WHO WE ARE

Stephen has been CEO at the Big Issue Foundation since July 2007. His previous role was Director of Commercial Operations at Shelter, where he had responsibility for a chain of 100 charity Stores, a mail-order business and a Training business primarily focusing on Housing professionals. Stephen was a member of the Senior Management Team with cross organisational responsibility for the strategic management of the Charity. Stephen was at Shelter for 13 years.

Stephen helped found and ultimately chaired the professional body that represents most of Charity Retailers in the UK, ‘The Association of Charity Shops’. Stephen is a Trustee of the homeless health care charity, London Pathway and a Trustee of TRAID, a charity committed to protecting the environment and reducing world poverty by recycling and campaigning at home.  Stephen is proud to be the Chair of the Board of Trustees of Shoreditch Town Hall, massively enjoys the diversity of the programming, the wonderful work in the local community and the very fabric of the building itself!

Caroline Routh is an arts professional with over twenty years’ experience working at the highest level for a range of producing theatres. She has previously been both Administrative Director for Battersea Arts Centre and Executive Director for Northern Stage; and most recently Caroline was Executive Director at Nuffield Southampton Theatres where she oversaw the company’s move into and launch of its new £30m city centre venue. Caroline was the co-founder and co-director of The Empty Space, a company producing and developing theatre in the north east of England and in a freelance capacity she has acted as producer for a number of companies including Piesn Koszla, Greyscale and The Paper Birds, touring work nationally and internationally.

Caroline loves how the innovative artistic programme at Shoreditch Town Hall constantly invites its audiences to experience this beautiful building in different ways.

Jesse Jones is a theatre director from Bristol. He is a founding member of award-winning company The Wardrobe Ensemble who are associates of Complicite and Shoreditch Town Hall, and they have toured nationally and internationally.

Jesse was Resident Director at Royal & Derngate, Northampton, having won the Regional Theatre Young Directors Scheme award. He is also an alumni of the Old Vic 12, National Theatre directors program and Bristol Old Vic’s Made in Bristol scheme.

In 2011 Jesse founded the Wardrobe Theatre where he was Artistic Director until 2015, which he helped establish as the leading fringe theatre in the city.

As a freelancer Jesse has worked at some of the country's leading theaters including The National Theatre, The Old Vic, The Young Vic, Bristol Old Vic, Royal & Derngate and Liverpool Everyman.

He is passionate about the work that Shoreditch Town Hall does developing artists and ideas from their infancy, working with them every step of the way to produce excellence. The venue is a safe space for artists to explore, take risks and experiment and he is proud to have a continued relationship with the organisation.

Jonathan was a Hackney Councillor for 13 years representing the area that covers Shoreditch Town Hall and holding the portfolio covering health, social care and culture. Since standing down from local government he has been working in health and social care at both a national and local level.

Alongside his role at Shoreditch Town Hall, he is a trustee of Action on Smoking and Health and is the Chair of the Terrence Higgins Trust, Europe's largest HIV charity.

James is currently Director and Chief Executive at Shoreditch Town Hall.

Previously, James assisted on the producing of the Watch This Space Festival and Platforms programme at the National Theatre, worked in the Director’s Office at Battersea Arts Centre, and spent three years supporting the Southwark Community Projects team at Shakespeare’s Globe. He regularly undertakes guest lectures in producing and arts management at the likes of Royal Central School of Speech & Drama and Royal Holloway, University of London and is also a trustee of Theatre Royal Plymouth.

Penny enjoyed a successful and varied career at the BBC for over two decades, working as a reporter and producer in TV and radio before becoming the first BBC London Communities Editor, shaping coverage of one of the world’s most diverse cities.

A mid-career MA in cultural leadership led her to set up a not-for-profit collaboration in Hackney, LandSky, specialising in community arts and media. Penny has also worked extensively with heritage film-makers Elbow Productions, whose clients include the British Museum, the National Trust and the V&A. She currently works as a freelance media producer, teaches journalism at Essex University and in a councillor representing Victoria ward on Hackney Council. She is also a trustee at the brain injury charity Headway East London.

Their stories are rooted by an in-depth research process, drawing upon collaborations with leading experts in fields as diverse as histopathology, neuroscience and social science.

The company is led by Artistic Directors Liam Jarvis and Hannah Barker, in collaboration with Producer Ric Watts. Their associates and collaborators come from a range of disciplines, from writing and directing to puppetry and computer game design. Company members have worked and trained with the likes of Theatre-Rites, Chris Goode, Suspect Culture, Gecko, and Punchdrunk.

www.analoguetheatre.co.uk

He has shown and developed new work in the UK and internationally at places like Battersea Arts Centre, Bristol Old Vic Ferment, MC (Amsterdam), Orchard Project (New York), MAKE (Ireland), Bios (Athens), LAX Festival (Los Angeles), Ovalhouse, Mayfest, Shoreditch Town Hall, Forest Fringe and The Yard, where he is also an Artistic Associate.

His most recent critically acclaimed solo performance, The Ted Bundy Project, has toured nationally and internationally. In 2014 he was shortlisted for a Total Theatre Award at the Edinburgh Fringe for Hurtling, an outdoor performance for one.

www.gregwohead.com

His other recent work includes Assassins (Menier Chocolate Factory; Evening Standard Award nomination for Best Director); Urinetown (St James & Apollo); The Commitments (Palace Theatre); Cyrano de Bergerac (Roundabout Theatre Company; American Airlines Theatre, Broadway); The Duchess of Malfi (Old Vic); She Stoops to Conquer (National Theatre); The Faith Machine and the Olivier Award-winning The Pride (Royal Court); Inadmissible Evidence, The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee, the Evening Standard Award-winning Passion and Polar Bears (Donmar Warehouse); Piaf (Donmar Warehouse, Vaudeville Theatre, Teatro Liceo in Buenos Aires & Nuevo Teatro Alcala in Madrid; Olivier Award nomination for Best Musical Revival, Hugo Award for Best Director, Clarin Award for Best Musical Production, ADEET Award for Best Production); The Little Dog Laughed (Garrick); Three Days of Rain (Apollo; Olivier & WhatsOnStage Award nominations for Best Revival); The Lover and The Collection (Comedy Theatre); Elegies: A Song Cycle (Arts); The School for Scandal (Theatre Royal, Bath); Salome (Headlong); Eric’s (Liverpool Everyman), and The Caretaker (Sheffield Crucible & Tricycle). For radio, he directed and co-adapted Orson Welles’ Heart of Darkness (BBC Radio 4).

He has also directed work as a part of the Old Vic’s 24 Hour Plays and Musicals and at the Royal Court International Residencies, and was on the panel for the 2015 Kevin Spacey Foundation Theatre Awards. He was Associate Director of the Donmar Warehouse from 2008 to 2011 and a former Associate Artist of Headlong. Jamie was a Macgeorge Fellow with the University of Melbourne in 2016

There are 6 full time members of simple8 - Mat Wandless, Emily Pennant-Rea, Christopher Doyle, Sebastian Armesto, Dudley Hinton and Hannah Emanuel - as well as a number of associates who work alongside them.

The company was formed in London in 2004 to create the kind of work they love – work focused on simplicity, the collective and the story. Using a variety of techniques – poor theatre, mime, live music and song, puppetry and magic – simple8 aim to put on new plays that are fun, inventive, original and daring.

simple8 believe they define a style of theatre that is unique in this country: large ensemble-casts creating new writing through extensive research and development, inspired by material that is rarely explored.
 
simple8 want to produce simple stories, simply told.

www.simple8.co.uk

Their aim is to make work that inspires, moves and challenges both themselves and the audience. They look at the world and try to present it in unexpected and revealing ways. Their work constantly comes back to the dilemmas of ordinary people in extra-ordinary situations, using humour and playfulness to tell stories that can also be dark and bleak.

Theatre O look for a visual poetry that highlights something essential behind human relationships and behaviour.

Theatre O create strong, imaginative theatrical worlds in which to tell stories and they look for surprising and unexpectedly appropriate languages to express those stories. Their interest lies in creating an interactive relationship with the audience who, in return, have to engage with what’s unfolding before them, not just sit back and watch.

They aim to create work that could not be done in any other medium, that makes sense only as theatre.

www.theatreo.co.uk

Since 2008, they’ve worked with some of the country’s most exciting, engaged playwrights to make work about everything from the shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes (Oh Well Never Mind Bye) to the financial meltdown of 2007-8 (The Maddening Rain) and the erosion of human liberty that happens when artist’s imaginations are enclosed (Silent Planet).

In 2011 artistic director Tom Mansfield and associate director James Blakey co-founded Oscar Mike, which aimed to make theatre for audiences who want to play. Following their collaboration on The Situation Room and A Day In The Life Of Someone Else, they’ve decided to merge the two companies, bringing together everything that excites them about the new writing and interactive strands of their theatre making.

They are going to be making theatre which is playful, political and provocative - and which places you, the audience, in the heart of the show.

www.analoguetheatre.co.uk

Flashy, rough, silly and serious, they explore the big ideas of our time through intimate human stories. They are usually energetic, often irreverent and dedicated to finding the place where the intellectual and the emotional collide.

The company’s first two shows RIOT and 33 have toured nationally and internationally to venues including BAC, Salisbury Playhouse, Northern Stage and Jack, Brooklyn, NY. In 2013 RIOT was part of the Limited Editions season at The Shed at the NT, alongside artists Dan Canham and Little Bulb.

The company are an Associate of the Bike Shed Theatre, Exeter, where they have made three Christmas shows; Eliza and the Wild Swans and Edgar and the Land of Lost, and Eloise and the Curse of the Golden Whisk. Also in their repertoire is a show for ages 3-8, The Star Seekers, a co-production with The Wardrobe Theatre, Bristol.

Their third full company show 1972: The Future of Sex was commissioned by Shoreditch Town Hall and played Latitude, Bestival and Edinburgh Fringe Festival, where it received 4 and 5 star reviews in local and national press. The company also won a Stage Award and a Mervyn Stutter Pick of the Fringe Award.

www.thewardrobeensemble.com