So welcome to the website officially and a little bit about me. I was born in Darlington, north east England in 1963. Apart from a few diversifications in my working life, I like to think of myself mostly as an all-round 'creative' - writer, director, poet, teacher, daydreamer - but what others think of me is up to them! Most of what I've done over the last four decades has come from my own imagination, my education, my training as an actor and teacher, my inner self-belief and of course exterior input from an amazing array of talented people whom I've had the privilege or luck to have collaborated with.
The Master Plan? 'Make the world a better place through art, showing not only how things are but how they could be' could be one definition. I wonder myself sometimes how I've managed to keep going with this dream I've always had, sometimes a living, sometimes a hobby, sometimes a pain, but always a passion.
I've written twenty-three books and counting, compiled five volumes of twenty-nine theatre plays and one full-length film script - which scraped in at number four out of a list of 200 submitted to the Children's Film & Television Foundation in 2005 but sadly only three films got made that year - and continue to write and perform (when I get the chance) my own performance poetry.
For three years in the late 1980's I trained as an actor at the prestigious Central School of Speech & Drama in London and today can count many 'famous' television actors, directors and writers in film and theatre among my former peers. I loved the time I spent training with that team of diverse talents - it taught me to treat my output and myself with professionalism - but I disliked the solo, jobbing actor world once it finished and especially the business part of 'show business' and it is a business with a creator, a product, a seller and a buyer and lots speculators in between. I thrive on teamwork and group creativity and in the early days wanted to join the RSC to develop my craft as an actor but all my agent saw was £ signs. We parted company soon after so early on in my budding career I knew I'd have to travel my own route to preserve my self-respect. I suspected it would be a long and painful road and it has been; I even tried for six years to suppress my creative urges but no, I had to undergo my metaphorical forty days in the wilderness. Getting dressed up in costumes, pretending to be other people and speaking other writers' lines for a living seemed to me to be less interesting than being myself and understanding and interpretting the world I live in.
I've since created innovative plays, shows, events, happenings, readings, performances, both solo and with others. We don't get anywhere, that is make art, by copying other people. We have to be ourselves and it takes a kind of courage to strive for this ideal even when all around think you might be crazy. My dilemma - and challenge - has always been 'How to have a satisfying and fulfilling career as an artist without losing anonymity or getting dragged into the circus of celebrity?' Have I succeeded? Yes and no. The quest is eternal, that's the whole point I suppose.
Over the years I've acquired knowledge and hands-on experience through my own work as a writer/director, correspondence with Max Stafford-Clarke and Edward Bond, some great friends in small and mid-scale theatre like Jack Drum in north east England, an indefatigable search for self-expression, a couple of A-Levels, The Oxford English Dictionary, my French degree from Nantes University in 2015, running two professional theatre companies in the UK, entertaining 100,000 people with my theatre work, my French theatre company, giving young British actors Equity cards and solid experience, a ravenous appetite for English literature and theatre plays (which still sees me reading about 50 books a year) and always looking at ways to cross-fertilise art forms. I've written and 'made stuff happen' since I was a kid and will continue to do so for as long as I can. I currently live in Nantes, France and have been living and working here/there for 17 years.
The Master Plan? 'Make the world a better place through art, showing not only how things are but how they could be' could be one definition. I wonder myself sometimes how I've managed to keep going with this dream I've always had, sometimes a living, sometimes a hobby, sometimes a pain, but always a passion.
I've written twenty-three books and counting, compiled five volumes of twenty-nine theatre plays and one full-length film script - which scraped in at number four out of a list of 200 submitted to the Children's Film & Television Foundation in 2005 but sadly only three films got made that year - and continue to write and perform (when I get the chance) my own performance poetry.
For three years in the late 1980's I trained as an actor at the prestigious Central School of Speech & Drama in London and today can count many 'famous' television actors, directors and writers in film and theatre among my former peers. I loved the time I spent training with that team of diverse talents - it taught me to treat my output and myself with professionalism - but I disliked the solo, jobbing actor world once it finished and especially the business part of 'show business' and it is a business with a creator, a product, a seller and a buyer and lots speculators in between. I thrive on teamwork and group creativity and in the early days wanted to join the RSC to develop my craft as an actor but all my agent saw was £ signs. We parted company soon after so early on in my budding career I knew I'd have to travel my own route to preserve my self-respect. I suspected it would be a long and painful road and it has been; I even tried for six years to suppress my creative urges but no, I had to undergo my metaphorical forty days in the wilderness. Getting dressed up in costumes, pretending to be other people and speaking other writers' lines for a living seemed to me to be less interesting than being myself and understanding and interpretting the world I live in.
I've since created innovative plays, shows, events, happenings, readings, performances, both solo and with others. We don't get anywhere, that is make art, by copying other people. We have to be ourselves and it takes a kind of courage to strive for this ideal even when all around think you might be crazy. My dilemma - and challenge - has always been 'How to have a satisfying and fulfilling career as an artist without losing anonymity or getting dragged into the circus of celebrity?' Have I succeeded? Yes and no. The quest is eternal, that's the whole point I suppose.
Over the years I've acquired knowledge and hands-on experience through my own work as a writer/director, correspondence with Max Stafford-Clarke and Edward Bond, some great friends in small and mid-scale theatre like Jack Drum in north east England, an indefatigable search for self-expression, a couple of A-Levels, The Oxford English Dictionary, my French degree from Nantes University in 2015, running two professional theatre companies in the UK, entertaining 100,000 people with my theatre work, my French theatre company, giving young British actors Equity cards and solid experience, a ravenous appetite for English literature and theatre plays (which still sees me reading about 50 books a year) and always looking at ways to cross-fertilise art forms. I've written and 'made stuff happen' since I was a kid and will continue to do so for as long as I can. I currently live in Nantes, France and have been living and working here/there for 17 years.
A collection of photographs from my many projects over the years