Meet the Associate Artists

Our Associate Artists are new, mid-career or established artists and companies who are developing and making theatrical work in the North West of the UK. Over a period of 18 months, we at The Dukes support those artists to reach their goals and aspirations.

Here are our new Associate Artists!

From Three Left Feet.

Elspeth is a creative practitioner and freelancer based in Lancaster; she is a producer, stage manager, performer and a prop, puppet & theatre maker. She is the director of Three Left Feet CIC, a theatre company which she founded in 2019 and has since produced multiple theatrical productions locally including A Christmas Carol (2019) in King Street Waterstones, Twelfth Night (2022) and The Wind in the Willows (2024) in Williamson Park, and The Magic Toyshop (2024) at Lancaster Castle, as well as collaborations with local organisations and festivals such as Lancaster Music Festival, Lancaster BID and Escape2Make. Three Left Feet strive to rethink storytelling by creating spellbinding, collaborative theatre and events which transform and transport audiences beyond their reality with an interest in site-sensitive work, retellings of classic tales, and an investment in employing and engaging with people and artists living and working in the North West.

Founded by Joel Phillimore.

“The north is full of stories.
Some you'll have heard.
Most you won't.
We'd never heard most of them until we found them.
And we're going hunting for more, like pigs snuffling through the ginnels, snickets and alleys of time.”

Ginnel Pigs is a fledgling theatre company based in Lancaster, founded by Lancastrian actor, Joel Phillimore. They are a Community Interest Company committed to supporting, growing and strengthening people’s access to, and participation in, the performing arts in the north.

Ginnel Pigs are currently developing a new piece of theatre about the Lancashire witch trials, adapted from Camille Ralphs’ collection of poems, ‘Malkin’.
www.ginnelpigs.com

Northern writer.

I am a Northern writer from a working-class background, and this informs my writing. Initially I trained as a Teacher of the Deaf at Manchester University and I have moved between teaching and theatre making for many years. Prior to writing I made original plays and inclusive cabaret nights with Disabled adults at the Dukes Theatre Lancaster. There I established Dukes Deaf Drama group and toured plays that were created and performed in British Sign Language.
In 2021 I completed an MA in Scriptwriting at Manchester Writing School and was a finalist in the Alfred Bradley Bursary Award with a radio drama called Driving Lessons and became part of Bush Theatres Emerging Writers group. An excerpt of my play Debbie Townsend Is a Slag was staged at HOME as part of Box of Tricks BOXFRESH showcase in 2023 and I am part of their current International Pen pals scheme.

I have a range of television drama and comedy projects optioned and in development with various production companies including Balloon, Lime Pictures, Pulse Films and New Pictures. I am a Channel 4 Screenwriting alumnae and a member of BAFTA Connect.
My writing is inspired by real people, lesser-heard voices and my hometown of Barnsley. I wite about family, the extraordinariness of ordinary people and my work often has an element of social justice. I see my writing as a form of activism.

Actor & Writer.

Christine trained at Rose Bruford College and started her career as a drama teacher, during which time she worked alongside BBC Schools radio on an in Education project with her students and the Perspectives Theatre Company. Her first job as an actor was here at the Dukes with the T.I.E company creating several devised shows and touring in schools throughout Lancashire. Further TIE work with Coventry Belgrade led to her first writing project, Handsome Terms (co – written with Alison Altman) to which school children attended the show on the Belgrade main stage instead of their school halls. 

She also joined the Women’s Theatre Group as an actor, a touring company which commissioned new writing. Then lots and lots of Theatre and TV and Radio. She returned to Lancaster in the late 80’s and has been in many shows here, becoming an Honorary patron in 2014. Her plays BEST GIRL, RACE FOR LIFE and KIN have been seen at the Dukes, the Pleasance Edinburgh, Hull Truck, Theatr Clywd, Alnwick Playhouse, Queen’s Hexham and Hope Mill Theatre and HOME in Manchester. Christine will be appearing at the Dukes, 53Two Manchester and Lawrence Batley, Huddersfield this spring in the premiere of A PINEAPPLE by Olivia Mace.
 

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Company guided by Adam Davies.

Animikii began life in 2014 as a vehicle to explore the blurring of lines between the mythological, the historical, and the modern experience. The company is guided by Adam Davies.

Their mission is to create a responsive and fearless international facing laboratory theatre company residing in the North West of England. Their work is experimental in process combining imaginative improvisation, weaved with new & existing writing, and dynamic physical devising to create theatre that is intense, immediate and fearless.

They were commissioned by The Lowry Theatre, Spot On Lancashire and Cheshire Rural Touring in 2016 and made their debut production Origins which premiered at The Lowry Theatre (2015) before playing the 'A Nation's Theatre' festival at The Southbank Centre (2016), touring to six rural touring venues and later earned the ‘Pick of the Fringe’ award (Voice Magazine) at Edinburgh Festival Fringe (2017). The play enjoyed further nationwide and international tours (2016-18). They then created The Kaspar Hauser Experiment, which toured nationally across 2022-23 and ran for a week at The Space in London earning critical acclaim and a Off-West End award nomination for best production in the IDEA (Immersive, Devised, Experimental and A-Typical) category.

A vital element of Animikii’s continued work in theatre practice centres around training, workshops & participation. This allows them to continue to create a rigorous and relevant expanded theatre practice in which to make work. Since 2015 they have engaged thousands of artists including students, professionals, and other UK communities. Their craft based training was created to bring regular training in body, voice and imagination to the North of England in a more affordable way. The training also invites a host of international artists from across the world to lead the work.