Young Actors Studio

YAS tutor with students

The Team 2010/11

Erica Eirian - YAS Course Leader
Erica trained at the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama and has worked in professional theatre, radio and television for the past 30 years. She combines her part-time role as YAS Course Leader with her career as a professional actor and theatre director. She is currently filming a new five-part drama for BBC Daytime TV.

As YAS Course Leader she is responsible for creating and maintaining an engaging and challenging learning environment for all our students and for the recruitment of the YAS Team.

Anna Fonge - YAS Administrator
Anna is a graduate of the University of Birmingham where she studied for a BMus. Anna is the first point of contact for our students and their families and is responsible for providing YAS with administrative support.

YAS Tutors

YAS tutors are experienced specialist teachers and workshop facilitators as well as professional practitioners. They are called upon as and when YAS Acting Courses and YAS Theatre Workshop demand. Meet some of the tutors who are working with us during the academic year 2009/10.

Matthew Bailey - Voice and Acting Tutor
Matthew has worked variously as a performer, a musical director, a director, a voice consultant and an education animateur for a wide range of arts organisations in Wales and England. In recent years these have included: music organisations (such as the BBC National Orchestra of Wales and the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Society); drama organisations (like BBC Radio Drama Wales, the Unicorn Theatre [London], the Royal Shakespeare Company, the Sherman Theatre, the National Theatre, Moving Being); and training organisations (for example, the Royal Welsh College of Music & Drama and Loughborough University). He has worked on vocal technique with students as varied as young offenders in prison in Aylesbury and TV presenters in BBC Wales. Nowadays he works principally for the Cardiff-based crime-reduction charity Safer Wales.

Julie Barclay - YAS Theatre Workshop Group Tutor
Julie trained at the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama. In 2006 she joined the Drama Department staff, teaching Contemporary Text Studies to BA Acting students. She has worked extensively in repertory theatre and for BBC radio/television. She will shortly be directing a production of A Kind of Alaska by Harold Pinter and appearing in The Censor by Anthony Neilson with The Faction Collective at Chapter Arts Centre. She also works for Theatr Ffynnon using actor training techniques to help adults with learning difficulties and physical challenges into employment.

Isaac Blake - Movement Tutor
Isaac completed a 3 year undergraduate Diploma Dance Theatre Course at Laban and also attended The Martha Graham School of Contemporary Dance, New York. Whilst at Laban, Isaac experienced working with various artists and companies including Adventures in Motions Pictures (AMP), DV8 and Rambert. Since Laban, Isaac has worked with Ragdoll, the BBC, Chapter Arts Centre, Arts Council, FIND, S4C and Local Housing and Education Authorities in and around Wales and London.

Jain Boon - Acting and Audition Technique Tutor
Jain trained at the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama. She has toured extensively with, amongst others, Theatr Powys, New Perspectives and Quicksilver Theatre. She has also played Trafford Tanzi with Durham Theatre Company touring to bloodthirsty wrestling fans in the North East. Jain is the Assistant Director of Gwent Theatre, one of a Wales-wide network of eight professional Theatre in Education companies and has worked as an actor and director with the company for seventeen years. She also teaches and directs with the Gwent Young People's Theatre.

Dick Bradnum - Acting Tutor
Dick Bradnum read English at Birmingham University and then went on to train at the Royal Welsh College of Music & Drama and the Institute of Education, UCL. He was a founder member of The Custard Factory Theatre Co. Dick's acting credits include Romeo and Juliet and Macbeth (English Shakespeare Company), The Office and My Hero (BBC TV). He has appeared in many radio dramas, and was for seven years a regular MC on the comedy circuit. His most recent performance was as Malvolio in Twelfth Night at York Theatre Royal,a performance the Yorkshire Post described as "a masterclass." He has always worked with young people,lecturing and teaching. Being around young people occasionally compensates for his having very little hair and being middle-aged.

Beatrice Brooke - Voice Tutor
Beatrice gained a first class degree in Italian and Linguistics from Manchester University, and worked as a storyteller in a London school before going on to train, again at Manchester, as a teacher of drama and modern languages. It was during this training that she was introduced to the world of voice, and she resolved to go to Central, where she graduated from the Postgraduate Diploma in Voice in 1996. She has worked at several of the London drama schools, including Arts Ed, Mountview, C.S.S.D. and RADA, and at The Oxford School of Drama, in between having her three children. More recently, her work has also included running singing groups for women, and music and singing workshops for pre-school and reception aged children. Beatrice has teaching experience spanning 18 years, and her students have ranged from 2 to 80.

Caroline Bunce - Audition Technique Tutor

Paul Clements - Acting Tutor

Simon Harris - Acting and Audition Technique Tutor
Simon is is a dramatist and theatre director. Simon trained at RADA and worked as an actor for twelve years with many of the country’s leading directors and companies. His first play Badfinger premiered at The Donmar and he has been under commission at the National Theatre and Soho Theatre. Until 2007, Simon was Artistic Director of the national company for new writing in Wales – the multi-award-winning Sgript Cymru, where he was responsible for a rolling programme of new work including over twenty productions. Recently, Simon has been writing for television - an original drama series called Crash for the BBC and Tony Jordan’s Red Planet productions. In 2009, Simon won a highly-prized Creative Wales Award to enable him to develop new and innovative theatre projects. Simon is also a Fellow on the prestigious Clore Leadership Programme - the first to be selected from Wales.

Buddug Verona James - Acting Through Song Tutor
An acclaimed mezzo soprano as well as an actress, Buddug trained at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama and National Opera Studio. She has worked with Almeida Opera, Cleveland Opera (USA), English Pocket Opera, English Touring Opera, Glyndebourne, Lanternhouse International, Netherlands Opera, Opera Atelier (Canada), Opera Circus, Opera North, Opera Northern Ireland, Opera Theatre Company (Dublin), Opera 80, Operavox Cartoons, Mid Wales Opera, Music Theatre Wales, Siobhan Davies Dance Company, Theatr Genedlaethol Cymru and theatr peña. An extensive concert repertoire includes Mozart's Ch'io mi scordi di te with the BBC Welsh Symphony Orchestra and Jane Glover, Elijah at the Royal National Eisteddfod with Owain Arwel Hughes, Verdi Requiem with Malcolm Archer at Wells Cathedral and Dvorak Mass at the Auditorio Nacional, Madrid. In collaboration with Cardigan’s Theatr Mwldan and the Arts Council of Wales, Buddug has commissioned two one-woman shows; Castradiva by Mark Ryan and A Knife at the Opera by Chris Harris – both plays have toured to numerous theatres and festivals in the UK and Ireland including Edinburgh and Buxton. Buddug recently premiered Find Me a Primitive Man – a revue featuring classics from the Great American Songbook accompanied by jazz musicians Paula Gardiner, Richard Roberts and Paul Smith. Since 1999 Buddug has been a vocal tutor at the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama. She has directed Pirates of Penzance, Ruddigore, Acis and Galatea, Dido and Aeneas, Orpheus in the Underworld and Hercules for RWCMD. In 2001 Buddug was honoured with the Druidic White Robe of Gorsedd y Beirdd at the National Eisteddfod. She is also a Welsh Singers Competition Winner.

Deborah Light - Movement Tutor
Deborah works freelance as a contemporary dancer, choreographer and teacher. Her work has recently been recognised through receipt of a 2009 – 2010 Creative Wales award from the arts council. Among others she has performed for Welsh Independent Dance, Sean Tuan John, Sherman Cymru, Diversions Dance House, Institute of Crazy Dancing, Polish Dance Theatre and Transitions Dance Company. She is developing a strong solo performance practice and this work has been presented both nationally and internationally. She has also received choreographic commissions from Welsh Independent Dance, University of Salford and Polish Dance Theatre. Deborah graduated from Laban Centre London in 2001 with a BA (hons) and PGdip.

Jennifer MacKerras – Alexander Technique Tutor
Jennifer is a singer, recorder player and mother. She has worked in professional theatre as a director and workshop leader, particularly with children. She first studied the Alexander Technique when strain-related injuries stopped her form working and enjoying activities which she loved.

Yvonne Murphy - Acting and Audition Technique Tutor
Yvonne Murphy read Drama at Manchester University and went on to train at the RWCMD and later as a teacher of English & Drama at The Institute of Education, UCL. Yvonne's directing credits include Sherman Cymru, The Welsh National Opera (Max Dept), The English Shakespeare Company (Education), The National Theatre (Education) and BAC. Yvonne also runs Shakespeare Summer Schools, is a script reader for Sherman Cymru and has worked as an actor in theatre, TV and radio.

Richard Mylan - Acting for the Camera Tutor

Philippa Reeves - Acting Through Song Tutor
Along side her own performance work, Philippa has lectured in singing in the Drama School of the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama for over seventeen years. A classically trained singer, she has worked in Britain and Europe in a wide range of musical styles, she has performed with the physical theatre company ELAN in Europe and the American composer and choreographer, Meredith Monk. She has gained a reputation for her work in contemporary music, most recently working with the dancer Tanja Råmon and designer, film-maker and dj, John Collingswood on a series of improvised performances culminating in the premier of Virta at the Royal Opera House.
Through her work as both singer and teacher she continues to explore the notion of the interdisciplinary singer, an actor singer who can move effortlessly between the demands of text and music, and it is this expertise that she brings to her teaching.

Anita Reynolds - YAS Theatre Workshop Group Tutor and Audition Technique Tutor
Anita trained at the RWCMD and has been a professional actress for many moons now. She has appeared on various TV programmes such as Tracy Beaker, Holby City and Doctors and has acted in many stage shows. Anita enjoys the learning process that comes with working with young people, and most of all, she enjoys watching them shine.

Nicola Reynolds - Audition Technique Tutor
Nicola trained at RWCMD and is now a professional actress with over 15 years experience in Theatre, Television, Film and Radio. Nicola has been on the audition panel at the college for many years and is employed as a visiting professional on various projects linked to the BA course in Acting.

Nicola Rose - Acting Through Song Tutor

Emma Stevens-Johnson - Voice Tutor
Emma is a professional actress with nearly two decades of experience. She has performed in various types of theatre and made appearances in film and television in programmes such as The Bill, Casualty and Crimewatch. Teaching since 2004, she’s worked with organisations such as The Wales Theatre Company, Script Cymru, BBC Radio Wales, Theatre Royal (Bath), Hijinx and Barnet Dysphasia Society. With a Master in Voice from The Central School of Speech and Drama, London, a PGCE from Cardiff University, plus a diploma in Dramatic Art from The Oxford School of Drama, Emma brings all this professional experience into her work as a voice coach.

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Rebekah Davies
Rebekah trained as an actor and theatre practitioner at Rose Bruford College of Speech and Drama and has since toured the UK in both Musical Theatre and Theatre in Education productions. Rebekah graduated from the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama where she studied a Postgraduate Diploma in Arts Management. In addition to working with YAS, Rebekah has worked with the Congress Youth Theatre since the age of 18. From time to time Rebekah provides cover as YAS Theatre Workshop Group Tutor for the 15s to 16s group.

John Lovat
John has worked in Theatre and Education since 1977, when he helped to found 'FairPlay', the first ever Theatre In Education company to tour the South West of England. He first came to Wales in 1983 to join Gwent Theatre, where he worked for many years as an actor, director, writer and tutor. He has also worked in television and radio and in 1996 moved into teaching. He now teaches English and Performing Arts at Crickhowell High School and maintains his contact with the Gwent Theatre Company by working as a freelance tutor for the Junior Youth Theatre. John has enjoyed teaching acting classes at YAS over the past two years and looks forward to continuing his association in the future.

Guest Tutors 2010-2011 - to be confirmed

In addition to our tutors, we employ a number of Student Mentors drawn from RWCMD Acting Students who assist the YAS Team and give support and encouragement to our YAS students:

Stephen Bisland
Naomi Everson (ex YAS Student)
Chris Gordon (ex YAS Student)
Alex Griffin-Griffiths (ex YAS Student)
Clifford Lyonette