Callum Berridge

Callum is a director and theatre-maker with a special interest in new writing which explores contemporary working-class identity/ies, social mobility and social justice. Underpinning his work is a desire to be overtly political, formally experimental, and a collaborative, co-authored approach to making theatre. He has previously worked with Not Too Tame Theatre Company and Derby Theatre, and co-assisted Rob Hastie & Anthony Lau on the Crucible’s 2021 production The Band Plays On. Born and raised in Worksop, the city of Sheffield and the Crucible has always been of huge significance to him, and he’s incredibly excited to be joining the Bank Cohort in Sheffield Theatre’s 50^th anniversary year.

Shreya Patel

Shreya started becoming interested in directing when she first joined Leeds Playhouse’s Young Company in 2018. The following year she enrolled in RTYDS’ Intro to Directing Course for Disabled and D/deaf Artists, and had the privilege of working as Trainee Assistant Director on There Are NoBeginnings, directed by Amy Leach at Leeds Playhouse. She made her directing debut with an online play called Steriliser as part of Slackline Productions. As a queer, disabled, South Asian artist, she is particularly interested in any projects surrounding racism, disabled stories and talent, and queer Asian magic, so she is ecstatic to be joining the ever-growing, ever-evolving team at Sheffield Theatres.

Alexandra Whiteley

Alexandra is a theatre director originally from Chesterfield. She trained at The University of Birmingham and gained her MA in Shakespeare and Creativity at The Shakespeare Institute, as well as undertaking the Regional Theatre Young Directors Scheme Introduction to Directing course at Birmingham Rep. She specialises in radical restagings of classical texts and verse drama, aiming to make these plays exciting and engaging for modern audiences. She is also passionate about new writing and works closely with writers to develop their work.
Alexandra’s recent directing work includes productions for Graeae, Radical Body Arts, and Midlands Academy of Musical Theatre, as well as working as an assistant director for multiple companies including Birmingham Rep's Foundry Festival, Heartbreak Productions, and recently JW Theatres critically acclaimed world premiere production of The Wicked Lady. She also works as a dramaturg and text advisor, and has extension facilitation experience. As a disabled director, Alexandra is always keen to ensure her work is accessible for D/deaf and disabled audiences and theatre makers.

Beck Gadsby

Beck Gadsby is a Director and Producer specialising in classics, children’s shows and live events that require a big imagination. She graduated from Warwick University with Ba (hons) in Theatre & Performance and began her practice in touring theatre. Since then, she has directed almost 70 stage productions ranging from large-scale projection mapping shows to new writing. Her productions have been filmed and used by the BBC and she directed the UK’s largest open air theatre event at Chatsworth House (Pride and Prejudice).
In 2016 Beck began a journey to produce her own work; inspired by an installation by Japanese artists, Team Lab. The interactive projection inspired Beck to research digital technology and how it could be used to enhance storytelling in theatre. In 2020, during the pandemic, Beck secured Innovate UK funding to develop the world’s first immersive theatre design app – an idea to emerge from the team’s 4 years of R&D. In the same year she established Inside Theatre – a digital-tech company experimenting with the latest technology to create a more immersive, inclusive, and eco-friendly theatre for the digital age.
Inside Theatre has recently been named “Ones to Watch” by the Creative Industries Council.

Lydia Harrison

Lydia is a theatre producer originally from Sheffield. After completing her MA in Creative Producing from Mountview Academy of Theatre Arts, she has produced many early-stage projects that span the Edinburgh Fringe, the Other Palace and Maiden Speech Festival. In 2021 she produced new festival Sightlines, a Sheffield-based online festival exploring the relationship between performance and wellbeing. Other producing credits include site specific play Every Thing by T E Lodge at the Huddersfield Piazza; new short play Drag Baby by Grace Carroll which explores queer family building; and Weapons of the Weak by Nancy Salt, a new piece of gig theatre, in development with the Other Palace, London.

Katrina Woolley

Katrina is a producer and programmer with a particular interest in the relationship between performance and wellbeing. She founded Big Mind Theatre in 2017 to explore this theme through producing shows, workshops and the Anxiety-Free Fringe Guide. Last year she directed the first edition of Sightlines Performance and Wellbeing Festival. She was formerly Head of Programming at Bedlam Fringe in Edinburgh.

Katrina recently became the Administrative Producer for Utopia Theatre, a leading African theatre company in the UK and resident company at Sheffield Theatres. Having moved to the city a year ago, she is excited to be contributing to the creative life of Sheffield and meeting those working in a plethora of creative ways within the community. Talking to other artists and helping them realise their visions is her favourite part of her work and she is looking forward to further opportunities to collaborate as part of The Bank.

Nicole Joseph

Nicole Joseph is a writer who loves to connect and care for communities through stories and often writes playing with genre and centring women-led, rich and truthful stories where the ordinary meets the extraordinary, exploring the body and soul of under and mis-represented characters and places. Her first play, Blessed Spirits was an ETPEP Award Finalist and was shortlisted for the Women's Prize for Playwriting and Traverse Theatre and longlisted for the BBC Alfred Bradley Bursary Award and Royal Court (2021). She was recently selected for development with the Royal Exchange Theatre and Tamasha Playwrights and has previously been commissioned to write short pieces and monologues with Tamasha and Leeds Playhouse, Cast and Graeae (2021).

Jasmin Mandi-Ghomi

Jasmin is a British-Iranian playwright and facilitator born and raised in Yorkshire. Her work has been staged at the Southwark Playhouse, the Arcola Theatre, and the North Wall, with her debut full-length show MADDY premiering at the VAULT Festival in 2020. Between 2019/2020, Jasmin was on attachment with Tamasha Theatre as one of their developing playwrights which culminated in a virtual showcase of her play Your Vote Will Not Count. Her most recent play was The Magic of Wild Heather which was written for the National Theatre’s Public Acts and performed at Cast Theatre in August 2021.

Chloe Wade

Chloe Wade is an actor, writer and proud northerner! She trained at The International School of Screen Acting and is an alumna of WoLab’s Actor-Writer course. Chloe recently performed the role of Ophelia in The Secret Love Life of Ophelia, alongside Helen Mirren and can be seen on Sky On Demand playing the role of Emily in the film The Fall, directed by Robert Bathurst (Cold Feet/Downton Abbey). Chloe’s passions include bold, female driven narratives, stories that give a voice to the voiceless, writing that utilises humour to explore serious issues, and work that will have a long-lasting legacy and high impact. She’s interested not only in how we make work, but also who we make work with and for. Her writing has been performed at various venues across the UK, including The Lowry, 53Two, The Cockpit, The Bunker Theatre, Theatre N16 and King’s Head Theatre. Chloe is the reigning champion at Birmingham’s MonologueSlam with her self-penned comedy piece, May I Take Your Order, and is currently working on her new play, As She Likes It, inspired by the story of #MeToo pioneer Patricia Douglas.

Tommo Fowler (Dramaturg)

Tommo is a dramaturg for text and production, and a director.
He is co-founder of script-reading and dramaturgy company RoughHewn (winner of an Olwen Wymark Award from the Writers’ Guild of Great Britain), and sits on the Board of the Dramaturgs’ Network, working on anti-racist strategies in dramaturgy and support for early-career dramaturgs.
As a dramaturg, work includes How to make a revolution (Finborough Theatre online, forthcoming), There Is No Planet B (Theatre Deli, Sheffield), One Jewish Boy (Trafalgar Studios), Out of the Dark (Rose Theatre, Kingston), In My Lungs the Ocean Swells, Inside Voices (VAULT Festival, both Origins Award Winners), Omelette (VAULT Festival, Origins Award Nominee), Griff Rhys Jones: Where Was I? (International Tour) and Griff Rhys Jones: Jones & Smith (National Tour).

Tommo was Visiting Tutor on the MA Playwriting & Screenwriting at City, University of London, a Tutor for Text at Identity School of Acting, and has worked as reader for theatres including the Bush, Royal Court, Royal Exchange, Sheffield Crucible and Traverse.

Jennifer Jackson (Theatremaker / Movement Practitioner)

Jennifer is a Latinx British-Bolivian performer, theatre maker and movement director/choreographer, with a particular focus on women's bodies in performance.
Her work interrogates the ways that women and girls use their bodies, her personal relationship with the UK, and the duality of living between cultures and races.

Jennifer was awarded the Leverhulme Scholarship in 2019 by The Egg, Theatre Royal Bath and The Lowry, 'Developed With' programme to develop Thank Heaven for Little Grrrls, a performance for a cast of 8–12-year-old girls. In 2020, she was an EVOLVE Artist at Oxford Playhouse developing WRESTLELADSWRESTLE, and received a Jerwood Live Work Award for her project TAKE SPACE (a body of work interrogating how space is intimately linked with power). Her solo show Endurance, was commissioned for PUSH Festival at HOME Manchester, and transferred to Battersea Arts Centre as part of their Overcome Season 2021.

José Guillermo Puello (Sound Designer / Composer)

As a composer, José Guillermo Puello has collaborated on theatre and dance projects, including The return (Square Peg Theatre, HOME, 2017) and Omega (Wireless theatre, radio play, 2019), Lonely cities (Cohan Collective, 2017) and Hiatus (Subtle Kraft Co, Re:Con Festival, Contact theatre, 2015), Legacy (Co:Lab, Royal Exchange Theatre, 2019) and There’s no Planet B (Hassun el Zafar, Deli Theatre, 2021).

He has also composed music for the concert hall that has been performed in the UK, Europe, Canada, USA and the Dominican Republic by different ensembles, such as Manchester Camerata (2010), Mason & Ruttlant Duo (2014), National Youth Orchestra of Dominican Republic (2014), and Manchester Chamber Choir (2016). Puello won the Dominican Cultural Personality of the Year and the Dominican National Music Prize in 2011 and 2017, respectively. Most recently, Aqui/Alla was selected to be performed by Opera North in their upcoming series Minute Masterpieces.

Zoyander Street (Digital Theatre Maker)

Zoyander Street is a neurodivergent, genderqueer artist-researcher making work about toxic feelings and tech garbage. A newcomer to theatre, Zoyander's practice thus far has focused on videogames, but also involves other forms of media art and (mis)uses of technology. They create lo-fi glitchy games and custom hardware for festivals, galleries, and museums, and they are now exploring theatre as a window into the other side of interaction design, where users and devices are configured in embodied performances. Zoyander is a part-time PhD student at Lancaster University; a Director at non-profit Critical Distance, which curates, archives, and supports experimentation in critical writing on videogames; a Trustee at NEoN Digital Arts, which runs an annual festival in Dundee; and a Director at Typeset CIC, a social enterprise established in 2021 that has created a coworking space and arts venue in the form of a vintage bookshop in Rotherham.