The BADA faculty is comprised of many distinguished actors, directors, and leading teachers from Britain's foremost drama schools. Faculty members have included:
Ian Wooldridge—Dean
Wooldridge served as Artistic Director of the touring company of the Glasgow Citizens Theatre from 1978-84 and Artistic Director of the Royal Lyceum Theatre Company, Edinburgh from 1984-93. His many productions include the Merchant of Venice, Othello and Romeo and Juliet by Shakespeare, Arms and the Man by Shaw, Death of a Salesman and View from a Bridge by Arthur Miller, Three Sisters by Chekhov, Tartuffe by Moliére and The House of Bernarda Alea by Lorca. He has taught extensively for BADA, of which he became Dean in 1996, and for the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama.
Norman Ayrton
Appointed Assistant Principal of LAMDA (The London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art) in 1954, Ayrton served as Principal from 1966-72. He has worked extensively as a teacher and director in Australia and the United States where he joined the faculty of the Juilliard School at Lincoln Center in New York in 1974. He has been guest director at many universities and festivals.
Mick Barnfather
A key member of Theatre de Complicitè, Barnfather trained with Desmond Jones, Philippe Gaulier and Monika Pagneux. For Theatre de Complicitè he has performed in The Visit, Food and Studd, Please, Please, Please and The Lives of Lucie Cabrol which had two seasons at the Shaftesbury Theatre and went on to tour in the UK and Europe, Chicago and the Lincoln Centre in New York. He has worked with Toucan Theatre Company, directed plays for the Hot House Theatre and appeared many times on television. He has appeared in Ionesco's The Chairs at The Royal Court Theatre and on Broadway.
Selina Cadell
Cadell has starred in many Royal National Theatre productions, including As You Like It, The Cherry Orchard, The Duchess of Malfi, The Madness of George III, Pericles and Stanley in which she also starred with Anthony Sher in New York. She has also performed in A Flea in her Ear and Uncle Vanya for the Birmingham Repertory Company, and has participated in ACTOR tours throughout the United States.
Christopher Cook
Cook is a broadcaster and journalist who has written, presented and produced many arts, feature and documentary programmes for television including Kaleidoscope and Critics Forum and the World Service. He has produced and presented several documentary programmes for television including Camerons Country, The Philpott File and Yesterday's Witness for the BBC and The Writing on the Wall for Channel 4. Publications: The Lion and the Dragon: British Voices from the China Coast (Hamish Hamilton 1985), the Dilys Powell Reader (OUP 1991) and Genetics & Health co-authored with Dr. Ron Zimmerman (Nuffield Trust 2000).
Paola Dionisotti
Dionisotti has starred in many productions for the National Theatre and the Royal Shakespeare Company, including Camino Real (RSC), Measure for Measure (RSC), The Taming of the Shrew (RSC), The Goldoni Trilogy (National), The Wandering Jew (National), Moscow Gold (RSC), Richard II (National) and Ninagawa's production of Peer Gynt. She has also starred in The Relapse at the Chichester Festival and King Lear at the Old Vic. Her movies include The Sailor's Return and Sakharov.
Lynn Farleigh
Recent work for the RSC includes The Prince of Homburg and The Family Reunion for the RSC at Stratford and on tour, including the US. She has starred in The Daughter in Law at Theatre Clwyd, A Voyage Round My Father, Macbeth, and The Tempest for the English Shakespeare Company. At the RNT she has starred in The Mysteries, The Crucible, Inadmissable Evidence and Brand by Ibsen. Also for the RSC she has starred in The Winters Tale, Julius Caesar, and The Homecoming by Harold Pinter which also played on Broadway. TV work includes Pride and Prejudice, and two series of Wycliffe and the film A Fairytale A True Story.
John Gorrie
Gorrie has worked extensively for the BBC and Britain's independent television companies. For the BBC he has directed several Wednesday Plays, Plays for Today, and Plays of the Month. He directed and wrote the series Edward VII starring Timothy West, seen on PBS in the USA. In addition he wrote and directed Lillie, the story of Lillie Langtry also seen on PBS. He has directed several episodes of Rumpole of Bailey and also three Shakespeare plays for BBC TV, Macbeth, Twelfth Night and The Tempest. Recently, he directed Helen Mirren in Cause Celebre, a number of Ruth Rendell mysteries, episodes of the Sherlock Holmes series and also Coronation Street and Eastenders.
Henry Goodman
Trained at RADA, Goodman spent many of the early years of his professional career in South Africa. He returned to England to join the Royal Shakespeare Company and appeared in The Comedy of Errors for which he won the Best Newcomer Award in 1983. He starred in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof and After the Fall at the Royal National Theatre and won the Best Supporting Actor Award in 1992 for his performance as the original Roy Cohn in Angels in America. In 1993 he won the Olivier Award as Best Actor in a Musical for his role in Assassins by Stephen Sondheim, and in 1994 he was nominated as Best Actor of the Year for his performance in Hysteria at the Royal Court Theatre. He starred in Broken Glass by Arthur Miller at the Royal National Theatre and in the West End, in Hysteria and Art at the Wyndhams Theatre, in Guys and Dolls at the Royal National Theatre and most recently as Shylock in Merchant of Venice also at the Royal National Theatre.
Jessica Higgs
Higgs studied at Central School of Speech and Drama prior to working as a freelance Voice Teacher. She has worked on many productions in London and elsewhere including the musical "Mamma Mia". She has taught Mountview Theatre School, Middlesex University and Rose Bruford College and has directed a number of productions for Tandem Theatre Company.
Jackie Snow
Snow trained as a dancer, dance teacher, and choreographer and subsequently trained at the Guildhall School as a teacher of movement for actors. She has taught ballet, Graham Technique and Gymnastics and is a member of the American Academy of Dance. Taught at LAMDA, is a member of the Movement Faculty at the Guildhall School of Music and is Master of Combat for The Globe.
Diana Quick
Having starred in Lear and The Sea by Edward Bond at the Royal Court, Quick has also played Beatrice-Joanna in The Changeling and Anne Bonney in Anne Bonney and Mary Read by C.P. Gooch at the RSC. At the National Theatre, she starred in Plunder and played Cressida in Troilus and Cressida. Quick also appeared in Phaedra Brittanica by Racine/Tony Harrison, played Olympia in Tamburlaine and Peggy in Map of the World. Her movies include Max Mon Amour directed by Oshima, and she starred in television's Brideshead Revisited. She regularly performs her one-woman show, Woman Destroyed, based on the work of Simone de Beauvoir.
Fiona Shaw
Shaw won the Actress of the Year Award in 1989 for her performance in Electra, directed by Deborah Warner. She has starred in many roles for the Royal Shakespeare Company, including Katherine in Taming of the Shrew. For the Royal National Theatre, she starred in The Good Person of Setzuan and for the Old Vic she starred as Rosalind in As You Like It. She gave an award-winning performance in Machinal at the Royal National Theatre, directed by Stephen Dalory, and starred as Richard in Richard II, directed by Deborah Warner and Way of the World, directed by Phyllida Lloyd also at the Royal National Theatre. She starred in the highly acclaimed Hedda Gabler, directed by Deborah Warner and filmed by the BBC. Her movies include My Left Foot, Mountains of the Moon, Three Men and a Little Lady, Cloak and Diaper, co-starring Kathleen Turner and Dennis Quaid, and Super Mario Bros. She has taught regularly for BADA in both London and Oxford. She recently performed The Waste Land on BBC television and various theatres in Canada and the United States and made her directorial debut with Widowers' Houses for the Royal National Theatre.
Deborah Warner
Warner was voted Director of the Year in 1988 for Titus Andronicus for the Royal Shakespeare Company and also in 1989 for Electra. She directed King Lear and The Good Person of Setzuan for the Royal National Theatre and then directed Fiona Shaw in Hedda Gabler for the Abbey Theatre, Dublin and in London. After this she directed Coriolanus at the Salzburg Festival, Wozzeck for Opera North, Don Giovanni at Glyndebourne and Footfalls at the Garrick Theatre. She recently directed Richard II for the Royal National Theatre and The Waste Land on Television and stage.
Mark Wing-Davey
Wing-Davey served as Artistic Director for the Actors Centre 1998 - 2002. He directed West Side Story in South Africa for the Spier Festival. His Sundance Theatre Lab 2000 workshop production of 36 Views became a co-production between Berkeley Rep and New York's Public Theatre, for which he was nominated for the 2002 Lucille Lortel award. In the States he also directed the original 10 actor LA workshop of Anna Deveare Smith's House Arrest and Angels in America for ACT in San Francisco, Oleanna at Seattle Rep, The Visit at the Milwaukee Rep and Troilus and Cressida in Central Park. He won an Obie Award and LA Drama Critics Dramalogue Award for his production of Mad Forest. Mark has taught regularly for BADA and at Yale University, Barnard College, and NYU.
Leo Wringer
Wringer recently starred in Deborah Warner's Medea in Dublin and in London's West End, in The Odyssey for the Gate Theatre, and in The Comedy of Errors for Royal Shakespeare Company tour of England, Ireland, Mexico City, San Francisco, and Indian sub-continent. He appeared in Antony and Cleopatra at the National Theatre with Helen Mirren and Alan Rickman and played the title role in Woyzeck at Bristol Old Vic; Mirabell in The Way of the World at Theatre Royal York; Camillo in The Winter's Tale directed by Simon McBurney for Theatre de Complicite. His movies include The Changeling, The Kitchen Toto and Max Loves Alice.