MLIMA’S TALE

Lynn Nottage

Playwright

Lynn Nottage is a playwright and a screenwriter, and the first woman in history to win two Pulitzer Prizes for Drama. Her plays have been produced widely in the United States and throughout the world. Recent work includes the book for MJ the Musical (Broadway), the libretto for the Intimate Apparel Opera (LCT), and Clyde’s (Broadway, 2ST, Goodman Theater), and co-curating the performance installation The Watering Hole (Signature Theater). Past work includes Sweat; Ruined; the book for The Secret Life of Bees; Mlima’s Tale; By the Way; Meet Vera Stark; Intimate Apparel; Fabulation, or the Re-Education of Undine; Crumbs from the Table of Joy; Las Meninas; Mud, River, Stone; Por’knockers; and POOF!. She has also developed This is Reading, a performance installation in Reading, Pennsylvania. Nottage is a member of the Theater Hall of Fame, and the recipient of a MacArthur “Genius Grant” Fellowship (among other awards). She is also an Associate Professor at Columbia University School of the Arts and is a member of the Dramatists Guild. 

Miranda Cromwell

Director

Miranda Cromwell’s directing credits include The Beekeeper of Aleppo (Nottingham Playhouse); Swing Sister Swing (UK tour); Rockets and Blue Lights (National Theatre and Royal Exchange Theatre, Manchester); and breathe… (Almeida Theatre); Othello (NYT and Royal and Derngate); Death of a Salesman – co-director with Marianne Elliott (Young Vic, Piccadilly Theatre and Broadway – Olivier Award for Best Director); Half Breed (Talawa Theatre/Soho Theatre/India tour); Magic Elves, Hey Diddle Diddle, Sense (Bristol Old Vic); Pigeon English (Edinburgh Festival Fringe); The Rest of Your Life (Bush Theatre) and Death and Treason (UK tour). As Associate Director to Marianne Elliott her credits include Company (Gielgud Theatre) and Angels in America (National Theatre/Neil Simon Theatre) and to Melly Still on Coram Boy (Colston Hall). As Assistant Director her credits include, Strife, An Enemy of the People (Chichester Festival Theatre); hang (Royal Court Theatre); and Swallows and Amazon and Faraway (Bristol Old Vic).  

Amelia Jane Hankin

Designer

Amelia Jane Hankin trained in Architecture and at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art then RSC. Amelia has designed a variety of theatre ranging from new writing, devised, touring theatre, immersive, site-specific, community and theatre for young people. Amelia is an Associate Lecturer at the RCA and co-founded the Office for Speculative Spatial Design in 2020.

Design credits include: Richard III (Liverpool Playhouse); Holes (Theatre Royal Bury St Edmunds); Let the Right One In, Mountains (Royal Exchange Theatre); Drowntown (Barbican); The Night Before Christmas (Leeds Playhouse); The Wave, (This Isn’t) A True Story (Almeida Theatre); Christmas in the Sunshine, The Wolf, The Duck and The Mouse (Unicorn Theatre); Unknown Rivers (Hampstead Theatre); Sing Yer Heart Out For The Lads (Chichester Festival Theatre); One Under (Graeae); Blue Orange (Birmingham Rep); The Comedy of Errors (RSC); The Fishermen (Trafalgar Studios); Gastronomic (Curious Directive); PowerPlay (Historic Royal Palaces); Good Dog (UK Tour); Rudolf (West Yorkshire Playhouse); Fake It ‘Til You Make It (UK and Australian Tour) and We Are You (Young Vic).

Studio AJH is based in Hackney, London

Amy Mae

Lighting Designer

Training: University of Winchester (BA (Hons) in Stage Management and Performing Arts); RADA (Postgraduate Diploma in Stage Electrics and Lighting).

For Kiln: Girl on an Altar, Retrograde.

Theatre credits include: Girl on an Altar (Abbey Theatre); They (Manchester International Festival); Falkland Sound (RSC); A Passionate Woman (Leeds Playhouse); Say Yes to Tess (Leeds Playhouse / Camden People’s Theatre); How a City Can Save the World, Wildfire Road (Sheffield Theatres); Shut Up, I’m Dreaming (National Theatre / Schools Tour); Rockets and Blue Lights (National Theatre /  Royal Exchange); The Boy with Two Hearts (Wales Millennium Centre / National Theatre); The Strange Undoing of Prudencia Heart (Royal Exchange); Mountains: The Dreams of Lily Kwok (Royal Exchange Theatre /  UK Tour); Vincent in Brixton (RADA); When We Dead Awaken (Coronet Theatre); seven methods of killing kylie jenner (Royal Court Theatre); Half Breed (Soho Theatre / Assembly Rooms Theatre); The Playboy of the Western World (Gaiety Theatre / Market Place Theatre / Arts Centre, Armagh / Lyric Theatre, Belfast / English Touring Theatre /  The Royal Theatrical Support Trust); Noises Off (Lyric Hammersmith); [Un] Leashed: Sense of Time (Birmingham Royal Ballet); The Memory of Water (Nottingham Playhouse); The Trick (Bush Theatre / UK Tour); Wild East (Young Vic); Start Swimming (Young Vic / Summerhall, Edinburgh); Hansel and Gretel (Rose Theatre); The Fishermen (Edinburgh Fringe / Arcola Theatre / UK Tour / West End); Br’er Cotton (Theatre503); Othello, Jekyll and Hyde, The Host (NYT Rep Season 2017); The Ugly One (Park Theatre); Babette’s Feast (The Print Room) and Sweeney Todd (Harringtons Pie and Mash Shop / West End / Off-Broadway).

Awards: Scotsman Edinburgh Fringe First Award; Knight of Illumination Award

Femi Temowo

Composer

Femi Temowo is a MOBO Award nominated musician who was raised listening to West African pioneers such as Fela Kuti, Sunny Ade and Ebenezer Obey. Later he discovered the legendary Charlie Parker and classic jazz albums such as Miles Davis’ Kind Of Blue. It was when he became inspired by the great jazz guitarist Wes Montgomery that he decided to pursue his passion for the guitar, based around a fusion of these musical influences.

Early benchmarks in Femi’s career include being approached by critically acclaimed jazz saxophonist and UK Hip Hop artist Soweto Kinch, who asked him to become part of his newly formed quartet in 2002. His phenomenally successful collaborations with Soweto culminated in a nomination for the Mercury Music Prize, a BBC Jazz award for best new group and several MOBO awards. As his talent and success gained momentum, so too did the demand for Femi as a versatile and stylish guitar player. Femi’s intricacy and skill on his instrument of choice led to a diverse range of high profile collaborations.

Femi’s slick and melodic guitar sound has earned him a place beside many great musicians and artists from across many genres, having played with the likes of: George Benson, Dee Dee Bridgewater, Courtney Pine, The Roots, Omar, Roachford, Amy Winehouse, Jason Rebello, Eska Mtungwazi, Soweto Kinch, Terri Walker, Jean Toussaint, Don Blackman, Michal Urbaniak and many more.

Theatre credits include: Death of a Salesman (Broadway / Young Vic / West End); Cock (West End); Much Ao About Nothing (Royal Shakespeare Company); and breathe… (Almeida Theatre – Best Composer /  Musical Director winner at Black British Theatre Awards); Rockets and Blue Lights (National Theatre / Royal Exchange Theatre) and Three Sisters (National Theatre). Femi also won the Stage Debut award for Best Creative West End Debut in 2020.

Emma Laxton

Sound Designer

Training: Central School of Speech and Drama.

As Sound Designer, theatre credits include: Robin Hood: The Legend. Re-written, Antigone (Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre); Dancing at Lughnasa (National Theatre); Trouble in Butetown, Limehouse, Coriolanus (Donmar Warehouse – Falstaff Award winner for Best Sound Design/ Original Score); The Collaboration (Broadway); The Collaboration, Blood Wedding, Hamlet, See Me Now (Young Vic); Walden (West End); Against (RADA); The Living Newspaper: Edition 1, Superhoe, A Kind of People (Royal Court Theatre); Coriolanus, Julius Caesar (Sheffield Theatres); Vassa, The Writer (Almeida Theatre); Emilia (West End – Olivier Award winner for Best Sound Design); Rita, Sue and Bob Too (Out of Joint / Royal Court / UK Tour); The Glass Piano (The Print Room at The Coronet); The Country Wife, random/generations, The House That They Grew Up In, Forty Years On (Chichester Festival Theatre); The York Realist, Measure for Measure (Donmar Warehouse); Sweet Charity (Nottingham Playhouse); Uncle Vanya (Hampstead Theatre); Titus Andronicus (Royal Shakespeare Company / Barbican); Breaking The Code (Royal Exchange Theatre); Ghosts (HOME); Made in Dagenham (Queen’s Theatre / Hornchurch /  New Wolsey Theatre, Ipswich); Boys Will Be Boys (Headlong / Bush Theatre); Observe The Sons of Ulster Marching Towards the Somme (Headlong / UK Tour); Schism (Finborough Theatre); Easter Rising and Thereafter (Jermyn Street Theatre); Great Expectations (West Yorkshire Playhouse) and The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (Birmingham Rep).

As Associate Sound Designer, credits include: A Christmas Carol (Old Vic Theatre) and Equus (West End).

As Sound Consultant, credits include: The Band Plays On (Sheffield Theatres).

Shelley Maxwell

Movement Director

As Choreographer, theatre credits include: The Time Traveller’s Wife: The Musical (Storyhouse / Apollo Theatre); Get Up, Stand Up! The Bob Marley Story (Lyric Theatre); Best of Enemies (Young Vic); J’Ouvert (Harold Pinter Theatre) and After Life (National Theatre).

As Choreographer, film credits include: Romeo & Juliet and Ear for Eye.

Lotte Hines CDG

Casting Director

Lotte has worked as a freelancer as well as in-house for Royal Court, Julie Harkin Casting and Kharmel Cochrane Casting.

As Casting Director, credits include: Macbeth (ETT); Romeo & Juliet, Let The Right One In, Nora – A Doll’s House, The Mountaintop, Glee & Me (Royal Exchange Theatre); Never Have I Ever,, The Votex Mom, How Did You Meet The Beatles, The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas (Chichester Theatre); Accidental Death of an Anarchist (Haymarket / Lyric Hammersmith / Sheffield Crucible); Closer, Jack and the Beanstalk (Lyric Hammersmith); The Tempest, As You Like It, Pride and Prejudice (Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre); Harry Potter and the Cursed Child (Sonia Friedman Productions); The Forest (Hampstead Theatre); Ivan and the Dogs, Thing of Dry Hours, La Musica (Young Vic Theatre); The Dark (Oval House / UK Tour); Hole (Royal Court); The Wolves (Theatre Royal Stratford East); Meek, Junkyard, Boys Will Be Boys, The Absence of War (Headlong); People, Places and Things (UK Tour); The Barbershop Chronicles (US Tour); Elephant (Birmingham Rep); Speech and Debate (Trafalgar Studios); The Iliad, The Weir (The Lyceum Edinburgh); Brenda (HighTide Festival / The Yard Theatre); The Glass Menagerie (Headlong) and Pride and Prejudice (Sheffield Crucible).

As Casting Director, short film credits include: Influencers, CLA’AM and Above (Winner of Best Short Film at the National Film Awards).

As Casting Associate, credits include: Lockwood & Co, Lady Chatterley’s Lover (Netflix); Harry Potter and The Cursed Child (Sonia Friedman Productions); The Seagull (Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre); Tipping the Velvet (Lyric Hammersmith /  Royal Lyceum Theatre Edinburgh) and Bull (Sheffield Crucible).

As Casting Assistant, credits include: Hamlet (Sonia Friedman Productions /  Barbican) and A View From The Bridge (Young Vic).

Hazel Holder

Voice & Dialect Coach

For Kiln: The Son, Pass Over, The Wife of Willesden, Retrograde.

Theatre credits include: Blues for an Alabama Sky, Rockets and Blue Lights, Death of England: Delroy, Death of England, Small Island, Nine Night, BarberShop Chronicles, Pericles, Angels inAmerica, Les Blancs, Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom (National Theatre); Best of Enemies, Cock, To Kill a Mockingbird, Get Up Stand Up!, The Glass Menagerie, Constellations, 2:22, Death of a Salesman, Caroline, or Change, Uncle Vanya, Tina: The Tina Turner Musical, Dreamgirls, The Goat, or Who is Sylvia? (West End); seven methods of killing kylie jenner, ear for eye, A Kind of People, Poet in Da Corner, Grimly Handsome, Pigs & Dogs, Cuttin’ It, Father Comes Home from the Wars (Royal Court Theatre); Mandela, Best of Enemies, Changing Destiny, Fairview, Death of a Salesman, The Convert, The Mountaintop, The Emperor, Cuttin’ It (Young Vic); The Doll’s House Part II, Marys Seacole, Love and Other Acts of Violence (Donmar Warehouse); Jitney (The Old Vic); Richard II (Sam Wanamaker Playhouse); Guys and Dolls, Girls (Talawa Theatre Company at Soho Theatre / Royal Exchange Theatre); Caroline, or Change (Chichester Festival Theatre / Hampstead Theatre); The Death of a Black Man (Hampstead Theatre); Eclipsed (Gate Theatre) and A Midsummer Night’s Dream (Shakespeare North).

Television, film and audio credits include: Drift, The Silent Twins, Aisha (for Letitia Wright); The Anansi Boys, Wool, Small Axe (Steve McQueen anthology); The Power, In the Long Run (for Jimmy Akingbola); Death on the Nile (for Letitia Wright) and A Visible Man by Edward Enninful (Audible UK).

As a performer: Here We Go, As You Like It, Medea, Death and the King’s Horseman (National Theatre); The Bakkhai (Almeida Theatre); The Tempest (Royal Shakespeare Company); The Bacchae (National Theatre of Scotland / Lincoln Center, Broadway); The Sleeping Beauty (Young Vic / Barbican /  New Victory Broadway); Noise (BBC Radio 3); Death and the King’s Horseman, Something Understood and Solomon Child (BBC Radio 4).

Tamara James Dickson

Wigs, Hair and Make-up Associate Designer

Tamara James-Dickson is a Special Fx artist, writer, and director, working in film and theatre. Her practice largely focuses on horror, fantasy, and surrealism.
She has a master’s in performance design which she obtained from Central Saint Martins in 2019 and a bachelor’s in Prosthetics, Makeup, and Wigs she obtained in 2017 from the London College of Fashion.
Since then, Tamara has developed many exciting characters for stage and for screen. Her credits include but are not limited to the critically acclaimed stage adaptation of Let the Right One In for the Royal Exchange Theatre.
Tamara continues her work as a multidisciplinary performance artist in London and Edinburgh.

Ira Mandela Siobhan

Associate Movement Director

Movement direction credits include: Addictive Beat (Boundless Theatre) and Strike (Southwark Playhouse).

Kev McCurdy

Fight Director

Kev is an Equity Registered Fight Director. He is also the Fight Instructor at the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama as well as the Co-Founder, a Fight Examiner and Senior Stage Combat Tutor of the Academy of Performance Combat (APC).  He works in a wide range of disciplines across film, television, and theatre.

For Kiln: The Wife of Willesden

Selected Theatre credits include: Les Misérables (Sondheim Theatre/UK Tour); Miss Saigon (Prince Edward/UK and European Tour); O Island, Ivy Tiller: Squirrel Killer, The Tempest (RSC); Frankenstein, Hamlet, Let The Right One In (Royal Exchange, Manchester); Anthony & Cleopatra, Mosquitoes, Barbershop Chronicles, Othello (National Theatre); Eyam, Love’s Labour’s Lost, The Taming Of The Shrew (Shakespeare’s Globe); Billy Elliot (Curve); Glory (The Dukes, Lancaster/UK Tour); The Comedy About A Bank Robbery (UK Tour); Sylvia, Jitney (Old Vic); Hamlet, The House of Shades (Almeida); Fairview, Mandela (Young Vic); Bajazet (Irish National Opera Tour/Royal Opera House); Moreno (Theatre 503); Guardians of the Galaxy (Secret Cinema); Red Pitch (The Bush Theatre); Marys Seacole, Trouble In Butetown (Donmar Warehouse); Sister Act (UK Tour/Eventim Apollo) and The Colour Purple (UK Tour)

Film includes: The Lady of Heaven, Season of the Witch, John Carter of Mars, Journey’s End, Kenya, Canaries and Carmilla.

Isobel Pellow

Costume Supervisor

Training: London College of Fashion.

For Kiln: Girl on an Altar, Retrograde.

Costume Supervision credits includes: The Walworth Farce (Southwark Playhouse Elephant); A Christmas Carole (Southend Palace); Alice in Wonderland (Brixton House); House of Flamenka (West End); The Memory of Water and Blackout Songs (Hampstead Theatre); Urinetown (Royal Academy of Music); Green Eggs and Ham (Opera North); The Sweet Science of Bruising (Wilton’s Music Hall); The Crowning of Poppea (Hampstead Garden Opera/Jackson’s Lane Theatre); Five Plays (Young Vic); Britten in Brooklyn (Wilton’s Music Hall); Four Play and Clickbait (Theatre 503).

Costume Design credits include: Twelfth Night (Theatre on Kew); The Lay of the Land (The Place); Death Drop (West End and UK Tour); Yes So I Said Yes, Not Quite Jerusalem, The Wind of Heaven (Finborough Theatre); Lysistrata (The Cockpit); Heather and Harry (Camden People’s Theatre); King Lear (Pleasure Dome Theatre Company); ‘Tis Pity She’s A Whore (Tristan Bates Theatre); Tales of Offenbach (Opera Della Luna at Wilton’s Music Hall); Three Brothers (Theatre N16); The Xmas Carol (Old Red Lion); Sense and Sensibility, Mary Stuart, A Streetcar Named Desire (Oxford Playhouse); Blue Stockings, Hay Fever (Old Fire Station Theatre, Oxford) and The Accrington Pals (Ashcroft Theatre, Croydon).

Jessica Mensah

Kiln-Mackintosh Resident Assistant Director

For Kiln: Girl on an Altar, The Wife of Willesden, Retrograde.

Jessica Mensah is currently the Kiln-Mackintosh Resident Assistant Director. She has trained on programmes such as: Stonecrabs Theatre Young Directors Programme (2021), the RTYDS placement at tiata fahodzi (2019) and the Young Vic’s Introduction to Directing programme (2017). She studied BA Theatre & Performance at Guildford School of Acting, University of Surrey. Her short film I Stand Proud was nominated for two FFTG Awards & screened as part of the festival in 2021. Jessica is also the host and founder of the YouTube channel and
podcast called Living in our 20s.

As Director, theatre credits include: Yerma (Lyric Hammersmith); House (Southwark Playhouse); The Life of Olu (Soho Theatre / Theatre Peckham / Golden Goose Theatre); DRUM (Omnibus Theatre); Tales from the Frontline – part 4 (Talawa) and Signed, Sealed, Delivered (National Theatre).

As Assistant Director, theatre credits include: Schoolgirls; Or the African Mean Girls Play (Lyric Hammersmith); The Snail House (Hampstead Theatre); Typical (Soho Theatre) and Queens of Sheba (Edinburgh Fringe / New Diorama).