A Shakespeare specialist, writer-director, and coach.
My work is making Shakespeare playable: specific, alive in the room, and trustworthy under pressure. Whether you are preparing a drama-school audition or rehearsing a main-house production, the job is the same. Find what the text is doing. Act on it.
Shakespeare's Globe
Text practitioner, Higher Education Faculty.
The Poel Event
President. National Theatre training programme.
NFTS Screenwriting
Two Fringe Firsts; West End debut.
The Studio
1:1 coaching plus cohort practice.
From the rehearsal room into practice.
I grew up in rehearsal rooms, watching my father, a theatre and screen director, shape text into performance. I specialised in Shakespeare at university, then trained as a director at Mountview Academy of Theatre Arts.
In 2012 I joined Shakespeare's Globe as a text practitioner, where I was trained and mentored by the Globe's Head of Text, Giles Block. That apprenticeship still shapes how I teach: practical, evidence-led, rooted in what the text is doing rather than how it is supposed to sound.
I now serve on the Globe's Higher Education Faculty, coach privately for stage and screen, and work with actors at every level: from drama-school applicants to professionals at RSC and West End level. I have taught the Performing Shakespeare courses at LAMDA and Northampton University, and work as a text coach for the National Youth Theatre.
Trained and mentored by Giles Block, Head of Text at Shakespeare's Globe.
Giles Block has shaped the Globe's text work since the company's founding seasons. My coaching practice carries that apprenticeship forward: text-led, actor-first, and built for the rehearsal room rather than the seminar.
So what does a text practitioner actually do?
In rehearsal, a text practitioner works alongside actors and directors on what the text is doing under the surface: how the verse is moving, how the rhetoric builds, where the silences fall, what the structure is asking the actor to play. The job is to make sure the choices on stage match the choices in the writing, so the audience hears both at once.
Twelve years in the main house.
I have worked at Shakespeare's Globe since 2012, both as a text practitioner on main-house productions and as a member of the Higher Education Faculty. The work is collaborative: every show is shaped by the director's reading, the actors' instincts, and the company that gathers around them.
The Poel Event, 2014 to 2018.
The Poel Event is an annual Shakespeare training programme for professional actors hosted at the National Theatre. From 2014 to 2018, I served as its President.
- Papaa Essiedu
- Sir Timothy West
- Blanche McIntire
- Erica Whyman
- Barbara Houseman
- Jeanette Nelson
- Emily Jenkins
Both sides of the table.
I am also a working writer-director, and that practice is load-bearing for the coaching, not parallel to it. I know what directors need from actors because I direct them. I know what scripts ask for because I write them.
My plays have been produced at the Theatre Royal Haymarket, on national tour, and at Pleasance Courtyard, Traverse Theatre, Paines Plough, and the Royal & Derngate. I have won two Scotsman Fringe Firsts: Rainbow and Bobby & Amy. I graduated from the National Film and Television School screenwriting course in 2022. Bobby & Amy has been translated into Italian and is regularly performed across Europe.
A working practice.
A selected list, not a comprehensive one. Further credits available on request.
Shakespeare and text work
- Text practitioner, Shakespeare's Globe. Productions include The Tempest, A Midsummer Night's Dream, King Lear
- President, The Poel Event, National Theatre
- Text and voice coach, Romeo and Juliet, Ambassadors Theatre
- Text and voice coach, The Tempest, Royal & Derngate
- Text coach, National Youth Theatre
Writer-director work
- Cookies, Theatre Royal Haymarket
- Bobby & Amy, Pleasance Courtyard 2019 and national tour 2021
- Rainbow, Zoo Southside
- Vinegar Tom by Caryl Churchill, Royal & Derngate
- Merry Wives of Windsor, Royal & Derngate Studio
- Serious Money by Caryl Churchill, Sainsbury Theatre
- KCS by Caitlin Moran, Southwark Playhouse
- Mojo Mickybo, Old Red Lion
- The Provoked Wife, As You Like It, A Midsummer Night's Dream, LAMDA
- Quarantine, Greenwich Maritime Museum
- Dark Matter, Paines Plough
- Bed, Traverse Theatre
Teaching and training
- Higher Education Faculty, Shakespeare's Globe
- Performing Shakespeare courses, LAMDA
- Performing Shakespeare courses, Northampton University
- Text coach, National Youth Theatre
- Visiting director, conservatoire drama schools, UK
- Trained: Shakespeare specialism at university; directing at Mountview Academy of Theatre Arts; screenwriting at the National Film and Television School
I coach actors and directors privately and through the studio's cohorts and clinics.