Faculty | Theatre Academy London

Emily Bruni

Emily most recently appeared as Actress in the one woman play Psychodrama. Other recent theatre includes Debbie / Deborah in Donald Marguiles’ play The Model Apartment at Bath Ustinov. Goneril in King Lear (Shakespeare’s Globe); Woman in Berkoff’s Lunch / Bow (Trafalgar Studios) directed by Nigel Harman; Grace in the one woman show Before You Were Born (Trafalgar Studios), Donkey Heart (The Old Red Lion and Trafalgar Studios), all directed by Nina Raine; Clare in Yes Prime Minister (Trafalgar Studios), directed by Jonathan Lynn. On television Emily’s most recent credits include Dead Lions for Apple starring Gary Oldman, the ABC show Soul Mates, The Collection and Life in Squares. Emily appeared regularly as Gail in Channel 4’s hit comedy Peep Show. She is a regular contributor to Radio 4 Drama and has a bouyant career as a voice artist. Emily trained at The Guildhall.

Phoebe Sparrow

Phoebe has worked across screen and stage in her career as an actor; working in the West End, Off-Broadway and appearing in numerous TV projects. Theatre Credits include: FATHERS AND SONS (Donmar Warehouse), THE DRESSER (Duke of York’s, West End), CITY STORIES (59E59, Off-Broadway) and recently playing Lady M in MACBETH (Queens Theatre and UK Tour). TV credits include: DOWNTON ABBEY (ITV/PBS), INSIDE NUMBER 9 (BBC), BUFFERING (ITV2), SISTER BONIFACE (BBC) and RISE OF THE TUDORS (Sky). Phoebe has worked as a teacher across London for the past 8 years, specialising in Scene Study and Screen Acting. Whilst at University herself, Phoebe studied abroad in America, and enjoys teaching students doing the reverse Study Abroad programme now!

Christian Dixon

Christian is a professional and registered dramatherapist and professional actor, graduating from The University of Hertfordshire, United Kingdom in 1996 and The Guildhall School of Music & Drama in 1987 respectively.

Christian recent film and TV work includes Mary Poppins Returns with Emily Blunt in the titular role, Fantastic Beasts and Where To Find Them, and an eight part drama series for Channel 4 called Cucumber, written and produced by top TV writer - Russell.T.Davies, famous for bringing back ‘Dr Who’ to our screens and creating the ground-breaking ‘Queer As Folk’ series. Christian is also a fellow of The Royal Society of Arts and has performed many times in London’s leading and West End theatres and with top theatre directors, including The Old Vic, The Donmar, The Royal Court Theatre and The Almeida. Acclaimed productions which Christian has appeared in over the years include: Macbeth, The Little Foxes, The Plantagenets, Kissing The Pope, Burn My Heart, Richard lll, The Winter’s Tale, The Tempest, Much Ado About Nothing, Mogadishu, In Basildon, A Midsummer Night’s Dream and The Park.

In his work as a dramatherapist, Christian has, to date, worked with many clients of all ages: children as young as three, to young people to adults. He is dedicated to supporting his clients towards finding effective solutions to help heal their issues or negative life experiences. Christian specialises in relationships, racism, gender, sexuality, eating disorders, anger management, family therapy, attachment disorders and most forms of mental health problems.

Michael Barnfather

Mick Barnfather has been working in theatre as an actor, director and teacher for more than 40 years.

He is a graduate of the Ecole Philippe Gaulier (Paris.)

Amongst other acting work he has been a member of the internationally aclaimed touring company Complicite since 1986, appearing in six of their shows: Food Stuff, Please Please Please, The Visit, The Three Lives Of Lucie Cabrol, The Chairs and Light. He has performed at the National Theatre London, the West End and on Broadway.

He has also worked as an actor in television, radio and short films and directed a number of devised physical theatre and comedy shows.

During his career as an actor and director, he has always continued to teach theatre. He worked at the Commedia School in Copenhagen where he taught Melodrama and Neutral Mask. He also taught Clown at the Central School of Speech and Drama and Devising Theatre at both Rose Bruford Drama School and the Manchester Metropolitan University where he teaches Improvisation at present.

He was a teacher at the Philippe Gaulier School where he taught Bouffon, Clown and Neutral Mask. He is a regular teacher at the National Centre for Circus Arts in London, where he teaches Theatre Studies on the three year degree program, at the London School of Musical Theatre where he teaches improvisation and at the Florida State University London program where he teaches physical theatre . He has also taught Physical Theatre for over twenty five years for the British American Drama Academy and at RADA for ten years where he taught Clown, Mask, Ensemble and Physicality in Performance. During this time he also taught on the open Complicite workshop programs and has given classes and courses in Hong Kong, Berlin, Hamburg, Finland, Sweden, Denmark, Switzerland and America. He also runs his own open courses. For more details about him: www.mickbarnfather.com

Emma Baggott

Sarah Finch

Sarah works as an actor, director and sometimes a creator of theatre; as with the play Lilies on the Land, about Land Girls in WW2, which had 4 tours, a West End run, is published, and now being done in various parts of the world. Sarah has done seasons with the RSC, in Regents Park: Pirandello’s ‘Henry IV’ in the West End with Richard Harris. She has worked extensively in TV, radio and film, including feature film Man Dancin, and C.S.Lewis, Dreamer of Narnia, for Disney. Sarah’s passion for travel has also led her to work on Shakespeare at the National Drama School in Havana, Cuba – where in 2016 she, with others, created a Shakespeare Festival in 2016: ‘Shakespeare 400’. Sarah also works in Italy, where, being bi-lingual, she has directed a couple of musicals. Her various projects have led to working in Morocco, creating theatre and music with Sufi musicians, Jamaica – a peace project in Trenchtown, Kingston, and as Programme Director for an international youth festival in Manilla, Philippines. She is a founder member of The Lions part, and has a one woman show ‘Yours Ever, Jane’, which was born from playing Jane Austen on TV, she has play this show in various places around the world, including at the UN headquarters in New York.

Madeleine Potter

Madeleine Potter is an actress and director residing in London. She has dual Irish and American citizenship. Her most recent London theatre credits include True West (Vaudeville Theatre) and The Kid Stays in the Picture (Royal Court). Pre pandemic recent US credits include the Shakespeare Theatre Company’s production of Hamlet (2019, 2017) in Washington DC and The Glass Menagerie (Fords Theatre, 2016). Other London credits include Electra and The Internationalist (Gate Theatre), 4:48 Psychosis (Royal Court), After Mrs Rochester, Madame Melville, An Ideal Husband (West End), All My Sons and Southwark Fair (National Theatre), Broken Glass (Tricycle), The Waters Edge (Arcola). Her Broadway credits include Plenty, Slab Boys, Metamorphoses, Coastal Disturbances, The Master Builder, The Crucible, A Little Hotel On the Side, Getting Married. Other NY credits include Pygmalion (Roundabout), Richard III (NYSF), Playboy of the Western World (Irish Rep), The Plough and the Stars and many more. Madeleine’s film credits include The Bostonians, Slaves of New York, The Golden Bowl and The White Countess, all for Merchant Ivory; recent television includes Cobra, Foyles War, Houdini and Mr Selfridge in which she played Elizabeth Arden. She has done numerous radio plays and other voice work. She has taught for BADA, FSU, Manchester School of Theatre (MST) and she has directed for MST, Rose Bruford and Synergy Theatre Project. Madeleine is a member of the Actors Studio.

Paula Stephens

Paula trained as an actor at The Guildhall School of Music and Drama, gaining a BA Hons in Acting, followed by several years as an actor with the Royal Shakespeare Company, and many years working in Theatre, TV and Film. Throughout her actor training and work at the RSC, she was fortunate to study voice, text and dialects with Cicely Berry, Patsy Rodenburg, Andrew Wade, Jeannette Nelson, Lyn Darnley, Charmian Hoare and classical singing with Margret Bennett.

In addition to her training at Guildhall, she has also trained extensively with Patsy Rodenburg both in the UK and the US to become one of her registered teachers and associates.

Paula teaches or has taught voice, text and presence at The Guildhall School of Music and Drama, The London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art (LAMDA), Florida State University on The Theatre Academy London Programme, and voice and dialect to BA acting students at UCA (University of the Creative Arts). Paula delivers voice and text workshops for Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre, London. Paula has a private client base to include actors and corporations teaching both from her home in Oxford, in London and the United States. She has a dedicated passion and practise to enable women in business to be seen and heard, using the authentic, full voice, and presence. She also works with vulnerable women and those at risk to explore their right to be heard.

Barbara Houseman

Barbara Houseman has worked in theatre for over 40 years as a voice, text and acting coach and a director. She spent six years in the Voice Department at the Royal Shakespeare Company and then became Associate Director at the Young Vic, in London. She now works freelance. Among other clients she coaches Daniel Radcliffe and Jude Law. She has been Voice and Text Coach at Regent's Park, since 2009 and Season Associate Director since 2014. She has worked on numerous shows in the West End including Macbeth, Richard III and Dr Faustus for the Jamie Lloyd company; the All Female Trilogy, Coriolanus, Les Liaisons Dangerous and St Joan for the Donmar; The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night time and The Ferryman at the Gielgud and most recently Hamlet at the Young Vic. She is a visiting lecturer at the Universities of Tennessee and Connecticut, the author of Finding Your Voice and Tackling Text [and Subtext] and of Actor Food Masterclasses “Developing Your Voice” and “Bringing the Text to Life”

Rachel Bown-Williams

Rachel Bown-Williams is a founder and director of Rc-ANNIE Ltd. Established in 2005 with Ruth Cooper-Brown.

Rc-ANNIE Ltd is the UK’s leading Dramatic Violence Company, choreographing action for Theatre and Film. Rachel and Ruth are 2 of the most sought after Fight Directors in the UK. They also work as Intimacy Directors and are members of the Intimacy Practitioners Guild. 

Rachel trained as an Actress at Rose Bruford College, London before training as a British Academy of Dramatic Combat (BADC) Teacher. She was made the first female BADC Examiner in 2013. 

Theatre Fight Directing Credits include:

2.22 A Ghost Story (The Noel Coward), Robin Hood: Legend of the Forbidden Forest, Beauty and the Beast (Theatre Clywd), East is East, (Birmingham rep and National Theatre), Once Upon a Time in Natizi Occupied Tunisia (Almeida), T he Prince of Egypt (Dreamworks at the Dominion Theatre); 

The Invisible Hand (The Kiln) Henry VI Part, Tartuffe, The Duchess Of Malfi, Salome & Snow In Midsummer (RSC); 

The Secret Theatre, Boudica, Lions And Tigers, Much Ado About Nothing, Twelfth Night, The White Devil, Comus, Imogen, The Little Matchgirl (And Other Happier Tales) (Shakespeare’s Globe); 

The Welkin, Three Sisters, Anna, When We Have Sufficiently Tortured Each Other, Common, Ugly Lies The Bone, Peter Pan, The Threepenny Opera, And Cleansed (National Theatre);

The Night Of The Iguana (Noel Coward Theatre); Wife (Kiln Theatre); A Very, Very, Very Dark Matter (The Bridge Theatre); Wise Children (Wise Children & The Old Vic); Company (The Gielgud Theatre); The Village (Theatre Royal Stratford East).

Charmian Hoare

Charmian has been a voice and dialect specialist coaching actors for the past 25 years. She trained at the Central School of Speech and Drama. She has worked at RADA and the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, as well as the National Theatre, Shakespeare's Globe, The Young Vic, The Almeida theatre, The Royal Court, and many others, including the Theatre for a New Audience, New York and Shakespeare Festival theatre, Stratford Ontario.

Ben Naylor

Ben is a Lecturer in Classical and Contemporary Acting, Central School of Speech and Drama. He has also taught at the Shakespeare Centre, Stratford-upon-Avon; The Method Studio; ASAD; Cambridge University; Birkbeck College, London; Queen Mary’s, London; Forum für Filmschauspiel, Berlin; Theatro Exo ap ta Teihi, Greece.

Directing includes: Much Ado About Nothing, The Merchant of Venice, Britannicus, Henry IV, The Broken Heart(Central), Wish You Were Here (Diorama and Berlin), Julius Caesar (Menier Theatre), Tamburlaine the Great(Rose Theatre, Southwark).

Patsy Rodenburg

Patsy is an eminent advocate of the use of Shakespeare in teaching for the present day (not just for actors, but for public speakers, prison inmates, and the mentally ill; see her book, Speaking Shakespeare). She is also perhaps the UK’s most highly-regarded voice coach and has taught many of today’s renowned actors, including Judi Dench, Ian McKellen, Daniel Day-Lewis, and many other Oscar-nominees and winners. She is the author of The Actor Speaks and Presence. She currently serves as Director of Voice at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama

Mark Wheatley

Mark is writer for theatre and television. Most recently he has written a single drama for BBC Films (The Escapist) and is under commission for a new play to be produced later in the year. His adaptation for Complicite, The Street of Crocodiles, was nominated for an Olivier award. He teaches theatre and playwriting courses for both undergraduates and graduates.

Lee White

Senior Lecturer of Drama, Theatre and Performance at Roehampton. He has developed several courses for the BA program there, including Performance Ethics, Drama In Ireland, Practical Approaches to Acting, Approaches To Directing, and Text Workshop. He was Literary Manager at Out of Joint Theatre Company from 1996-2001 and worked on many productions including, The Steward of Christendom, Our Country’s Good, and Some Explicit Polaroid’s, and developing scripts with renowned dramatists such as Caryl Churchill, Mark Ravenhill and Sebastian Barry.