Meet the Team

Tanushka Marah

Artistic Director and tutor

Tanushka Marah is a theatre director and the Artistic Director of ThirdSpace Theatre CIC. She also works as a Movement Director for companies such as the RSC, a dramaturg, writer and workshop leader.  She was an Artist in Residence at The Brighton Dome, and regularly works for Brighton People’s Theatre.

After completing a degree in Philosophy her early career began by founding Company:Collisions which toured for ten years all across the UK and abroad. She won two awards, The Genesis Young Director Award at the Young Vic and The Outstanding Theatre Award Brighton Fringe, her work has also been nominated for two awards. Her production of Medea, toured international festivals in Cyprus and Albania, representing British Classical Theatre. Two of her original works appeared in London’s International Mime Festival. Rest Upon The Wind sold out at Riverside Studios and Tristan Bates before touring extensively in the Middle East during 2012.


Angela El-Zeind

Drama Tutor

Angela is a performing arts lecturer, artistic director of Speak Up! Act Out! cic, and an Applied Theatre workshop facilitator.

Her practice involves working with theatre makers, community groups, charities, corporations, and educational institutes, as well as with individuals as a mentor and coach.

Angela teaches performing arts and production design at Northbrook College, and is a visiting performing arts lecturer at Portsmouth University. In 2019 she was the recipient of a travel Fellowship, researching how Improvisation can be used as a tool to support the wellbeing and mental health of young people.


Graham Shackell

Drama and Stage Combat Tutor

Graham works as a practitioner in theatre, circus, storytelling, and combat. He specialises in creating site-specific and outdoor spectacle events, including theatrical performance, circus, storytelling, film, and moving visual arts installations. He runs Sometime Soon Arts and is also a regular collaborator with the internationally-acclaimed large-scale performance company Periplum. Graham is also a freelance tutor, delivering workshops and educational projects with BTEC and HND students from Northbrook College and North Herts College. He also teaches masterclass residencies in Spain, Greece, France, and Italy with Pavilion Tours to performing arts students at A level, BTEC, and HND level.


Natasha Higdon

Drama Tutor

Natasha is a director, writer, author, and teacher of Drama. She is a Brighton-based practitioner, who currently teaches at BHASVIC College and ThirdSpace.

Natasha is an author and researcher for ‘We Teach Drama’, ‘Mousetrap’ and ‘Get Up Stand Up – The Bob Marley Musical’. Natasha specialises in physical theatre, total theatre, and cathartic community based projects.


Bex Milner

Drama Tutor

Bex is a Drama Facilitator, Theatre Maker and Educator. She has an MA in Applied Theatre from Goldsmiths and was recently awarded Arts Council Funding to develop her creative practice in physical theatre. She is passionate about creating spaces for children and young people to play and connect, for their voices to be heard and to access high quality theatre teaching. She spreads her work across Brighton, London and Newhaven. Working for Half Moon Theatre, The Unicorn Theatre, The Primary Shakespeare Company, and The Old Vic. She co runs her own theatre company in Newhaven called Haven Young Creatives.


Zoë Alexander

Drama Tutor / Tutor Assistant

Zoë started training with Windmill Young Actors (now ThirdSpace Theatre) when she was 13 and performed in many of their productions including their award-winning Agamemnon (Brighton Fringe, 2017). She has assistant directed two of ThirdSpace’s large scale productions: Romeo and Juliet (2019) and Bakkhai (Brighton Festival, 2023). Zoë studied at the University of Oxford and during her time there and participated in the filmmaking and dramatic societies where she directed a short film (The Classicist, 2022) and wrote and directed a play (Ariadne and the Minotaur, 2020). Since graduating, Zoe has been collaborating on various theatre and film projects in Brighton and now works for ThirdSpace as a drama teacher and teaching assistant. Zoë continues to participate in ThirdSpace Theatre as a student and performer/company member

 


Robert McCloskey

Drama Tutor / Tutor Assistant

Robert trained as an actor at Northbrook College for 3 years and then went on to train with ThirdSpace Theatre under Artistic Director Tanushka Marah. Robert has performed with the company in their productions of the Bakkhai and Romeo and Juliet and continues to work with the company as a performer and teacher. Robert has also trained across Europe and the UK at the Grotowski Institute, and with international theatre directors and teachers such as David Glass, John Wright, Paul Hunter, Euripides Laskaridis and companies Spymonkey, Theatre Re, and Studio Matejka, and worked with the director Stephen Harper’s company Corned Beef Croissant which acted as a major inspiration for Robert’s work.

Robert has primarily worked in devised and physical theatre, working with recent graduate companies from East 15 Drama School. Robert creates and directs his own work with his company Theatre Patchwork made up of other members of ThirdSpace Theatre – they have performed in both London and Brighton and received Must See and 5 star reviews, hailed as “perfectly achieved physical theatre” and continue to experiment with different forms of theatre in their Theatre Lab. Robert believes in play and creating a secure, collaborative environment where all voices are able to express themselves as the foundation for the emergence of creativity.


Gina Kawecka

Drama Tutor

Gina trained as an actor at the BAFTA Award winning Television Workshop, working as a professional actor on stage, TV & film. She is a lecturer at the Institute for Contemporary Theatre and has a wealth of experience in devising, directing and teaching; her continued and respected work with young people in Drama gives her the insight, sensitivity and sense of humour required to work with younger actors. A practical, positive approach, partnered with a creative and imaginative flair and a love for storytelling in all its dramatic forms. Her film work focuses on character and emotional tone. Passionate about inspiring teams toward a shared vision, and thinking creatively around both content and form. Her first short film ‘Plaster’ was officially selected for film festivals in the UK, Sydney & Mumbai.


Kirsty Martin

Choral designer / Vocal Tutor

Kirsty specialises in choral design for theatre, choral arrangements and composition, facilitating group composition through improvisation, and collaborative work with instrumentalists.

Kirsty has been the Choral Designer for several ThirdSpace  productions and has also worked with Brighton People’s Theatre, New International Encounter Theatre, The Albany, London, Brighton Festival and Brighton Fringe.

Kirsty was a secondary school teacher for many years and is the founding Artistic Director of Hullabaloo Community Quire. She also runs Bards and Ballads Choral Theatre projects in Brighton, London and Cambridge as well as Hubbub Song Hub in Brighton and Raise the Roof Community Choir in London.


Dave Barnstorm

General Manager & Producer

Dave is an experienced producer, change manager, relationship manager, administrator, events and project coordinator having worked in the corporate consultancy and charity sectors, with a history as an organisational lead in the theatrical and arts industry.

He left his Operations and Facilities Manager role at The So & So Arts Club due to COVID-19, and worked with Winston’s Wish from February 2021 to December 2022. Having implemented and change-managed a new method of service delivery, he left Winston’s Wish to join Plain Numbers as Partnerships & Services Manager.

Before moving to Brighton, he was a theatre director trained at the King’s Head Theatre on the Resident Directors’ Scheme and is an Olivier-nominated associate director for King’s Head’s La Boheme at Trafalgar Studios in 2016. He has won awards and received critical acclaim for his directing work including The Soul of Wittgenstein and The Yellow Wallpaper and ran his own theatre company, Another Soup for over 7 years.


The Board of Directors

Our leadership is made up of young people and industry professionals from both the arts and wider sectors, from diverse backgrounds.

Emily Bignell – Head of HR

Hannah Coxeter – Youth Worker and B.Fest founder

Imber Eames-Dorkings – ThirdSpace Theatre company member, freelance creative, and writer

Dulani Kulasinghe – Member of B&H Council’s Anti-Racist Education team, teacher, and writer

Ruth Lass – Actor and member of the International Solidarity Committee at Equity

Tanushka Marah – freelance theatre director and Artistic Director of ThirdSpace Theatre

Robin Morley – Managing Director & Artistic Director of Enchanted Places and Artistic Director of Magnetic Events

Vito Taskin – ex-ThirdSpace Theatre company member, currently attending Royal Central School of Speech and Drama