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Theatre Live! is terribly exciting for so many reasons. Not least is the fact we have a handful of acclaimed authors - Jackie Kay; Kate Mosse; Morag Joss; Nicci French and Michael Dobbs – making their collective debut as playwrights, collaborating with respected directors John Alderton, Pip Broughton, Fiona Laird, Sue Tully and Patrick Sandford.

Then there are the people who bring it to life in front of our eyes. We have actors including Pauline Collins and Siobhan Redmond to create original plays, performed to a live audience in the purpose built Sky Arts Theatre Live! studio. Here you can find out more about the selectd cast and creators of Theatre Live!

PLAY 1: MIND AWAY
   Author Jackie Kay
   Actors

PLAY 2: SYRINX
   Author Kate Mosse
  Actors

PLAY 3: FAMOUS LAST
   Author Morag Joss
   Actors

PLAY 4: TOO MANY COOKS
   Author Nicci French
   Actors

PLAY 5: CHARITY BEGINS
   Author Tina Mcbuig, aka Sandi Toksvig
   Actors

PLAY 6: THE TURNING POINT
   Author Michael Dobbs
   Actors

 

Jackie Kay
Poet and author Jackie Kay uses her life as a great source of inspiration, and it’s one that has provided rich literary pickings.

Born in Edinburgh in 1961 to a Scottish mother and a Nigerian father, Kay was adopted at birth by a white Scottish couple and was brought up in Glasgow, studying at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama and Stirling University where she read English.

The experience of being adopted by and growing up within a white family inspired her first collection of poetry, The Adoption Papers, which was published in 1991. The poems deal with an adopted child's search for a cultural identity and explore the perspectives of an adoptive mother, a birth mother and a daughter. The collection won a Scottish Arts Council Book Award, the Saltire Society Scottish First Book of the Year Award and a commendation by the Forward Poetry Prize judges in 1992. Similarly, the poems in her subsequent 1993 collection, Other Lovers, explore the role and power of language, inspired and influenced by the history and enslavement of Afro-Caribbean people.

In 1998, Kay branched out and published her first novel, Trumpet, which was inspired by the life of musician Billy Tipton and tells the story of Scottish jazz trumpeter Joss Moody whose death revealed that he was, in fact, a woman. It was awarded the Guardian Fiction Prize and was shortlisted for the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award.

Jackie Kay’s poetry has also appeared in a number of anthologies; she writes regularly for television and she has published two collections of short stories plus a novel and a collection of poetry for children. More recently, her novella Sonata was published in 2006; a book of poems Darling: New and Selected Poems in 2007; and a dramatised poem, The Lamplighter, was published in 2008. She lives in Manchester, teaches creative writing at Newcastle University, is a fellow of The Royal Society of Literature and in 2006 was awarded an MBE for services to literature.

Cast of Mind Away
Sheila Reid, as Nora
Best known for her fag smoking perma-tanned role as Madge in ITV comedy Benidorm, Sheila Reid is in fact a non-smoking vegetarian who practices yoga everyday. Born in 1937, the Scottish actress has had a long and distinguished career in theatre, film and television. Hightlights include Doctor Who, A Christmas Carol and Shakespeare's Globe production of In Extremis. Her latest role in the first Theatre Live! play, Mind Away, explores the sad effects of dementia.
 
Raza Jaffrey, as Dr Mahmud
Born in 1975 to a ship's captain from Agra and a Liverpudlian mother, English Asian actor Raza Jaffrey is most commonly recognised for his portrayal of Zaf in hit BBC series Spooks. Studying acting at Bristol Old Vic Theatre School, Raza's career really took off when in 2002 he starred in Andrew Lloyd Webber's Bombay Dreams. His previous successful project before Mind Away saw him in a leading role on BBC series Mistresses.
 
Siobhan Redmond, as Mary
A trained dancer, Scottish actress Siobhan Redmond is immediately familiar for her leading roles in Between the Lines and Holby City. Siobhan is also a stage actress, having starred in theatre productions such as The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie in 2003, The Twelfth Night with the Royal Shakespeare Company and A Midsummer Night's Dream with Shakespeare's Globe. Her film credits include Half Moon Street, Duet for One, Captives and Frankenstein.

Lisa Livingstone, as Lisa Livingston
Lisa Livingstone grew up in the Seaton area of Aberdeen, Scotland and was educated at Linksfield Academy. Winning the Laurence Olivier Bursary award in 2004, her £7500 prize and a contract with British acting agent Simon Berrisford, prompted her move to London where her career took off. Lisa’s television projects include Holby City, Sea of Souls and Waking the Dead. In 2007 she starred in horror film, In the Spider’s Web.

Kate Mosse
No, not that one: while the author certainly isn’t difficult on the eye, we’re pretty sure she would resist any comparison of her writing abilities with those of a certain supermodel... This particular Kate Mosse-with-an-e is the woman behind a number of non-fiction books and novels, including the multi-million selling international bestseller, Labyrinth, although she has said in interview that being picked up by disappointed taxi drivers who confess they thought they were picking up ‘the other one’ is “quite a funny thing...it reminds you of your place”.

Born in West Sussex in 1961, Mosse graduated from New College Oxford and spent seven years in publishing before switching sides and becoming an author herself. Her first novel, Eskimo Kissing, was published to great acclaim in 1996, followed in 1998 by the novel Crucifix Lane, which was cryptically described as a ‘bio-tech time-travel thriller’. It was with her 2006 hit novel Labyrinth however, that she came to greater public attention: the thriller, set in medieval and contemporary France was a New York Times bestselling novel; was top of the UK paperback charts for six months, and has been translated into thirty-eight languages, including Japanese, Chinese, and Hebrew. The follow-up, Sepulchre, was published in 2007, and is the second of the planned Languedoc trilogy. Described as ‘a timeslip adventure novel set in 19th century and contemporary France’, it too has become an international bestseller, hitting the top spot in the UK and bestseller charts in a number of countries.

In addition, Mosse has also published two non-fiction books: Becoming a Mother, a companion to pregnancy and childbirth (now in its fourth edition), and The House: Behind the Scenes at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, which accompanied the BBC television fly-on-the-wall documentary series. Mosse’s short stories and articles have also appeared in a range of magazines and newspapers, and she currently presents the BBC Radio 4 programme, A Good Read.

Notably, Mosse is also a Co-Founder & Honorary Director of the Orange Broadband Prize for Fiction; is the author of several of the Orange Prize education initiatives; is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts and is also one of the regular judges of the Financial Times/Arts & Business Sponsor of the Year Awards. And if you were looking for a theatrical connection, here it is: from 1998 - 2001, Mosse was Deputy Director of Chichester Festival Theatre, the first woman ever to hold the position, and she was subsequently awarded an honorary degree by the University of Chichester in 2006. 

Cast of Syrinx

Penelope Beaumont
Trained at the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School, Penelope Beaumont has appeared in a variety of stage and television productions. With a number of prestigious Shakespearian productions under her belt for both Shakespeare’s Globe and Royal Shakespeare Company, Penelope was a natural choice for Sky Arts’ Theatre Live! Her screen appearances include: Eastenders, Doctors, Holby City,  Recovery, Wire in the Blood, Mrs David, Midsomer Murders, Cyrano de Bergerac and Poirot.

Gabrielle Lloyd
A familiar face on television, Gabrielle Lloyd’s credits include Inspector Morse, Middlemarch, Midsomer Murders and most recently, The Tenth Kingdom. She has appeared on the London stage in Medea, Alice's Adventures Underground, A Doll's House, and Dancing at Lughnasa. Gabrielle has also written and adapted for radio, her most recent work being M for Mother.

Sian Thomas
Born September 1953, Sian Thomas is an award winning Welsh actress who trained at the Central School of Speech and Drama. Sian has appeared in films such as Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix and Vanity Fair. Her television roles include the classic 90s Spanish television series Celia and the recent Half Broken Things. Her theatre and musical credits include National Theatre’s Fram and Richard II. Her sister is actress Sara Mair-Thomas and her partner is British poet Tony Harrison.

Eleanor Tomlinson
Eleanor was born in London in 1992 and moved to East Yorkshire at an early age, where she now lives with her family in the historic market town of Beverley.
From a professional acting family, it was always likely that Eleanor would be drawn to a film career. Eleanor’s first role was as little Daphne in YTV’s adaptation of Falling which starred Michael Kitchen and Penelope Wilton.  Shortly afterwards she was asked to play the young version of Jessica Biel’s character Duchess Sophie Von Teschen in Neil Burger’s film The Illusionist.


Morag Joss
There can’t be many authors who owe their career to a chance conversation with the doyenne of crime fiction PD James in a Roman bath, but for Morag Joss, truth is without doubt sometimes stranger than fiction...

Born in England but raised on the west coast of Scotland, Joss completed a degree in English at St Andrew’s and went on to study singing at the Guildhall School of Music. Her subsequent career path took her to work in museums, galleries and higher education, where she worked as both a manager and a lecturer, and to the National Trust, where was an adviser in arts education. It was a chance meeting in 1996 with PD James however, which sparked her current career as a full-time writer.

Charged with looking after James during the 1996 Bath Literature Festival, Joss recalls that she took her to see the city’s Roman Baths, and whilst showing her around, joked that they would be a good place to discover a body. James encouraged the fantasy, and at the end of their meeting, told her to go and write about it. Joss dismissed the idea, but some months later saw a short story competition in Good Housekeeping magazine, and decided to enter. She was awarded the runner-up prize, embarked on a novel, swiftly found a publisher and an agent and hasn’t looked back.

She now writes full time and has a number of novels to her name, including: Funeral Music; Fearful Symmetry; Fruitful Bodies: Half Broken Things (which as well as being adapted as a television film in 2007, was awarded the Crime Writers’ Association Silver Dagger in 2003); Puccini’s Ghosts and her most recent book, billed as “dark, psychological study of mental distress”; The Night Following, has been nominated for a coveted Edgar Award for crime fiction.

Cast of Famous Last

Pauline Collins
Born in Devon in 1940 to Irish emigrant parents and educated at a convent school, Pauline Collins is instantly recognisable for her lead role in Shirley Valentine.
Winning the OBE in 2001 for her services to drama her much noted credits include four years on Upstairs, Downstairs, Thomas and Sarah, and Forever Green, in which she co-starred with her husband John Alderton. In 1997 Collins played a leading role in Paradise Road, the story of women incarcerated in a POW camp during WWII. Latest television appearances include From Time to Time and Doctor Who.

Laura Haddock
Growing up in Hertfordshire, Laura Haddock decided to be an actress at six after seeing Hayley Mills in the film Pollyanna. Leaving school at 17, she headed to London to study drama and started performing in plays by Shakespeare and Mike Leigh. Her TV break came last year with the sitcom pilot Comedy Showcase: Plus One. Since then she has played Amanda Redman's daughter Kacie in the ITV1 comedy drama Honest and appeared in Sky One's adaptation of Terry Pratchett's The Colour Of Magic with David Jason and Christopher Lee.

Nicci French
It’s not a terribly well-kept secret, but Nicci French is two for the price of one: the nom de plume (...noms des plumes? ...our French grammar is a little rusty...) whose most recent title is What to do When Someone Dies is in fact best-selling writing team of journalists Nicci Gerrard and Sean French.

Nicci Gerrard was born in 1958 in Worcestershire. After graduating from Oxford, she began her first job, working with children with special needs in Sheffield. In the early eighties she taught English Literature in Sheffield, London and Los Angeles, but moved into publishing in 1985 with the launch of Women's Review, a women’s magazine for focusing on art, literature and female issues. In 1989 she became acting literary editor at the New Statesman, before moving to the Observer, where she was deputy literary editor for five years, and then a feature writer and executive editor. It was while she was at the New Statesman that she met Sean French.

Sean French was born in May 1959 in Bristol, to a British father and Swedish mother. He too studied English Literature at Oxford at the same time as Nicci, also graduating with a first, but their paths didn’t cross until 1990. In 1981 he won Vogue magazine’s Writing Talent Contest, and from 1981 to 1986 he was their theatre critic. During that time he also worked at The Sunday Times as deputy literary editor and television critic, and was the film critic for Marie Claire and deputy editor of New Society. Sean and Nicci were married in Hackney in October 1990. Their daughters, Hadley and Molly, were born in 1991 and 1993. By the mid-nineties Sean had had two novels published, The Imaginary Monkey and The Dreamer of Dreams, as well as numerous non-fiction books, including biographies of Jane Fonda and Brigitte Bardot.

It wasn’t until 1995 however, that they decided to pool their talents and began work on their first joint novel under the pseudonym Nicci French. The ensuing psychological thriller, The Memory Game, was published to great acclaim in 1997. The Safe House; Killing Me Softly; Beneath the Skin; The Red Room; Land of the Living Secret Smile; Catch me When I Fall and Losing You have since been added to the Nicci French CV, and while they also both continue to publish individually, their latest thriller, What to do When Someone Dies takes their joint works into double figures.

Cast of Too Many Cooks

Adam James
Since training at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, Adam’s theatre credits include:Gethsemane – National Theatre, Now or Later, My Child – Royal court, Rabbit – Trafalgar Studios and Off Broadway, Original Sin – Sheffield Crucible, Time and the Conways, Snake in the Fridge, King Lear and Poor Superman – Manchester Royal Exchange. TV credits include: Dr Who Easter Special, Hustle, Love Soup, Consuming Passion, Jonathan Creek Christmas Special, Bonekickers, Let Them Eat Cake, Ashes to Ashes, Judge John Deed, Waking the Dead, The Amazing Mrs Pritchard, Extras - Christmas Special – BBC,Harley Street, The Commander - ITV, Band of Brothers - HBO, Cold Lazarus - Channel 4.

Nicola Stephenson
Nicola began acting professionally as a teenager in Manchester on television shows such as Children’s Ward and Coronation Street. Her television credits include: Brookside – Channel 4, Nice Day at the Office, Out of the Blue, Holby City, Clocking Off, Waking the Dead, Superstorm, The Chase, Lark Rise to Candleford – BBC, Wokenwell, The Walk, Christmas Lights / Northern Lights / City Lights, Dead Man Weds, Law and Order - ITV, Legless, All in the Game – Channel 4. Theatre credits include: A Patriot for Me – RSC and His Girl Friday and Edmund - National Theatre.

Danny Webb
Danny trained at RADA and has been working in theatre, fi lm and television ever since. Theatre credits include: Hamlet - Old Vic, Death and the Maiden – Duke of York, Serious Money – Royal Court and Broadway, Dead Funny - Hampstead & Vaudeville, and PopCorn – Apollo Theatre. Most recent Television appearances include: Life Begins, Doctor Who – BBC, The Bill, Midsomer Murders, Trinity, Henry IIV, Miss Marple - ITV, Landgirls – Channel 5. Film credits include – Alien III, Henry V, Shiner, and Valkyrie.

Paul Thornley
Paul has done quite a lot of television and quite a lot of theatre but has never done both at the same time!

 

Tina Mcbuig, aka Sandi Toksvig
We’re going to let you in on a little bit of a secret here: the reason you may not have heard of Tina Mcbuig, literate theatre-lover that you are, is because she is in fact the nom de plume of Theatre Live!’s very own Sandi Toksvig. The significance of the Celtic-sounding name remains a mystery (we have tried a number of anagrams, but none of them has any apparent meaning although many are unprintable...); suffice to say that Charity Begins is all Toksvig’s own work. And were you in any doubt as to her credentials, here’s how she got to be where she is...

Although born in Denmark, she was brought up in America, until she moved to the UK at the age of 14, where she has lived ever since. After gaining a first in Archaeology and Anthropology at Cambridge (where she also wrote and performed in the Footlights’ first all-female show), she became an early member of the alternative improvisational comedy team The Comedy Store Players, after which followed a brief foray into children’s television. This developed further and she quietly became the much-loved public figure we know today, whose TV and radio appearances read like a roll-call of the best British comedy: Call My Bluff; Whose Line is it Anyway?; Mock the Week; Have I Got News For You; The News Quiz; I’m Sorry I Haven’t a Clue and of course, Sky Arts’ very own What the Dickens? quiz. But the woman recently described in The Telegraph as having “a brain the size of a small planet and a dry wit to match” (we didn’t know planets were famed for their senses of humour, but our money’s on Uranus as the funniest; it would have had to have developed a nice line in witty ripostes with a name like that) has always been, first and foremost a writer.

As well as writing material for her show on London-based radio station LBC and regular columns for Good Housekeeping and the Sunday Telegraph, Toksvig has also written a number of books, both fiction and non-fiction, for both adults and children. They include travel guides to Spain and France; a children’s wartime adventure story starring a boy fighting in the Copenhagen resistance; the diaries of inveterate Victorian traveller and celebrated inventor of the double-gusset underpant, Lady ‘Bulldog’ Burton, and the book on which she is currently working, a novel set during the Boer War. As she noted in a recent interview; “Acting is showing your pants for a living; writing is a craft.”

Cast of Charity Begins

DIRECTOR
Patrick Sandford

Patrick is Artistic Director of The Nuffield, where he has directed both classic and new plays. Patrick won Best director in the TMA awards for The Winter Wife by Claire Tomalin (nominated for five TMA awards) and Much Ado About Nothing. Recently, Patrick has directed The House of Bernarda Alba, The Playboy of the Western World and A Streetcar Named Desire. Other classics include: Chekov’s Three Sisters – this was nominated for Best Touring Theatre Production in the 2002 TMA Awards. He has also directed two new plays by Penny Gold, two by Maggie Nevill and three by Claire Luckham. Abroad, Patrick’s productions have been seen in France, Germany, Australia, South Africa and Barbados.

Jo Monro
Joanna Monro has just finished five years in Mamma Mia. She is now delighted to be out of platform boots and back in to sensible shoes. In addition to West End theatre work, Jo has also performed in Coventry, Exeter and Liverpool. Jo has acted in so many plays directed by Patrick Sandford at the Nuffield Theatre Southampton that she is frightened to count them. Jo’s television credits include: Angels, Fast Forward, Doctor Who, Casualty, The Bill, Confessions of a Diary Secretary, Emmerdale and The Brontes of Howarth (with Sylvestra Le Touzel). Jo says that to do this play for her friend Sandi Toksvig is a dream... and she even gets to eat a sausage.

Dona Croll
Dona Croll has worked extensively in theatre, film and television. Recent theatre work includes: Measure for Measure - Plymouth, Elmina’s Kitchen - National Theatre and The Last Days of Judus Iscariot - Almeida. West End theatre work includes: Serious Money and Elmina’s Kitchen. Dona’s television credits include: Condoleeza Rice in Bremner Bird and Fortune, Casualty, Holby City, The Shadow in the North, Eastenders, Doctor Who and Family Affairs. Film credits include: Mammoth, Elephant Palm Tree, Eastern Promises and Manderlay. This is Dona’s first live TV appearance.

Sylvestra Le Touzel
Sylvestra Le Touzel began acting as a child in the days when drama was often broadcast live. It was during this time that she had the honour of playing Joanna Monro’s YOUNGER sister in the Bronte’s of Howarth. She has worked for the Royal Shakespeare Company and at the Royal Court, but is perhaps best remembered for her ‘Heineken’ advert The Water in Majorca. Most recently Sylvestra has appeared in Mike Leigh’s film Happy Go Lucky, Victoria Wood’s Housewife 49 and Ivanov at Wyndhams Theatre. As a writer Sylvestra’s first short story for Radio 4 Youthful Folly is due to be broadcast as part of the series Pavilion People.

Caroline Blakiston
Caroline Blakiston trained at RADA. Her theatre credits include: Lady Macbeth in Macbeth, Helena in Look Back in Anger, Lady Bracknell in The Importance of Being Earnest,  Lady Pontefract in A Woman of No Importance and Mrs Higgins in My Fair Lady. She appeared in Particular Friendships at Hampstead, winning the Charington Best Actress Award, and played Helena in A Midsummer Night’s Dream at Regent’s Park. UK tours include: Founder member of Actors Company; Millamant in The Way of the World and Goneril in King Lear. Caroline was the first English actress to perform Chekhov in Russia, in Russian, both at Taganrog (Chekhov’s birthplace) and the Moscow Art Theatre. Caroline’s Television credits include: The Avengers, The Saint, The Forsyte Saga, Miss Marple and As Time Goes By. Film credits include: The Trygon Factor, Sunday Bloody Sunday, The Return of the Jedi and The Fourth Protocol.


Michael Dobbs
Bestselling author Michael Dobbs’ history might be pretty well known, but anyone with a doctorate in nuclear defence studies who is referred to by The Guardian as “Westminster’s baby-faced hit man” deserves a second look...

Born – as his website biography notes – in 1948 on the same day as Prince Charles, Dobbs went to Christ Church, Oxford, before moving to America in 1971 to continue his studies in nuclear defence. He gained his Ph.D in 1975 and with it, returned to England and began working for the Conservative Party. From then on, his political career went from strength to strength: he became an advisor and speechwriter, was at Margaret Thatcher’s side when she entered Downing Street as Prime Minister and was a key aide to John Major when he was voted out. He eventually became Chief of Staff and later Deputy Chairman of the Conservative Party, and gained a self-admitted reputation for being in the wrong place at interesting times, one of these being the 1984 Brighton bombing during the Conservative Party Conference.

Despite such a busy day job, Dobbs found the time in 1989 to publish his first novel, the political thriller, House of Cards, which launched the career of the villainous Francis Urquhart. Following the books’ success, Dobbs expanded it into a trilogy (To Play the King was published in 1992, and The Final Cut in 1994), all three of which were subsequently adapted into a BAFTA-winning BBC miniseries with Ian Richardson memorably bringing the elegantly evil Urquhart to life.

While Dobbs has also been Deputy Chairman of Saatchi & Saatchi and a regular presenter of BBC TV’s Despatch Box, he retired from politics in 1995, and sixteen books later, is still keeping himself busy: he was shortlisted for the Channel 4 Political Novel of the Year in 2001, and won the Benjamin Franklin Award for best historical novel in 2008. If you’re wondering what he does with the rest of his time, he notes on his website that he “Lives with his wife and four sons near a church and a pub in Wiltshire". Before you ask, he spends more time in the pub. It has "better opening hours.”

Cast of The Turning Point

Matthew Marsh
Recent theatre includes: This isn’t Romance - Soho Theatre, Now or Later - Royal Court Theatre, A Prayer For My Daughter  - Young Vic, The Lightning Play - Almeida Theatre, The Overwhelming - National Theatre / Tour, The Exonerated - Riverside Studios, The Goat - Almeida Theatre / West End, Us and Them - Hampstead Theatre, A Buyer’s Market - The Bush, The Little Foxes - Donmar Warehouse, Conversations After a Burial - Almeida Theatre / Tour, and Copenhagen - National Theatre/ West End. Recent Television includes: Masterworks, The Philanthropist, How Not to Live Your Life, Lewis, The Street, Marie Lloyd, Spooks, The Commander, Service, Murphy’s Law, Belonging, Return of the Dancing Master, Wall of Silence and Real Men. Recent films include: Red Tails, Dead Man Running, Endgame, O Jerusalem, Land of the Blind, An American Haunting, Bad Company, Miranda and Spygame.

Benedict Cumberbatch
Theatre credits include: The City, Fire Raise, Rynoceros – Royal Court Theatre, Hedda Gabler , Lady From the Sea – Almeida Theatre, Oh What A Lovely War, Romeo and Juliet, As You Like it, A Midsummer Night’s Dream – New Shakespeare Company. Television credits include: Sherlock Holmes in Sherlock, Stephen in The Last Enemy, Alexander in Stuart: A Life Backwards, Edmond in To the Ends of the Earth, Stephen Hawking in Hawking, Cpt. Langley in Dunkirk. Film credits include: Creation, The Other Boleyn Girl, Atonement, Amazing Grace, and Starter for Ten.

 

 

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