people
clod ensemble
Suzy Willson: Director
Suzy is Artistic Director of Clod Ensemble - a theatre
company that creates theatre, music and performance events in London,
the UK and internationally. Suzy has spent over 7 years researching the
area of arts in medical training. She is currently Honorary
Non-Clinical Senior Lecturer at Barts and The London, Queen Mary's School
of Medicine and Dentistry, University of London.
Jo Allan: Project Manager
Jo read English and History of Art at Cambridge University. Upon graduating she worked in Tokyo for a bilingual organisation specialising in mounting cultural events internationally. She returned to the UK in 2003 to join the Donmar Warehouse, dealing with all areas of management of the company’s productions and promotion at the Donmar, at West End theatres and at tour venues. Since 2007 she has worked in theatre, TV, film and PR combining her administrative and communication skills as a freelance project manager, producer, writer and Japanese interpreter. She joined Clod Ensemble in 2009.
Associates
The Performing Medicine Project has worked with many contemporary artists and thinkers working across many art forms. Listed below are some of the artists we are currently working with.
Bobby Baker
Bobby Baker is a performance artist based in London. During
the last three decades she has produced an extensive repetoire of work
principally concerned with an exploration of aspects of daily life and
human behaviour. Her work has been shown widely in the UK and abroad.
Her major production How To Live was launched at the Barbican
London in 2004. www.bobbybakersdailylife.com
Sylvan Baker
Sylvan has over 20 years experience of using drama for facilitation,
directing, writing and workshop leading in young people’s theatre,
education, health and criminal justice. He has been an Associate Director
at London Bubble Theatre Company and is currently visiting lecturer
in Applied Theatre at Goldsmiths College and Central School of Speech
and Drama.
Liz Ellis
Liz Ellis's practice as a visual artist ranges from leading
walks to sites of non-conformity in Walthamstow to making vibrant colour
photographs, print multiples and artists books. She exhibits widely across
Europe and is currently Artist Educator at Tate Modern working with a
wide range of adult audiences.
Barbara Houseman
Barbara has worked as a voice and text coach in the theatre
for 25 years. She spent six years in the world renowned voice department
of the Royal Shakespeare Company and has written a voice book for actors,
Finding Your Voice. She has also worked as a presentation and communication
skills specialist in the public and private sectors including the Metropolitan
Police, NHS, Home Office and in the City.
Rosetta Life
Rosetta Life is a charity that runs artist-led residencies
in over fifteen specialist palliative care centres across Britain. Each
centre is equipped with multi media arts equipment enabling hospice users
to access the website that holds online exhibitions and enables a community
of hospice users to share experiences and ideas with an online community.
www.rosetta life.org
Brian Lobel
Brian's first play, Ball, toured the US and Canada extensively from 2004-2007 in theatres, medical schools, universities and as a keynote address at numerous conferences. Ball was the first half of work devoted to issues around illness and mortality and was followed by Other Funny Stories About Cancer, which premiered at Live Bait in Chicago, 2006 and was subsequently performed in New York City, Washington DC, Paris and Jerusalem. While still primarily concerned with the perception of bodies in public, Brian's new work explores such issues in more divergent styles - from installation, to performance lecture to simultaneously annotated storytelling. Recent performances include Hold My Hand and We're Halfway There, Love, Self-, Festival of Lights Alive and The View From My Side of the Nose. Brian holds a BA in Performance & Social Identity from the University of Michigan, an MA in Performance from Queen Mary, University of London and is currently pursing his PhD in Drama.
Dr Ali Mears
Ali Mears is a Consultant in Genitourinary medicine (GUM)
and HIV at Imperial College NHS Healthcare Trust (November 2007). She also
has a particular interest is medical ethics having completed a Masters
in Medical Ethics and Law at Kings College London in 2006.
Dominic Johnson
Dominic Johnson is a writer and artist based in London
and is currently a lecturer in the Department of Drama at Queen Mary University of London. He is a regular contributor to journals and magazines
including Frieze and Dance Theatre Journal, and is the
editor of a monograph on the work of Franko B (Milan: Galeria Pack, forthcoming).
Paul Heritage
Paul Heritage is Professor of Drama and Performance at Queen Mary, University of London and Director of Peoples Palace Projects. He was a director with The Gay Sweatshop Theatre Company and founding director of the Theatre in Prisons and Probation (TIPP) Centre at the University of Manchester. He has combined academic and professional activity in theatre for the past twenty years, regularly working in Brazil where he has developed a wide reaching theatre projects for prisoners called Staging Human Rights.
www.peoplespalace.org.uk
Helen Marshall
Helen has a track record in collaborative and socially engaged
public art projects. She has worked with a number of organisations including
The Photographers’ Gallery, BBC2, MUF Art Architecture, LIFT, Rosetta
Life and Space Studios. Her work explores photography and film, still
life, texts and objects and addresses social and individual identities.
www.helenmarshall.co.uk
Deborah Padfield
Deborah Padfield spent eight years as an actress in theatre,
television, and radio. In 1994 she became disabled through chronic pain
following surgery and retrained in fine art. In 2001 she won the Wellcome
Trust Sci Art Award to develop work with residential pain patients at
St Thomas' Hospital.
Leisa is a director, teacher, performer and writer who has many years experience working with young people through theatre. She is an associate artist for Company of Angels. Leisa also spent five years as Head of Drama at a London school, before leaving in 2001 to freelance with companies such as Performing Arts Labs, GYPT, Clod Ensemble and the Foundling Museum.
Peggy Shaw
Peggy Shaw is a performer, writer, teacher, producer from
New York. She co-founded with Lois Weaver The WOW Cafe Theatre in New
York, and the theatre compmany Split Britches, both of which have been
in operation for 26 years. She is recipient of multiple awards including a Stonewall Award.
Sarah Simblet
Sarah has written and illustrated two books The Drawing
Book (Dorling Kindersley 2005) and Anatomy for the Artist
(2001). She is also Tutor in Anatomy and Drawing at the Ruskin School
of Drawing and Fine Art, University of Oxford, and an academic member
of Wolfson College.
Lois Weaver
Lois Weaver has been a performer, director, and writer with
the Split Britches Company since 1980. She is Professor of Contemporary
Performance at Queen Mary, University of London.
www.splitbritches.com
John Wright
John Wright is regarded as Britain’s leading authority
in mask work. He co-founded Trestle Theatre Company and later Told By
An Idiot for whom he has directed most of their repetoire including On
the Verge of Exploding and Don’t Laugh It’s My Life.
He is an international teacher and has received numerous awards for his
work.
