Edward Taylor
Edward is an Artistic Director of Whalley Range All Stars. He studied fine art at Wolverhampton Polytechnic in the mid-1970s, and formed Whalley Range All Stars with Sue Auty in 1982, after working with Horse & Bamboo and Dogtroep (Amsterdam). He has also worked with IOU Theatre, Action Space Mobile, improvised comedy teams (Comedy Express and the Rupert Pupkin Collective) and as a percussionist for Manchester People’s Band, Conspiracy of Noise and Manchester School of Samba. Edward is a regular writer for Total Theatre magazine and has had essays published in books celebrating the Streets Ahead festival and the Sultan’s Elephant in London, as well as several publications by ISAN. He has held several solo exhibitions of paintings and drawings in Bath, London, Cheshire, Manchester and Kendal.
Sue Auty
Sue is an Artistic Director of Whalley Range All Stars. Sue graduated from Huddersfield Polytechnic in 1979, with a degree in Humanities. She formed Whalley Range All Stars with Edward Taylor in 1982, after working with Horse & Bamboo, Action Space Mobile, and Amsterdam-based theatre company Dogtroep as a performer, musician and maker. After learning to play trombone at evening school, during the 1990s she played with The Whole Hog jazz orchestra, Manchester People’s band, Conspiracy of Noise, and Manchester School of Samba. Sue has also worked as a pyrotechnician and artistic builder/maker for pa-BOOM for many years, including designing and making costumes for the Fire Garden, and building giant Ravenna effigies in Nottingham. She has trained in speed couture tailoring, and made costumes for Doo Cot Theatre and Feelgood Productions. In 2011, Sue joined the board of the Bury Met Theatre, and is also a member of Early Arts; a national network for people working creatively with children and families in the arts, cultural and early years sectors.
Associate Artists
Bryan Tweddle
- Compost Mentis – Brain Wave – Future – Ye Gods –
Bryan is a renowned artist, performer, designer and builder. He has designed and made things for theatre, opera, ballet, street performance, television, film, animation, educational projects, exhibition and carnival, and has created mechanical contraptions for the likes of IOU, Hoodwink, Avanti Display, Salisbury Art Centre and Welfare State International.
Matt Wand
- Compost Mentis – The Living Room – Brain Wave – Future – Cake – Ye Gods – Python on the Loose
Matt is an internationally renowned sound artist, and has worked in a huge variety of contexts, including creating a gallery full of Gameboys re-programmed to play tunes, and creating BBC children’s TV soundtracks. Matt revolutionised our soundscape! His creative contribution opened whole new world of sound in our shows and installations.
Clive Bell
- Head Quarters – Bedcases – Pig – Compost Mentis – Brain Wave – Ye Gods
Clive is a musician, composer and writer with a specialist interest in the shakuhachi (Japanese flute), khene and other Far Eastern wind instruments. He has travelled extensively in Japan (where he studied the shakuhachi for two years with the master Kohachiro Miyata), Thailand, Laos and Bali, researching music and meeting local practitioners. A musician who regularly joins David Ross, Sylvia Hallett, Mike Adcock and Peter Cusack in various improvisation duos and trios, Clive Bell has a substantial recording history as both a solo artist and as a composer for film, TV and theatrical productions (including Complicite, IOU, and Whalley Range All Stars). Kazuko Hohki, Jah Wobble, David Sylvian, Steve Beresford, David Toop, Jochen Irmler of Faust, Paul Schütze and Bill Laswell number among Clive Bell’s collaborators. Based in London, he writes regularly for the music monthly The Wire.
Current performing team
Peter Finegan
Compost Mentis – Brain Wave – Future – Ye Gods
Fireworks and street theatre – Peter is a man of many talents: pyrotechnician, deviser and performer, HGV lorry driver, bat surveyor, and new father … Pete was one half of The Mahoney Brothers, a street theatre company with a reputation that went before them.
Chris Davies
Bedcases – Imaginary Friends – Pig –
Musician and performer
Katy-Anne Bellis
- Imaginary Friends – Pig
Performer and maker. Katy-Anne has been a regular performer with us for several years and helped with the refurbishment/ remake of Gloria the Pig in 2015.
Jonny Quick
- Pig
Performer.
Tom Byrne
- Pig
Performer
Steve Gumbley
- Bedcases – Pig – Python on the Loose
Steve is a highly regarded artist and performer. He has worked with Welfare State International and Instantz, and was a co-founder of IOU Theatre in 1976. He has also created numerous installations and touring exhibitions in his own right. Steve also made an invaluable contribution to WRAS (1995–2006) as a performer, maker and deviser.
Chris Squire
- Future – Python on the Loose
Performer and maker.
Beka Haigh
- Compost Mentis – Imaginary Friends – Cake
Beka is a puppet maker and performer, and co-founder of Frolicked puppet theatre company – an outdoor, puppet-based company touring across Europe. Frolicked create unique and intimate experiences for all kinds of unusual spaces and places, with memorable, beautifully illustrated, self-made puppets and performances.
Vanessa Card
- Cake – Ye Gods
Performer and maker
All Stars from earlier shows
Jack Lockhart
- Bedcases – Compost Mentis – Pig
Jack is a performer, prop maker and film-maker.
Scott Tomlinson
- Bedcases – Pig
Singer, performer, and master of the Stradivarius saw, a rare talent in these times. Scott can also drive, mend broken props, and manage the petty cash purse all at the same time, probably.
Carina de Wit
- Outside In – The Birds – Imaginary Friends
Carina was educated as a teacher in theatre and, since 1996, has worked full-time as a theatre maker. Until 2004 she worked for Warner & Consorten (Amsterdam), and after that was involved in different projects, as a costume designer and theatre maker, until co-founding her own company, Babok, in 2005. Babok have since created three, full-length object theatre shows, including Iglo, which won the Outstanding Production prize in 2008 at the International Strassentheater Festival in Detmold (Germany): “Babok do not define theatre but they invent it” – Jury.
Guido Bevers
- Imaginary Friends
Originally a visual artist, Guido began making theatre in 1997, and until 2003 was a member of Warner and Consorten (Amsterdam). Since then he has worked on very different projects as a visual artist, theatre-maker and set-builder, specialising in objects, mechanics, and technics. In 2005 he co-founded his own theatre company, Babok, which has since created three, full-length object theatre shows, including Iglo, which won the Outstanding Production prize in 2008 at the International Strassentheater Festival in Detmold (Germany): “Babok do not define theatre but they invent it” – Jury.
Aya Nakamura
- Imaginary Friends
Studied Puppet and Object Manipulation at Central School of Speech and Drama, and is now a freelance theatre maker, puppet maker and puppeteer.
Annie Brooks
- Imaginary Friends
Annie Brooks is a performer, puppeteer and theatre maker based in Brighton. She works freelance making puppets for theatre and is a regular performer with Foul Play Productions, Inconvenient Spoof and Whalley Range All Stars. She runs her own theatre and visual arts company, Colossal Crumbs, which specializes in puppetry and large-scale visual performances to feed the imagination of the audience. Annie is a graduate of Brighton University, studying Theatre and Visual Art. She experiments with puppetry, film and animation in visual arts performances in the theatre and anywhere they may lend themselves. Her interest in sculptural set and costume was prominent in her first show, Colossal Crumbs, which incorporated these ideas with puppetry and dance. The work is largely non-verbal, using visual and musical approaches to tell stories and communicate feelings for which words cannot be easily found. Annie likes to make puppets that are beautiful and intriguing, as well as playful, entertaining and often edible. She uses recurrent themes in her work, most significantly food, and often dresses up as large vegetables.
Garth Williams
- Imaginary Friends
Performer.
Rachel Kirby
- The Living Room
Rachel is a performer specialising in physical theatre, mask, mime and puppetry. She studied at Huddersfield University and subsequently co-founded Frolicked – an outdoor, puppet-based company touring across Europe. Frolicked create unique and intimate experiences for all kinds of unusual spaces and places, with memorable, beautifully illustrated, self-made puppets and performances.
Sonya Moorhead
- Pig
Performer.
Terry Naylor
Performer.
Mary O’Neill
- Pig
Performer.
Liz Lockhart
- Pig
Artist and educationalist.
Andy Plant
- Head Quarters – Bedcases – Pig – Outside In – The Birds
As a creative engineer, Andy has been making interactive mechanical sculpture for more than 25 years. Combining sculpture, engineering, and large transformational theatre sets, he has created work for many theatre companies, but specialises in large, automated clocks and large-scale public sculpture. Andy has made an enormous contribution to Whalley Range All Stars, designing and building on several productions since 2000.
Dave Chadwick
Dave is co-founder of pa-BOOM, a company of artists, sculptors, designers and technicians producing work using the medium of sculpture and theatre, animated by fire, light and pyrotechnics. Dave also has considerable skills as a wood and metal worker, and has worked on the design and construction of several productions.
Laurence Lane
Laurence was a regular performer with WRAS between 1995 and 2000. He now runs The International 3, a contemporary art gallery in Manchester.
Pat Selden
- Head Quarters
Musician and performer. Pat brought his skills as a musician, notably his ability to play the berimbau (Brazilian one stringed percussion instrument), and as a performer of great presence, to our productions.