Claudette Bryanston is an English theatre director and practitioner of applied drama. [1] [2]
Bryanston has an MA in Contemporary Performance from Middlesex University. [3]
In 1983 she co-founded Classworks Theatre Company, Cambridge. [4] Classworks was initially the first youth theatre in Cambridge, meeting at the ADC Theatre [4] and securing the first patronage given by HRH Prince Edward Earl of Wessex. [5] Its productions toured to Germany, Finland, Poland and the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. [4] In 1988 it won the first ever award given by The Independent for Best Production with The Heart of a Dog, by Mikhail Bulgakov. [6]
Bryanston is the artistic director of Santé Theatre and Media company [7] which she founded in 2000. In 2003 she was appointed a Senior Research Fellow in Creativity and Performance at the Institute of Health at the University of Warwick. [8] From November 2008 to June 2009 she was also the Warwick University/Royal Shakespeare Company Fellow in Creativity and Performance. [9]
She was appointed Guest Director of the Master in Fine Arts in stage direction programme at Boston University in America [10] and has published academic articles on the practice of applied theatre. [11] She has worked closely with the English playwright Edward Bond, from whom she commissioned the play "The Children", directing its first performance in 2000. [12] She has also worked with English writers Mike Kenny [13] and Robin French [8] and American playwright Deborah Lake Fortson. [14] [15] Bryanston has also been commissioned to direct productions by the Coventry Belgrade Theatre [16] which is well known for developing the practice of theatre in education, and in the community. [17]
Bryanston's stage direction has been described as "visually incisive" by The Sunday Times and "extraordinary and impressive" by The Guardian . [10]
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