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Our People

Meet our team:

Naomi Alexander

CEO and Artistic Director

Naomi started work on Brighton People’s Theatre in 2015 and established it as a Community Interest Company in 2017. She did this because she was fed up with how out of touch theatre often is and wanted to do something to change this. She has a background in both community development and theatre. She has worked for organisations such as the Hangleton and Knoll Project, Locality, Battersea Arts Centre and The Old Vic. She is a 2019/2020 Clore Leadership Fellow for Theatre.

Lou Cope

Dramaturg

Lou is a Performance Dramaturg with over 15 years of experience in working with artists, organisations, and academic institutions to creatively and collaboratively develop both their processes and productions. Shows Lou has worked on have won: 2 Olivier awards, The Benois Prize for Dance, The Critics Choice Award, UK Theatre Award, Total Theatre Award, Amnesty International Freedom of Speech Award, ACTA Eastern Eye Award, Herald Angel Award & a Lustrum Award. She is also Dramaturg in Residence for South East Dance and works as an Organisational Dramaturg to a number of companies. She is an alumna of the Clore Pulse Leadership course.

Lily Einhorn

Board Member

Lily is an artistic and strategic consultant, creative and cultural producer, writer, and coach. She specialises in community and participatory arts. Organisations Lily works with include Complicité, Stratford East, ENO, Studio 3 Arts, Company of Others, Bounce, Donmar, Camden People’s Theatre and the Crafts Council. Lily produced adult community work at the Young Vic for seven years. Lily’s work is centred around cultural democracy and care as an aesthetic and creative practice.

Thomas Hescott

Chair

Thomas is a director and writer. He trained at Central School of Speech and drama, on the National Theatre Studio Directors course, and on the BBC’s emerging director scheme. After twenty years working in theatre, he now predominantly directs TV drama, and in 2017 he was named on the BBC’s Talent Hotlist. In 2019 he moved to Brighton and is delighted to be joining the board of BPT. Much of his work in theatre centered on community engagement, and so it is thrilling to be able to connect with his new local community through the work of BPT. He currently sits on the board of Stage Directors UK and was their executive director for five years.

Niamh Hicks

Communications Manager

Niamh has a background arts marketing and project management. Her interests lie in using arts for social change, and site-specific and outdoor performance. She specialises in working with vulnerable and underrepresented groups and has worked for Creative Future, Cardboard Citizens and Sussex Dance Network. Niamh has also delivered creative projects for Sussex Recovery College, Brighton Housing Trust and the YMCA, working with vulnerable adults using dance and drama as tools for creative expression and to build confidence.

Paul Hughes

Board Member

Paul was born and brought up in Brighton, living most of the time in Whitehawk and attending the local schools. He served in the Army for 15 years with most of that time in Germany. He became a social care manager for adults with learning disabilities. All his theatre experience has been with BPT in the last two years.

Anna Jefferson

Board Member

Anna is a fiction writer and playwright. She has written for stage and screen since 2005. She has had two novels published with Orion, Winging It and Nailing It and is currently working on her third novel. She is the founder and co-director of Broken Leg Theatre and has written and toured five plays.
Anna is an experienced workshop leader and facilitator. She is Co-Director of Writing Around the Kids. The project enables mothers of young children to write creatively, working in partnership with regional museums and a network of published female authors. She began the project having recognised how difficult it is to carve out creative time amidst family life. Anna works part-time as Theatre Relationship Manager at Arts Council England. She lives in Brighton with her husband and two children.

Jenni Lewin-Turner

Jenni Lewin-Turner

Board Member

Jenni has maintained a long portfolio career as an international creative producer, cultural broker, consultant and curator. She is also the founding director of Urbanflo Creative – a socially engaged collective of arts professionals who share a vision of equity and excellence. Her core practice involves developing innovative creative platforms to connect communities across traditional, geographical, cultural, generational, social and economic divides.

Fran Masey O’Neill

Company Manager

Fran has a background in theatre and over fifteen years experience in Operations Management roles in both the Arts and Hospitality sectors. She has spent many years in forward-facing roles in community settings and specialises in people management and development with a focus on improving social inclusion and access to the arts. Fran’s most recent role was Head of Operations at Jacksons Lane art centre in London. Fran is new to Brighton and is looking forward to getting to know the city through its people and their stories.

Tanushka Marah.

Tanushka Marah

Guest Workshop Leader

Tanushka was founder and Artistic Director of Collisions which toured for ten years in theatres and outdoors across the UK and abroad. She was a winner of The Genesis Young Vic Young Director Awards in 2002. Her production of Medea toured international festivals in Cyprus and Albania. Tanushka now works as a freelance director and movement coach and has directed many plays including Dracula, Beauty and the Beast, Macbeth, and Animal Farm. In 2017 she worked with Brighton People’s Theatre as a guest director on Tighten Our Belts. Tanushka runs a youth theatre company WYActors whose production of Berkoff’s Agamemnon won The Outstanding Theatre Award at Brighton Fringe 2017.

Munya Muchati

Board Member

Munya is a Creative Artist, multi-award-winning choreographer and entrepreneur from Brighton, working as a dance choreographer/teacher and filmmaker. Talented visionary and Director of Thirty 10 Arts formed in 2018, a platform for performing arts creatives which grew from a dance company ‘Visual Poets’ founded in 2013. He is a cultural leader who works with artists to push their creative development.

Jack Parris

Associate Director

Jack is a performer, theatre-maker, writer and facilitator. Prior to his work with BPT, Jack worked as a teacher, musician and actor and experimental film-maker Egg (2016), The Hex (2017) and Words (2018). Jack retrained in Theatre Laboratory at RADA in 2019 and now his practice focuses on co-creating physical theatre through play using embodied approaches influenced through his time working with David Glass Ensemble, Theatre Re, Peta Lily, Gabrielle Moleta Company and Gecko. Jack currently works with the devising ensemble Kreants, Saksi Bisou and Bunkum, whose recent experimental film Dangling Man was in the official selection at the London International Film Festival and the Montreal Film Festival.

Helen Rice

Vice Chair

Helen is CEO of Age UK West Sussex, Board Member at Worthing Home, and Chair of Grace Eyre Foundation. She has worked for the Charity Commission and for national charities that advise the sector. Helen has spent large parts of her career as either a Director of income generation or as CEO. Helen loves to perform as a Jazz and Blues singer. To be a part of the BPT team means so much to Helen, not only because of the joy that the arts have bought to her own life but also how it encapsulates so many of her own values regarding social justice, community development and a chance to provide life-changing opportunities for people.