Nameshifter (Joseph Chance)
Joseph was born in Norwich – the city to which Will Kemp once jigged without stopping. His stage work has taken him from the RSC Swan to the Varscona Theatre Edmonton, Alberta; from Det Andre Teatret, Oslo to Sydney Opera House. He is the most recent Frater of The School of Night, having capered alongside them at the Edinburgh Festival and Soho Theatre, and also an associate Yellow Player in the Society of Strange. Most recently he has been performing as one corner of the ‘actual play’ quartet, The Apocalypse Players, whose improvised gaming tales can be found wherever you listen to your podcasts.
Joseph most recently revived the role of Puck in Propeller’s Midsummer Night’s Dream at the Mill at Sonning, having previously toured from Hampstead to Istanbul. He has performed in ten Improvathons, completing five full fifty-hour adventures, and is currently working on a one-man project about the man who killed Christopher Marlowe. Joseph was born in Norwich – the city to which Will Kemp once jigged without stopping.
Theatre credits include: The Woman in Black (West End); Jeeves & Wooster in Perfect Nonsense (National & International tour); Twelfth Night, The Comedy of Errors, The Taming of The Shrew & A Midsummer Night’s Dream (Propeller, National & International tours); Cyrano de Bergerac (Chichester Festival Theatre), H.P. Lovecraft’s Reanimator (Southwark Playhouse/Terror Season) and The Spanish Golden Age Season with the RSC.
TV & Film includes Wallander (BBC); Bloody Britain (BBC) and Vomica, winner of Best Short Film at the H.P. Lovecraft Film Festival, Portland, Oregon.q1
The Goatador (Alan Cox)
Alan Cox is an actor, improviser, director and teacher. After training at LAMDA, he spent several years with the RSC, National Theatre and Chichester Festival Theatre. Recent work includes: My Fair Lady (Frinton) Farm Hall (Jermyn Street) Take The Rubbish Out Sasha (Finborough) Uncle Vanya (Hampstead), Hamlet (Shakespeare Theatre of Washington), Opening Skinner’s Box (Improbable), Forty Years On (Chichester), The Divided Laing (Arcola). He has toured the US in The Caretaker, Frost/Nixon and Translations. He has been a regular collaborator with Howard Barker and The Wrestling School.
Alan is a regular participant in the Annual London 50 hour Improvathon, and has guested with Die Nasty in Edmonton, Alberta and Second City in Toronto. He has improvised across Great Britain, Italy, Germany, Poland, Ireland, and Canada. As a member of The School of Night: Improvised Shakespeare and other explorations he has played at the Edinburgh festival, the Milano Impro-Festival, Impro-Amsterdam, Edmonton Improvaganza, Latitude Festival, Bristol Jam, and at Elsinore Castle in Denmark. He has also directed at the Irish Repertory Theatre in New York.
Film and TV work includes: Magic Mike’s Last Dance, Say My Name, Contagion, Mrs. Dalloway, An Awfully Big Adventure, Young Sherlock Holmes, A Voyage Around My Father, The Odyssey, Midsomer Murders, Not only But Always, Housewife 49, John Adams, Lucan, The Good Wife and New Amsterdam.
The Troubador (Dylan Emery)
Dylan has been performing, teaching and directing improvised theatre and comedy for more than 20 years.
He is the co-creator of Olivier-award winning Showstopper! The Improvised Musical (www.showstopperthemusical.com) and a co-founder of the improvised sketch group Grand Theft Impro (www.grandtheftimpro.com) as well as being a member of The School of Night.
He appears regularly in London’s glittering West End, has performed at The National Theatre, The Royal Court, The Bristol Old Vic and many times at the Edinburgh Fringe; he has performed for various TV and radio programmes and hosted the BBC Radio 4 series of Showstopper! The Improvised Musical.
He primarily trained under Alan Marriott and Ken Campbell.
You can find him on Bluesky at @dylanmarkemery
Mandrake (Robert Mountford)
Robert is an actor, writer and director, trained at RADA where he won the Lilian Baylis Award and has worked in productions at the Royal Shakespeare Company, Shakespeare’s Globe, National Theatre and London’s West End as well as making many television appearances.
Most recently he played Aguecheek in Twelfth Night (Offie nomination Best Supporting Artist), Hastings in She Stoops to Conquer (both Orange Tree Richmond) and Don John in Much Ado About Nothing at the Globe. In fact most of his career has been spent in Much Ado About Nothing (RSC, Byre, Chester, Lamb Players, Globe).
In between Much Ado About Nothings he has appeared in The Habit of Art (NYC), alongside Jonathan Hyde in Howard Brenton’s ‘Cancelling Socrates’ and was in the national tour of Ian Hislop’s comedy ‘Spike’ (Milligan). In 2017 he was nominated at the UK Theatre Awards for House and Garden. His Solo Show – Vagabonds – My Phil Lynott Odyssey has played to sell-out audiences in Edinburgh, Dublin & London, he regularly appeared for Read not Dead at Shakespeare’s Globe and extensively toured the UK & United States.
Other Theatre Credits include: Much Ado About Nothing, Merchant of Venice (RSC), The Habit of Art, Into The Night, The Haunting of Alice Bowles (Original Theatre), All’s Well That End’s Well, The Wind in the Willows (Jermyn St Theatre/GSC), The Odyssey (JST), The Winter’s Tale, Romeo & Juliet (GSC), The Omission of the Family Coleman (Royal Theatre Bath), Anita & Me (Birmingham Rep), Betrayal (Salisbury Playhouse), Much Ado, As You Like It, Merlin, Hercules (Chester Open Air). For Jatinder Verma at Tara Arts he played Macbeth in Macbeth, Prospero in The Tempest, Stockman in Enemy of The People and Bassanio in Merchant of Venice (Tara Arts), The Black Album (National Theatre), Tagore’s Women, Gandhi & Coconuts, Bitched (Kali Theatre), Hamlet, As You Like It, Winter’s Tale (USA tours) East is East (Leicester Haymarket)
Television includes: North Square(Ch4), Holby City, Eastenders, Silent Witness, Torn, One Night, Casualty, Michael Wood’s History of India, Reverse Psychology (All BBC) London’s Burning (LWT), A &E (Granada)
Ganzfeld Man (Oliver Senton)
Oliver is a founder member of The School, and of Showstopper! The Improvised Musical, and an associate of Slung Low. Recent theatre Includes: Coriolanus (National Theatre), The Gifting (Leeds 2023), Philosophy of the World (In Bed With My Brother, Cambridge Junction) A Christmas Carol (RSC, Stratford), Beauty & The Beast (Rose Theatre Kingston) and Peter Pan Goes Wrong (Apollo West End & UK Tour).
Also: All’s Well That Ends Well (RSC), Mamma Mia! (Prince of Wales), The Mob (Orange Tree), The Scarecrow and his Servant (Southwark Playhouse), Twelfth Night, The Merchant of Venice (Theatre Royal Bury St. Edmunds), The Lady’s Not For Burning (Chichester), The Count of Monte Cristo (West Yorkshire Playhouse), Cosmic Trigger (Cockpit Theatre), The Tempest (Norfolk and Norwich Festival), Arsenic & Old Lace (Derby), Three Sisters (Harrogate), The Invention of Love (Salisbury), War Correspondents (UK Tour) and hundreds of improvised musicals with Showstopper! (and an Olivier award in 2016) .
He was in Daisy and Ken Campbell’s legendary 24-hour production, The Warp (1999-2000), has been a volunteer for the Scene & Heard children’s playwriting charity and has appeared in nearly 20 shows for Slung Low, including The Fairy Portal Camp (with the RSC), Flood (Hull City of Culture), Camelot: The Shining City (Sheffield Crucible), The White Whale (Leeds) and most recently All The Joy That You Can Wish, the opening ceremony of the Shakespeare North Playhouse.
TV/Film Includes: Trigger Point, Call The Midwife, Wimbledon, Should We Bomb Auschwitz?, Frankie & Emma, White Heat, Doctors, EastEnders, Casualty, Hollyoaks, My Dad’s The Prime Minister, Nuremberg, Cathedral, Sink and Seagull.
Radio: Over 40 recordings, including The Sherlock Holmes Casebook, Miss Marple, Bomber, Ben Hur, Roads To Freedom, Journy To The Centre of the Earth, Trodd en Bratt Say ‘Well Done You’ (two series), Showstopper!, Doctor Who adventures for Big Finish and four Robert Anton Wilson books for Audible/Hilaritas Press.