Claudette Bryanston

Bryanston has an MA in Contemporary Performance from Middlesex University.[3]

In 1983 she co-founded Classworks Theatre Company, Cambridge.[4] Classworks was initially the first youth theatre in Cambridge, meeting at the ADC Theatre[5] and securing the first patronage given by HRH Prince Edward Earl of Wessex.[6] Its productions toured to Germany, Finland, Poland and the Edinburgh Festival Fringe.[7] In 1988 it won the first ever award given by The Independent for Best Production with The Heart of a Dog, by Mikhail Bulgakov.[8]

Bryanston is the Artistic Director of Santé Theatre and Media company[9] which she founded in 2000. In 2003 she was appointed a Senior Research Fellow in Creativity and Performance at the Institute of Health at the University of Warwick.[10] From November 2008 to June 2009 she was also the Warwick University/Royal Shakespeare Company Fellow in Creativity and Performance.[11]

She was appointed Guest Director of the Master in Fine Arts in stage direction programme at Boston University in America[12] and has published academic articles on the practice of applied theatre.[13] She has worked closely with the English playwright Edward Bond, from whom she commissioned the play "The Children", directing its first performance in 2000.[14] She has also worked with English writers Mike Kenny[15] and Robin French[16] and American playwright Deborah Lake Fortson.[17][18] Bryanston has also been commissioned to direct productions by the Coventry Belgrade Theatre[19] which is well-known for developing the practice of theatre in education, and in the community.[20]

Bryanston's stage direction has been described as "visually incisive" by The Sunday Times and "extraordinary and impressive" by The Guardian.[21]