Shifters

Alex Berry is a set and costume designer for theatre, opera and film based in London. She graduated with an MA in Theatre Design from Bristol Old Vic Theatre School, having previously trained at the Royal Northern College of Music and Koninklijk Conservatorium, The Hague, as a clarinettist. She was a finalist in the 2015 Linbury Prize, working with Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh.

Recent projects include: Macbeth (an undoing) (Lyceum Theatre, Best Design CATS Awards 2023); A Matter of Choice (Panoptic Films); The Barber of Seville and Don Giovanni (Nevill Holt Opera); No Sweat (Pleasance); The Rape of Lucretia (Royal Conservatoire of Scotland); Spring Awakening (Redgrave Theatre); Right Place Wrong Tim (Channel 4); A Tender Thing (The Theatre, Chipping Norton); Rabbits (Park); The Cunning Little Vixen (Royal College of Music); The Lighthouse (Hackney Showroom); Song of Riots (Battersea Arts Centre).

As a visual artist, her work has recently been included in Re:Imagining Musicals Exhibition, V&A Museum.

Benedict Lombe is a Kinshasa-born British Congolese writer based in London.

Her debut play Lava received its world premiere on the main stage of London’s Bush Theatre in 2021 to critical acclaim. Benedict was awarded the 2022 Susan Smith Blackburn Prize for Lava, becoming one of the first writers in the prize’s history to win the award for a debut play. In addition to this, she has won a Black British Theatre Award, was nominated for the Alfred Fagon Award for Best New Play of the Year, and Lava was also awarded the Best Performance Piece Off West-End Award.

Further theatre work includes a new commission for the Bush Theatre, an attachment at the National Theatre Studio, a commission for the Charleston Festival and other new plays in development. For screen, she has been commissioned to develop an original feature film, has taken part in BBC Drama Room Writersroom 21-22, and is developing original projects for television.

Chloe Stally-Gibson (she/her) is a freelance production manager. She is also the technical manager for ChewBoy Productions and is an associate of Zoo Co Theatre Company.

Her recent work includes: Pass It On and As We Face The Sun (Bush); Perfect Show For Rachel (Barbican); Welcome Home (Soho); The Secretaries (Young Vic); Caligari (ChewBoy Productions, winner of the 2022 Untapped Award); Space to Be (Oily Cart).

For the Bush Theatre: House of Ife, Lava, Overflow, The High Table.

Other theatre credits include: Snow Queen (New Wolsey); Cinderella (New Wolsey / Art Depot); We Anchor in Hope (Bunker); As You Like It (Queen’s Theatre Hornchurch); End of History (Royal Court); Inside Bitch (Clean Break); Snow White And Seven Dwarfs (Regents); Mysterious Gentleman (Courtyard); Treasure Island, Mr Tod, Richard The Third (Red Rose Chain – The Avenue); Fallen in Love (Red Rose Chain – The Tower of London); The Tempest, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, The Comedy Of Errors (Red Rose Chain – Theatre in the Forest); Betty Blue Eyes, A View From The Bridge (Mercury); Zatopek (Second Movement); Commencing (Joined At the Hip – Etcetera Theatre); A Face In A Jar (Inside Job Theatre Projects); Buried Child (Ovation); Gambling (Soho).

Heather Basten is an English casting director based in London. She has been recognised as a Screen International ‘Star of Tomorrow’, a BAFTA Breakthrough Artist, CDG Award Winner and CSA Artios Nominee. Heather recently cast Dreaming Whilst Black, the first UK TV series commissioned from A24 (Euphoria, Ladybird and Moonlight Helmers), which will air later this year.

Theatre includes: Beneatha’s Place (Young Vic); Red Pitch (Bush); God of Carnage (Lyric Hammersmith), Every Leaf A Hallelujah (Regent’s Park).

Film / TV includes: Dreaming Whilst Black (A24 / BBC); The Guests (Universal Pictures / Blumhouse); Hoard (BBC Film); Jungle (Amazon Studios).

Joel Trill’s recent work includes:

For the Bush Theatre: House of Ife, Strange Fruit.

Theatre: The 47th, A Number and Bagdad Cafe (Old Vic); All My Sons and As You Like It (Queen’s Theatre Hornchurch); Statements After An Arrest Under The Immorality Act (Orange Tree); Love Letters (Queens); J’Ouvert (Harold Pinter); Mirror Mirror, Master Harold and The Boys (National); Rockets & Blue Lights (Royal Exchange); Trojan Horse (Battersea Arts Centre); A Taste of Honey (Trafalgar Studios); Two Trains Runnin (Royal & Derngate); Red Dust Road (National Theatre of Scotland); One Night in Miami (Nottingham Playhouse); Glass Menagerie (Arcola).

Film and TV: The White Lotus, Riches, The Confessions Of Frannie Langton, Gangs of London (Season 2), The Crown (Season 5), Citadel, My Name is Leon, Empire, The Ancestors, Queen & Slim, Mama Ks Team 4, There’s Something About The Movies.

Lynette Linton is a writer and director and is the Artistic Director of the Bush Theatre. She was Associate Director of the Gate Theatre from 2016 to 2017 and the Resident Assistant Director at the Donmar Warehouse until February 2018. For her production of Blues for an Alabama Sky she won the awards for Best Director at the 2022 Evening Standard Theatre Awards and 2022 Critics Circle Theatre awards. In September 2017, she was nominated for Best Director at the Stage Debut Awards. She is currently developing screen projects with Avalon Entertainment, Home Team Content, and Wychwood Media.

Lynette’s directorial screen debut, My Name is Leon, a feature-length television adaptation of Kit de Waal’s award-winning novel, aired on BBC2 June 2022. The drama won Best TV Movie at the C21 Drama Awards, as well as Best Single Drama at the ITalkTelly Awards.

Lynette directed the UK premiere of Lynn Nottage’s Pulitzer Prize-winning play Sweat (Donmar Warehouse, Gielgud Theatre) for which she won Best Director at the inaugural Black British Theatre awards. Sweat also won the Evening Standard award for Best Play and was nominated for an Oliver award for Best New Play.

Lynette made her National Theatre debut with a critically acclaimed production of American writer Pearl Cleage’s Blues for an Alabama Sky in September 2022. Her production of Richard II (Shakespeare’s Globe) which she directed with Adjoa Andoh, marked the first ever company of women of colour in a Shakespeare play on a major UK stage.

She is co-founder of theatre and film production company Black Apron Entertainment who produced Passages: A Windrush Celebration with the Royal Court, a project she also curated.

As a writer, her credits include Look at Me (ITV), Hashtag Lightie (Arcola Theatre), Chicken Palace and Step (Theatre Royal Stratford East).

Her other directing credits include: August in England by Lenny Henry (as co-director, Bush); House of Ife by Beru Tessema (Bush); an adaptation of Jackie Kay’s Chiaroscuro (Bush); world premiere productions of Assata Taught Me (Gate), Function (National Youth Theatre), This Is (Arts Ed), Indenture (Dark Horse Festival), Naked (Vault Festival 2015), and a revival of This Wide Night (Albany). She was also co-director on Chicken Palace (Theatre Royal Stratford East).

Lynette was voted one of Marie Claire magazine’s Future Shapers in 2019, alongside being named one of the Evening Standard’s Most Influential Londoners.

Born and raised in Buenos Aires, Argentina, Malena Arcucci is a theatre designer and costume supervisor based in London. She is co-artistic director of Mariana Malena Theatre Company.

Design credits include: Strangers Like Me (NT Connect and Hackney Shed); The Bit Players (Southwark); Friday Night Love Poem (Zoo Venues Edinburgh); Point of No Return (Actor’s Centre); La Llorona (Dance City Newcastle); The Two of Us (Theatre Deli); Playing Latinx (Camden’s People’s Theatre) and various productions in Buenos Aires, Argentina.

Associate Designer credits include: Dear Elizabeth (Gate); Chiaroscuro (Bush); Thebes Land and Tamburlaine (Arcola).

Costume Supervisor credits include: Sucker Punch (Queen’s Theatre); Bootycandy (Gate); Super High Resolution (Soho); The Boys are Kissing (Theatre503); Blues for an Alabama Sky (as Assistant, National); The Cherry Orchard (Yard / HOME); Chasing Hares (Young Vic); House of Ife (Bush); Lotus Beauty (Hampstead); Moreno and Milk and Gall (Theatre503); Raya (Hampstead).

Neil Austin’s recent West-End work includes: Medea, Harry Potter & the Cursed Child, Leopoldstadt, Company, The Night of the Iguana, Rosmersholm, Shakespeare in Love, The Lieutenant of Inishmore, Red, Ink, The Goat, Photograph 51 and Bend it Like Beckham.

His Broadway work includes: Leopoldstadt, Company, Harry Potter & the Cursed Child Ink, Travesties, Hughie, A Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Evita, Red, Hamlet, The Seafarer and Frost Nixon.

He is the recipient of three Tony, two Olivier and two Drama Desk awards.

The Secret Life of Bees (Almeida Theatre); Best of Enemies (Noël Coward Theatre); Tartuffe (Birmingham Repertory Theatre); The Time Traveller’s Wife: The Musical (Storyhouse); Get Up, Stand Up! The Bob Marley Story (Lyric Theatre);Best of Enemies (Young Vic); J’Ouvert (Harold Pinter Theatre); After Life, Master Harold…and the Boys, Hansard, Antony and Cleopatra, Twelfth Night (National Theatre); Nine Night (National Theatre & Trafalgar Studios); Equus(Theatre Royal Stratford East & Trafalgar Studios);Tartuffe (RSC); Macbeth (Shakespeare’s Globe); Faustus (Headlong at Lyric & Birmingham Repertory Theatre); Cinderella (Lyric); Grey (Oval House); KingHedley II (Theatre Royal Stratford East); J’Ouvert (Theatre503); Cougar, Dealing with Clair (Orange Tree); Winter, Why It’s Kicking off Everywhere (Young Vic);  Cuttin’It (Young Vic & Royal Court); A Streetcar Named Desire (Nuffield, Clwyd Theatre Cymru & English Touring Theatre); Rules for Living (Royal & Derngate, the Rose Kingston & English  Touring Theatre); Apologia (English Theatre Frankfurt)

Television includes: Anansi Boys (Upcoming on Amazon)

Shelley won the award for Best Choreographer at the inaugural Black British Theatre Awards in 2019 for her work on Equus.

Tony Gayle‘s credits include: My Neighbour Totoro (Olivier Award & Whatsonstage Award for Best Sound design, RSC @ Barbican); Pygmalion (Old Vic); Beneatha’s Place (Young Vic); School Girls; Or, The African Mean Girls Play (Lyric Hammersmith); Greatest Days (UK Tour); Disney’s AIDA (Holland); Sylvia, The 47th (Old Vic); Newsies (Troubadour); Kinky Boots (New Wolsey); Running With Lions (Talawa/Lyric Hammersmith); Spring Awakening, And Breathe… (Almeida); The Wiz (Hope Mill); Get Up, Stand Up! The Bob Marley Musical (Lyric Theatre); A Place For We (Talawa/Park); Gin Craze! (Royal & Derngate); The Living Newspaper, Shoe Lady (Royal Court); Poet in da Corner (Royal Court & UK Tour); Beautiful – The Carole King Musical (UK Tour); Lazarus (King’s Cross).

Tony was awarded the Black British Theatre Awards (BBTA) Light and Sound Recognition Award 2019 & 2021, is a Wise Children Trustee and Stage Sight Co-Director.

XANA is a freestyle live loop musician, composer, spatial sound artist and haptic specialist sound designer. XANA’s approach to sound blends in sensory experiences with scents, touch and raw materials in XANA’s music making process.

Credits: Rumble In the Jungle (Rematch: Live); The Architect (ATC/GDIF); Beautiful Thing (Stratford East); Word:Play, Living Newspaper #4 (Royal Court); Anna Karerina (Edinburgh Lyceum, BOV); Galatea (Emma Frankland, Wildworks, Marlborough Productions); Hamnet (RSC); The Trials, Marys Seacole (Donmar); Sundown Kiki: Reloaded, The Collaboration, Sundown Kiki, Changing Destiny, Fairview, Ivan and the Dogs (Young Vic); …cake (Theatre Peckham); Who Killed My Father (Tron, touring Scotland); as british as a watermelon (Contact); Hyde and Seek (Guildhall); Elephant, Sleepova, The P Word, Strange Fruit (Bush); Burgerz (Hackney Showroom); Everyday (Deafinitely); Black Holes (The Place); Sankofa:Before the Whitewash, Hive City Legacy (Roundhouse); Glamrou: From Quran to Queen, Curious, Half-Breed (Soho); Blood Knot (Orange Tree); Noughts and Crosses (Pilot); SEX SEX MEN MEN (Yard).