is a graduate of the Universities of Birmingham, Westminster, and Grenoble (France). A producer and consultant in the British film and television industry, she has worked for Channel 4 TV, BBC TV, WNET/PBS, and BBC radio as well as for the British Film Institute, Edinburgh International Film Festival, National Film and Television School (UK), and the Screenwriters’ Studio. She has served on various international film festival juries and as an elected member of the Council of the British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA). She has been running the NYU Tisch London Program since its inception in 1998.
Brooke Sheldon, Program Coordinator
assists Mary Jane Walsh in the day to day running of the Tisch London Program. She has previously worked for one of Australia’s largest health funds in administration. Brooke is a graduate of the University of Queensland, Australia. She holds a B.A in Anthropology and Australian history, an Honours degree in Anthropology and a Masters in Museum Studies. Her current research involves cultural heritage and Victorian Spiritualism.
is a graduate of Cambridge University and the Courtauld Institute of Fine Art. She trained in directing, dramaturgy, and theatre education work at major European theatres, such as the National Theatre and Deutsches Schauspielhaus. She has taught for the English Shakespeare Company, the Oxford University Advanced Studies Centre, and the Marlowe Society. For the past 15 years, she has been directing productions and devising educational projects for theatres and arts institutions, including the National Theatre, the Royal Shakespeare Company, Shakespeare’s Globe, and Tate, as well as numerous schools and colleges in the UK and overseas.
Geoff Bullen, Shakespeare in Performance (at RADA) course supervisor (8 Points)
is RADA’s Associate Director, where he has directed Guys and Dolls, Into The Woods, Assassins, All About My Mother and Sondheim's Saturday Night. Other work includes All’s Well That Ends Well at the Cleveland Playhouse, Ohio; Cavalleria Rusticana and Tosca for Magdala Opera; the Edinburgh Festival premieres of Beside Picasso and Bacon; The Tempest at the Stadsschouwburg in Amsterdam; and the first performance of David Rudkin’s Red Sun. In October 2011, he directed the 59th year production of The Mousetrap at the St Martin's Theatre, becoming the 24th director in that production's history and he is currently at work on Penlee - The Loss of a Lifeboat with RADA graduate Joseph Kloska.
has supervised the training of many of today’s most exciting actors. RADA’s Head of Acting 1993 to 2003, then Vice-Principal 1998 to 2003, he was co-creator of the Shakespeare in Performance course for NYU Tisch London. More recently he has Creative Director of RADA’s Enterprise Company, producing educational and corporate projects, including British classical theatre productions on the Cunard transatlantic liner, the Queen Mary 2. He has starred in a number of situation comedies on the UK ITV channel and in TV Shakespeare productions for the BBC. He was awarded an Arts Council Associate directorship, and was Artistic Director of the theatre at Keswick, Cumbria. He has been a consultant director for acting programs at Tisch Asia in Singapore, Visiting Professor for the National Academy of Chinese Theatre Arts in Beijing, and directed the first-ever Chinese-language production of a play by Britain’s most successful playwright, Sir Alan Ayckbourn, at the Shanghai Theatre Academy. He is the creator of the new on-line training resource www.teachyourselfacting.com.
is an actor, director, writer, and teacher. He has scripted films for both BBC and ITV and plays for radio, one of which won the Writers’ Guild of Great Britain’s award for Best Original Radio Play. He has had a dozen plays produced on the professional stage, including Body & Soul, for which he was nominated Most Promising Playwright and which was produced in the West End of London after a nationwide tour. He has taught at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA), the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, and Morley College, where he was director of the Theatre School for many years. He was also adviser to the Emmy Award-winning BBC/HBO production Shakespeare: The Animated Tales.
Archie Tait, Writing for Television (BBC Group only) (4 points)As Director of the cinema department of the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London, he established one of the UK’s longest-established distributors of World Cinema, introducing the work of directors Terence Davies, Jim Jarmusch, Pedro Almodovar, Chen Kaige, Hou Hsiao-Hsien, Luc Besson and many others. He was Head of Development at Zenith Productions (Sid and Nancy, Simple Men, Velvet Goldmine) where he also produced many primetime UK TV drama series and serials. For ITV, he produced 100 hours of the long-running family drama Heartbeat. He is Head of Workshops at the London Film School in the UK and also teaches on this School’s MA Screenwriting course.
Dr Amy Sargeant, British Cinema – London on Film (4 points)studied at the Universities of Cambridge, London, and Bristol. Formerly a production designer in film and television, she is currently reader in film at the University of Warwick. She has written extensively on British cinema, being the co-editor of British Historical Cinema (Routledge, 2002) and the author of British Cinema: A Critical History (BFI, 2005).
Page Shepherd, Television Production at the BBC (8 points) course supervisor
is a director and producer of television shows for the BBC, TLC, Discovery and Channel 4 in the UK. She is currently making a six-part documentary series for the BBC looking at modern dilemmas facing 20 - 30 year olds in the UK are on the due to be broadcast on BBC3 in June 2012. Page combines her professional filmmaking work with training directors for the BBC and managing the television production course element of the NYU Tisch London Program.
has taught at Liverpool Hope and Manchester Universities and directed at many British drama schools. He was artistic director of the Oxford Stage Company, Liverpool Playhouse, and the Arts Theatre in London. He has directed over 200 productions, ranging from the West End to opera and children’s theatre, and his own plays have been produced professionally in London. He is course director of Foundation Studies in Performance at the Drama Centre in London and associate artistic director at Anvil Arts Theatre in Basingstoke, England.
Mandie Wright, Studies in Shakespeare (4 points)
is a freelance theatre practitioner. She has worked with the Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC) for over 15 years as an education associate. Recently, her role has included creating interactive web site resources (RSC Exploring Shakespeare), project-managing the RSC Teaching Shakespeare—Time for Change campaign leading to the current Stand Up for Shakespeare manifesto, and programming and leading the RSC Summer School and extension courses. In addition to a range of work with actors and other practitioners covering live events, recording work, and written projects she has also directed adult and undergraduate theatre studies, performing arts, and women’s studies courses. She is drama consultant for the University of Worcester Post-Graduate Teacher Education Program. Latest publication: Teaching Drama: How to Be a Brilliant English Teacher (Routledge, 2005).
