The Arden School of Theatre Staff Profiles

Marie started her acting career at The Young Vic Youth Theatre, London after graduating with a degree in English from Liverpool University.

Marie has worked extensively in television where she has performed alongside actors that include Kenneth Branagh, Keeley Hawes, Michael Gambon Stephen Graham, Vicky McClure and Olivia Colman.

Screen credits include JK Rowling’s The Casual Vacancy (BBC/HBO) BAFTA award winners In The Flesh and Don’t Take My Baby (BBC) The Secret Agent, See No Evil, South Riding, Ripper Street, Wallander and Lilies.

Marie’s theatre work includes A View From The Bridge (West End Birmingham Rep, Bristol Old Vic) The Snow Queen, Jude, William (The Young Vic) Adam Bede,Our Day Out, To Serve Them All My Days (Royal Theatre Northampton) Beautiful Thing ( Bolton Octagon/York Theatre Royal) Can’t Pay Won’t Pay! Brassed Off and Dreamers (Oldham Coliseum)

Marie completed a postgraduate qualification in teaching at Central School Of Speech and Drama and has since trained with international acting coach and Meisner specialist Larry Silverberg and Hollywood acting coach Ron Burrus from The Stella Adler Studio in New York.

Will teaches MA Directing, as well as BAs in Acting, Musical Theatre and Vocal Studies here at The Arden.

After starting his career in the licensed trade, Will became a mature student in his 20s.  After attaining his MA, Will worked at the University of Cumbria before establishing the DIY West End Theatre Company in Morecambe. 

Having then worked as a professional Actor and Director, Will joined The Arden as a teacher in 2018.  Since then, he has published several study guides for A-Level and has also reviewed work for New Theatre Quarterly.

On his love of teaching, Will noted “As a student I realised that I got as much joy from helping others to achieve, as I did from achieving things myself.

“This is a feeling that has never left me.

“Seeing every group through from day one to graduation; it never gets old”.
 

Wayne has been making theatre, both solo and as a co-founder of Escape Theatre, since 2004. His work explores autobiographical experiences and the vulnerability of memory to map, challenge, and document social change, often exploiting and experimenting with technology as a second performer to represent voices that are, for a number of reasons, not present.

His practice has been continually supported by hÅb, and previously greenroom, through Method Lab and Works Ahead commissions. His performance work includes Escape in Chic (2004), Nought Point Nought Seven Nine per Hour (2005), Losing (2008), How I Lost the Pound Coin (And Why I Want It Back) (2009), (and two) (2012), Now|Then (2017), From Me To Us (2020). He has delivered contemporary theatre workshops across Europe, at higher Education institutions in England, Spain, Norway, and Denmark. Through his role as Head of Theatre and Performance (TaP) at the Arden School of Theatre, he trains creative performers to make postmodern, innovative, and evocative new work.

His 2019 doctoral research explored the performance of memory in connection to placemaking, specifically located in his home city of Hull during its year as City of Culture in 2017, and resulted in the critically acclaimed Now|Then. He has presented his academic research in theatre, performance, and memory at a number of conferences both nationally and internationally including at Theatre and Performance Research Association (TaPRA), Queen’s University Belfast, and NCTE’s Assembly for Research in Birmingham, Alabama. His most recent chapter ‘From the Screen to the Streets: Translating Digital Engagement into Performance Practice to Facilitate Multiple Contributions to Placemaking’ is published in IAB’s Negotiating Place and Space through Digital Literacies (2019).

He is also collaborative founder and senior lecturer for the trans-Pennine MA in Performance Practice with Sheffield Hallam University.