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In the middle…
A move to London in 1987 led to a job at the Actor’s
Centre, then based in Chenies Street, where I worked behind the desk whilst
spending evenings struggling to get my Equity card via jazz singing in bars
and hospital wards. During this time I also worked for the Theatre Writer’s
Union as Secretary to the Delegate Committee and as a co-producer of
fund-raising play-readings for Greater London Productions. I eventually
reached the pinnacle of my jazz experience with various weekly residencies
at piano bars before gaining the elusive card and my first ‘proper’ theatre
job in 1989 – a national tour of The Royal Hunt of the Sun, directed
by Tim Pigott-Smith with a cast including Dennis Quilley, Rufus Sewell and Jack Klaff.
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In the beginning …
I was born in Edinburgh in 1964 and was
whisked away to Canada a year later to become a ‘landed immigrant’ – we
lived in Saskatchewan and then Vancouver, with visits to Los Angeles and San
Francisco in 1971, before returning to Scotland in 1972. I became a
professional actor via a youth spent performing in Edinburgh at school, at
the Fringe Festival and in Youth Theatre Productions at the Royal Lyceum
Theatre and the Theatre Workshop. Throughout this time I worked constantly
at music – clarinet, composition and singing - performing, for example, at
Dalhousie Courte Jacobean Banquets as a teenage Lady of the Court. At
Warwick University I studied Theatre and Drama and after graduating went
straight into a theatre company set up by an ex-tutor. Over the course of
eighteen months I played most of Shakespeare’s heroines including Juliet,
Calphurnia, Lady Macbeth, Helena and Titania.
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And now
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I
have worked constantly since 1987 on stage, screen, voice-overs and musical
projects. I have bases in London and Edinburgh. When not on stage or screen
I have my own business with colleague Ian Sanders,
www.xperient.co.uk, and I am a
lay member of various Professional Standards Committees, representing the
public interest on cases of alleged professional misconduct and have
recently been appointed as a Chair of the General Dental Council’s Fitness
to Practice Panel. I am currently playing with Monster Bobby’s Little
Orchestra, the London Gypsy Orchestra and Tatcho Drom as vocalist
and on Bb and Bass Clarinet. |
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