It” raises awareness about victim blaming and consent in cases of sexual violence and domestic abuse.  It currently has an online, interactive jury experience at www.askingforit.net where people can see and cast judgement on the historical mugshot series. This work was exhibited at Doughty Street Chambers, London and is set to exhibit in Newcastle, UK, later in 2023 as part of an ongoing social change/research initiative.

My project ‘Boys will be Boys’, was exhibited at Lighthouse Poole in October 2021 and was awarded ‘Official Selection’ in the IPA 2022.  As part of this work supporting males in ballet, I co-sponsored a scholarship for a male dancer in 2022.  I also exhibited a subsequent series entitled, Front page, which was recently awarded an Honorable Mention in the 20th Julia Margaret Cameron Awards. I am an official patron/photographer of National Boys Dance Day – 23rd October.

My series ‘Homefront’ reflects on women’s lives, as impacted by the pandemic and in comparison with women in post-war Britain.  Women’s roles in history and how visual narratives can impact/inspire others, is central to my Phd research, as well as my commercial collaborations.  Much of my work adopts a participant action research (PAR) approach, looking to enrich the lives of those through practice.

As an empowerment activist, I actively support women’s rights and promoting equality and body positivity.  This includes being the official UK photographer for THE REAL CATWALK and supporting the ‘REAL body” movement, which celebrates and increases visibility of people of all ages, gender, ability size, shape and sexuality.

Contact: jaynejacksonphotography@gmail.com