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Deafinitely Theatre presents

Grounded

By George Brant

George Brant | Playwright
Paula Garfield | Director
Paul Burgess | Design
Jack Knowles | Lighting Design
Chris Bartholomew | Sound Design
Ramesh Meyyappan | Choreographer


Biographies

George Brant | Playwright

George Brant’s plays include Grounded, Elephant’s Graveyard, The Mourners’ Bench, Any Other Name, Salvage, Grizzly Mama, Three Voyages of the Lobotomobile, Night of the Mime, One Hand Clapping and Dark Room. His scripts have been produced internationally by the Public Theater, Cleveland Play House, Trinity Repertory Company, the Studio Theatre, the Alley Theatre, City Theatre, London’s Gate Theatre, Page 73, Melbourne’s Red Stitch Theatre and Edinburgh’s Traverse Theatre, among others.  Awards include: Kennedy Center National Playwriting Award, the Smith Prize, a Scotsman Fringe First Award, a Creative Workforce Fellowship, an Off-West End Theatre Award, an NNPN Rolling World Premiere, two OAC Individual Excellence Awards, the Teatro Netto Festival Grand Prize and the Keene Prize for Literature. He is published by Samuel French, Oberon Books and Smith & Kraus.

Paula Garfield | Director

Paula is Artistic Director of Deafinitely Theatre. An actor, director, workshop leader and organiser, Paula has worked on a variety of television, film and theatre projects over the past fifteen years. She’s has produced and directed many plays and worked extensively for TV, including Channel Four’s Learn Sign Language, Four Fingers and a Thumb, BBC’s Hands Up, Casualty, and appeared in every series of the BBC's Deaf drama, Switch. For Deafinitely Theatre she has directed Two Chairs, Motherland, Children of a Greater God, Playing God. In 2012 as part of Deafinitely’s 10th Anniversary Paula directed Love’s Labour’s Lost as part of the Globe to Globe festival at Shakespeare’s Globe followed by Tanika’s Journey at Southwark Playhouse. Most recently, Paula directed A Midsummer Night’s Dream for Shakespeare’s Globe in 2014 and the children’s production Something Else, which toured Nationally this year.

Paul Burgess | Design

Paul trained at Motley following a degree in English. He has designed for numerous companies and venues in the UK including: The Arcola, The Albany, Hampstead, The Bush, Shakespeare’s Globe, Soho, Theatre 503, Hackney Empire, The Pleasance, Southwark Playhouse (all in London), The Watermill (Newbury), The Royal Exchange (Manchester), Glasgow Citizens, Colchester Mercury, The Lemon Tree (Aberdeen) and Birmingham Rep. He has also designed for venues in Hanoi, Islamabad, Vienna, Mumbai and New York. He is co-artistic director of Scale and Artistic Director of Daedalus Theatre Company, for whom he has directed projects including A Place at the Table and Selfish. He has taught at various universities, including Goldsmiths and the National College of Arts, Pakistan, as well as working widely in youth arts.
 

Jack Knowles | Lighting Design

Trained at The Central School of Speech and Drama.
Recent credits include: Phaedra (Enniskillen International Beckett Festival); Travelling on One Leg (Deutsches Schauspielhaus Hamburg); The Skriker (Manchester International Festival); A Declaration from the People (National Theatre); Carmen Disruption, Game (Almeida); Sunspots, Say it with Flowers (Hampstead Theatre); Happy Days (Deutsches Schauspielhaus Hamburg); Ages (Old Vic Workrooms); 2071 (Royal Court/Deutsches Schauspielhaus Hamburg); The Forbidden Zone (Salzburg Festival/Schaubühne Berlin); Hopelessly Devoted (Paines Plough); The Wardrobe, The Kilburn Passion, The Riots(Tricycle); Sorrow Beyond Dreams (Burgtheater, Vienna); Blink (Traverse/Soho Theatre/International Tour); Lungs, Yellow Wallpaper (Schaubühne Berlin); The Sound of Music (Jordan Cultural Festival); There Has Possibly Been An Incident (Royal Exchange/Edinburgh/UK Tour); Moth (Hightide/Bush Theatre); The Changeling (Young Vic, with James Farncombe); Debris (Southwark Playhouse); Tommy (Prince Edward Theatre).
 

Chris Bartholomew | Sound Design

Chris is a sound designer and composer specialising in devised and physical theatre. Since graduating from the Guildhall School of Music in 2013, Chris has sound designed various productions including Light by Theatre Ad Infinitum (Ed. Fringe, Barbican Pit, UK Tour), Jack and the Beanstalk at The Park Theatre and Shooting With Light by Idle Motion (New Diorama, UK Tour, China Tour). As composer, Chris has composed for chamber ensembles, symphony orchestras and choirs, often blending contemporary production techniques and live electronics with traditional instrumentation. His work includes commissions for the London A Capella Festival, the Barbican and Portsmouth Festivities.  
 

Ramesh Meyyappan | Choreographer

Ramesh is a theatre creator who uses a mix of visual and physical theatre styles to continually develop and extend his theatrical visual vocabulary, his latest production Buttery extended his practice to encompass puppetry. “Meyyappan's superb, simple, deeply emotive aesthetic is a very welcome addition to Scottish theatre" (Sunday Herald). His solo performances and collaborations have toured nationally & internationally to much critical acclaim. Twice winner of Best Actor Life! Theatre Awards (Singapore), Snails and Ketchup (2012 Cultural Olympiad – Unlimited) nominated for a Total Theatre Award. He was part of the Programme Design Team for the BA Degree for Deaf, a new course for September 2015 at Royal Conservatoire of Scotland and is co-ordinating the Visual Theatre module within the degree programme.