Graeae Theatre Company, often abbreviated to just Graeae is a British organisation composed of deaf and disabled artists and theatre makers. As well as producing theatre which it tours nationally and internationally to traditional theatres and outdoor spaces, Graeae run a large and varied Creative Learning and training programme for emerging, young and mid-career deaf and disabled artists.
Patrick Ewart Garland was a British director, writer and actor.
Mat Fraser is an English rock musician, actor, writer and performance artist. He has thalidomide-induced phocomelia. In 2017, he was cast to play Shakespeare's Richard III at the Hull Truck Theatre as part of Hull City of Culture 2017.
Katherine Jane Parkinson is an English actress. She has appeared in several television comedy series, including as Jen Barber in Channel 4's The IT Crowd, for which she received a British Comedy Best TV Actress Award in 2009 and 2014, and for which she was nominated twice for the BAFTA Television Award for Best Female Comedy Performance, winning once in 2014. Parkinson studied at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art, and has appeared on stage in the plays The Seagull (2007), Cock (2009), and Home, I'm Darling (2018), for which she was nominated for the Olivier Award for Best Actress in a Play.
Phil Willmott is a British director, playwright, arts journalist, teacher, and founder of London based theatre production company The Steam Industry.
David Bower is a Welsh actor, best known for his role as David in the hit romantic comedy Four Weddings and a Funeral. Born in Wrexham, North Wales, he is deaf and a BSL user and took his degree in the British Theatre of the Deaf. After university he joined what became the Signdance Collective working as sign dancer and choreographer. The collective was re-established in 2001 with Bower as artistic director and Isolte Avila as Dance Director. In 2012 the collective is devising a new production "Desire", featuring the songs of the band Dead Days Beyond Help, which will premier at the Warehouse Theatre, Croydon from 13 to 19 April 2012.
Jim Kenworth is an English playwright.
Kevin Edward Allen is a British actor, director, producer and writer. Allen came to prominence with the 1991 BBC film On the March with Bobby's Army, and for writing and directing his debut feature film, Twin Town, in 1997. He directed and co-wrote the movie adaptation of Dylan Thomas' "Under Milk Wood", submitted for Best Foreign Language Film at the 2015 Oscars ceremony but not nominated, the Hollywood feature films, The Big Tease and Agent Cody Banks 2: Destination London, and the first series of ITV's Benidorm, along with numerous other films and documentaries.
Timothy Charles Whitnall is an English actor, playwright and screenwriter. He is known for playing Angelo in the long-running CITV series Mike and Angelo and narrating the BBC children's TV programme Teletubbies from 1997 to 2001. As a writer, he has won a BAFTA and an Olivier Award for his work on TV movie Best Possible Taste: The Kenny Everett Story and play Morecambe. He is also a voice actor, providing voices on such shows as Fifi and the Flowertots, Roary the Racing Car and Thomas & Friends.
Terry Johnson is a British dramatist and director working for stage, television and film. Educated at Birmingham University, he worked as an actor from 1971 to 1975, and has been active as a playwright since the early 1980s.
Ted Craig FRSA is an Australian-born theatre director lately the artistic director of the Warehouse Theatre, South London, England.
Duncan Duff is a British stage, television and film actor who trained at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London 1985 - 1987. He is best known for A Quiet Passion (2016), Wild Target (2010), Big Kids (2000), and Hamish Macbeth (1997).
The Oxford Youth Theatre (OYT) is based in Oxford, England. It was founded in 1962 and established the Pegasus Theatre in 1975.
Glenn Chandler is a Scottish playwright, novelist, producer and theatre director. He has written plays for theatre and radio, original screenplays for television and films, television series, and also novels. His best known work is the Scottish television detective series Taggart, which was commissioned by Scottish Television for the ITV Network from 2 July 1985 until 7 November 2010, and which continues to be broadcast around the world. Since the completion of Taggart in 2010, Glenn Chandler has focused on writing for the theatre, with a consistent run of productions in both London and Edinburgh.
Whit Hertford is an American theatre director, writer, and actor.
Jonathan Paul Harvey is an English screen actor and playwright.
Jack Thorne FRSL is an English screenwriter and playwright.
Genevieve Barr is an English actor and writer of stage and screen. She played the lead role in the BBC award-winning series The Silence. Having grown up speaking orally, Barr learnt sign language for this role.
Theatre and disability is a subject focusing on the inclusion of disability within a theatrical experience which enables a cultural and aesthetic diversity in the arts. Showing disabled bodies on stage can be to some extent understood as a political aesthetic as it challenges the predominately abled audience's expectations as well as traditional theatre conventions. However, the performance of disability on stage has raised polarising debates about whether the performers are exposed and reduced to their disability or whether they have full agency of who and what they represent.
Kaite O'Reilly is UK-based playwright, author and dramaturge of Irish descent. She has won multiple awards for her work, including the Ted Hughes Award (2011) for her version of Aeschylus' tragedy The Persians. O'Reilly's plays have been performed at venues across the UK and at the Edinburgh Festival. Her work has also been shown internationally including in Europe Australia, Korea, Hong Kong and Taiwan. O'Reilly openly identifies as a disabled artist and has spoken of the importance of "identifying socially and politically as disabled" to her work.
