Headlong Origins Artists Announce Anna Berentzen, Callum Berridge, Sam Hardie, Mandeep Kaur Glover + Emily Ling Williams

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Today, Anna Berentzen, Callum Berridge, Sam Hardie,  Mandeep Kaur Glover and Emily Ling Williams have been announced as the Headlong Origins Artists for 2022. Now entering its third year, the programme aims to celebrate and nurture early career theatre makers from across the UK, outside London. 

These five artists will be invited to work closely with the company for 12 months, during which they will receive mentorship from the Artistic Director and the producing and creative team. The artists will join Headlong’s R&D sessions and workshops, engage with rehearsal processes and see work from theatres across the UK, as they develop their own work and artistic vision.

Callum Berridge is a director, theatre-maker and dramaturg with a special interest in new writing which explores contemporary working-class identity/ies, social mobility and social justice, particularly in the East Midlands and South Yorkshire, reflective of his own experience growing up. Underpinning his work is a desire to be overtly political, formally experimental, and a collaborative, co-authored approach to making theatre. He has previously worked with Not Too Tame Theatre Company and Derby Theatre, and extensively with Sheffield Theatres, and is currently one of its Bank Cohort 2022/23 supported directors.

Emily Ling Williams is a director and dramaturg from Sussex. Her theatre directing credits include: The Full Works, The Key Workers Cycle (Almeida Theatre), Text Me When You’re Home, 5 Plays (Young Vic); Swallow, 16 (Lemon House Theatre); Lucky Cigarette (New Earth Theatre); GYSB, Tuesday at the Library, A Perpetual State of Happiness, Good Trouble (Moongate Productions); Appropriate (RWCMD); Miss Julie (LAMDA); Preach (Rose Bruford); and Turbines (Paines Plough/ RWCMD/ Gate Theatre). 

Emily’s Dramaturg credits include: Endurance (HOME Manchester); and Before You Go (New Earth Theatre) 

As an Assistant Director her credits include: The House Of Shades (Almeida Theatre); Blood Wedding (Young Vic); The Meeting, The Chalk Garden (Chichester Festival Theatre); Black Mountain, Out Of Love, How To Be A Kid (Paines Plough/ Theatr Clwyd/ Orange Tree Theatre); and The Island Nation (Arcola Theatre).

Sam Hardie is a theatre maker and director from Fife whose work centres around play and community. She co-runs award-winning theatre company The PappyShow and has worked on shows including BOYS, GIRLS, CARE and What Do You See? as well as running workshops and programmes for the company around the UK.

Sam originally trained as a performer on the Acting: Collaborative and Devised Theatre Course at The Royal Central School of Speech and Drama. She is currently a Creative Practitioner for Stellar Quines, Imaginate's Accelerator Artist for 2022 and an Associate Artist at National Youth Theatre. Sam has made work, and directed and led community and engagement projects with organisations across the UK including The National Theatre Studio, English National Opera and Jackson’s Lane. She has facilitated workshops and taught at educational institutions throughout the UK including Royal Central School of Speech and Drama, St Mary’s University Twickenham, Performing Arts Studio Scotland (PASS), UEL and Rose Bruford.

Sam was awarded the Nicole Kidman bursary from the MGC Futures charity in 2021. 

Mandeep Kaur Glover is a British South Asian Director whose work is centred around telling stories from under-represented groups. She is dedicated to reaching audiences who have been traditionally excluded from the arts and exploring what it means to live in Contemporary Britain. Mandeep has a Masters in Contemporary British Theatre from University of Lincoln. Previously, Mandeep was the Resident Assistant Director at Curve supported by Weston Jerwood Creative Bursaries and is currently an Associate Artist for Feasible Ferret Theatre.

Mandeep’s directing credits include: a staged reading of Little India by Dilan Raithatha; Bower of Love by James Kerr; Zigger Zagger by Peter Terson; Professor Mapington for Pop Up Park, Wrong Brothers by Feasible Ferret Theatre; Terrible Troll Tales for Our Big GigLincoln; Christmas Train for Elsecar Heritage Railway; and The Bake Off, The French Waiters by BG Touring.

As an Assistant Director, Mandeep’s credits include: Our White Skoda Octavia directed by Sameena Hussain; Officer and a Gentleman directed by Nikolai Foster; Memoirs of an Asian Football Casual directed by Nikolai Foster; White Christmas directed by Nikolai Foster; Fiddler on the Roof directed by Sarah Ingram; Macbeth, Fashioning a City directed by Andy Reeves; and Lost Books directed by Mary Benzies.

Anna Berentzen is a director and theatre maker from Manchester. She studied at LIPA as an actor before moving into directing, training on the Young Creative course at the Royal Exchange.

In 2020 Anna co-founded Hawkseed Theatre Ltd with Hannah Donelon. Their aims are to support, develop, and celebrate new writing for theatre that raises the voices of those often under or misrepresented in theatre. In 2020, Anna directed seven R&Ds of new writing as part of Hawkseed Theatre’s Arts Council England funded project ROOT. This saw her develop new scripts for the stage, collaborating with actors, writers, and access consultants with whom she explored embedding access into new writing in innovative and creative ways. 

In 2022 Anna will direct A Very Odd Birthday Party by Hannah Donelon which will tour across England. Anna’s other directing credits include: TheSurvivors Guide To Living (Royal Exchange, The Module), Hers to Measure, In Minutes and Miles (North Wall Theatre, Catalyst).

Anna is passionate about developing sustainable approaches to creating theatre and creating work that actively engages with audiences who often face barriers when accessing the theatre. Anna is partially deaf and has first-hand experience of the barriers that deaf people face in theatre and the wider community. She is currently learning British Sign Language and in 2022 began training towards Level 3 BSL.

As an actor, Anna has appeared on stage and screen. She is also an award-winning singer, training in classical music and musical theatre before working more recently as a jazz and folk singer. As well as performing, Anna uses her love and knowledge of music to create rich soundscapes in theatre and inspire projects with local communities.

Previous Headlong Origins Artists have included: Gitika Buttoo, Maria Crocker, Nyasha Gudo,Alix Harris, Julia Head, Fionnuala Kennedy, Maisie Newman, Jack Nurse, Ellie Taylor and Sita Thomas. 

Headlong Origins is generously supported by Backstage Trust.

About Headlong
Headlongis one of the most ambitious and exciting theatre companies in the UK, creating exhilarating contemporary theatre: a provocative mix of innovative new writing, reimagined classics and influential 20th century plays that illuminate our world. Headlong make bold, ground-breaking productions with some of the UK’s finest artists. They take these industry-leading, award-winning shows around the country and beyond, in theatres and online, attracting new audiences of all ages and backgrounds. During an unparalleled period of global uncertainty, Headlong partnered with Century Films and BBC Arts to present Unprecedented, a series of critically acclaimed digital plays responding to the radical way that the world changed when the first lockdown was announced. Previous Headlong productions include Best of Enemies, Hedda Tesman, After Life, People Places and Things, Junkyard, The Nether, Pygmalion, This House, Richard III, Labour of Love.

Artistic Director and Joint CEO: Holly Race Roughan

Executive Director and Joint CEO: Lisa Maguire