Theatre Producer | Melissa Dean

The Pleasance Theatre and Southwark Playhouse

In 2013 I went to the Edinburgh Fringe for the first time and saw a play called Banksy: The Room In The Elephant, a moving piece of political theatre directed by Theatre Uncut's Emma Callander. She told me that every year since 2011 Theatre Uncut have commissioned leading and emerging playwrights to create short plays that tackle political and social issues. They then release these plays, rights free, for anyone to perform anywhere, creating theatrical mass action events that engage people all over the world with the issues at the heart of the plays. So far over 6,000 people in 26 countries across 4 continents have been part of Theatre Uncut.

Emma encouraged me to stage my own readings for their next round of scripts. So on returning to London I started BAREtruth Theatre Company and produced the plays at The Pleasance Theatre, London and Southwark Playhouse.

In 2015 I went on to produce Little Stitches at the Arcola Tent, Theatre 503 and The Gate. This was my stepping stone into professional theatre producing.

Stepping Into Producing

The rehearsed readings took place at Southwark Playhouse and Pleasance Theatre, London September 2013

BAREtruth: Theatre Uncut

- Writers included -

Tanika Gupta

Mark Thomas

Clara Brenan Neil LaBute

Kieran Hurley

Tim Price

Davey Anderson

Melissa was a driving force in making these important and critically acclaimed pieces of drama that furthered social justice and the protection of at-risk young women and girls in the United Kingdom.

Dexter Dias QC, human rights lawyer and author of The Ten Types of Human

Little Stitches

137,000 women in the UK are living with the consequences of female genital mutilation. Little stitches looks into the human stories behind the facts and figures.