Stillpoint produces the work of Rachel Blackman with a core team of collaborators and associates. Geoff Hense is head of Technical Management, Emma Kilbey and Emma Roberts are regular collaborators and Stillpoint is produced by Lucy Moore. We create powerful theatre that combines integral physical language with mischievous humour and cinematic intimacy.
The Company
Rachel Blackman Rachel Blackman is an award winning performer, actress, theatre maker and Artistic Director of Stillpoint. She created and performed the critically acclaimed Triptych: Three Attempts at Love for the Brighton Festival and Fringe in 2011. Triptych includes: The Growing Room, the award winning Steal Compass, Drive North, Disappear, and The Art of Catastrophe.
In 2012 Rachel begins work on a fourth Stillpoint piece with musician / performer Nick Norton-Smith as part of Fuel Theatre’s artist residencies at the former Dartington College in February. Fuel have also commissioned Stillpoint to create a short piece for The Southbank Centre’s Women of the World Festival as part of the Phenomenal People project in March.
In May 2012, Rachel and long time Stillpoint collaborator Emma Kilbey premiere their micro project The Department of Unreliable Memoirs (DUM) as part of The Nightingale Theatre’s Dip Your Toe program at the Brighton Fringe Festival and then again as part of Campsite at the PULSE and Greenwich Festivals in Summer 2012.
Rachel trained (WAAPA) and worked as an actress in Australia before relocating to England where she is now based. Recent credits include Billy Cowie’s Ghosts in the Machine, the improvised Katy & Rach (Jibba Jabba Productions), the Ornate Johnson’s The Ministry of Biscuits and Mississippi, she also played Charra in Matrix Revolutions (Time Warner, AOL). Earlier solo work, Aperture won best script at the Sydney Fringe Festival for TRS and an ABC Radio National commission. Rachel lives in Brighton, England with her quixotic boyfriend and uncommonly relaxed cat.
Geoff Hense
Geoff Hense is a lighting designer, composer, sound designer and production manager and has collaborated on all Stillpoint productions to date, designing lights for The Art of Catastrophe, Steal Compass, Drive North, Disappear and The Growing Room. He is also technical manager for Triptych: Three Attempts at Love. He graduated with a BA in Music (First Class Hons.) from Chichester University and then went on to graduate from an MA Music Design for the Moving Image at Bournemouth University.
Geoff has worked extensively with the Brighton International Festival and Edinburgh Fringe Festival, toured nationally and internationally both as a designer and technician and co-founded award-winning venue Upstairs at Three and Ten in Brighton. He has recently worked with Fuel/The Future Is Unwritten’s Brighton ‘Till I Die, and the Fringe First Award winning Meeting Joe Strummer, The Factory’s Boiling Frogs at The Southwark Playhouse and Stewart Lee’s If You Prefer A Milder Comedian, Please Ask For One, at the Leicester Square Theatre. He is currently Technical Manager at The Firestation Centre for Arts and Culture in Windsor and is based in London.
Emma Kilbey Emma gained a BA Honours English degree from Exeter University. After abandoning a career in journalism writing for national magazines and newspapers, she gave in to the little voices and did a post-graduate acting course at Arts Educational.
She now combines acting with directing, teaching, singing, voiceover work, corporate consultancy and script writing. Theatre highlights include: Polly Garter in ‘Under Milk Wood’, Lorraine Sheldon in ‘The Man Who Came to Dinner’, the Wife of Bath in ‘The Canterbury Tales’, Stella in ‘Whale Music’, the title role in the all-female Soho Group’s ‘Macbeth’, Mrs Malaprop in ‘The Rivals’, Ingrid in ‘Blavatsky’s Tower’, Margaret in ‘My Mother Said I Never Should’, Alex in ‘On the Verge’, and most recently Miss Lassiter in the Mitchell/Nixon musical ‘The Opinionmakers’.
She comprised one half of character comedy duo Kilbey & Larkin (Pleasance, Edinburgh Festival, London comedy circuit) was arstistic director of Sweet Spot Theatre Company and is a founding member, performer and writer for Brighton-based Radio City Theatre (Theatre Royal, Brighton) www.radiocitytheatre.com. Shift is Emma’s first self-penned solo show, loosely inspired by her time as a Samaritan www.foundrygroup.co.uk
Radio and voiceover include Radio One jingles, Cheddar Gorge audioguide, ‘Kath and Kim’ ringtone catchphrases and Lucy in ‘The Country Wife’ for Radio 3. TV experience includes ‘EastEnders’ and ’The Stand-Up Show’ for Live TV. Directing highlights: ‘The Fastest Clock in the Universe’ by Philip Ridley, ‘Talk’ by Mark Wilson, ’Baby with the Bathwater’ by Christopher Durang, ‘The Caretaker’ by Harold Pinter, ‘A Wedding Story’ by Bryony Lavery and ‘The No 9 Bus to Utopia’ by David Bramwell. For Still point, Emma was director for ‘Steal Compass, Drive North, Disappear’ as well as director and dramaturg for ‘The Growing Room’. Emma co-created and performs in The Department of Unreliable Memoirs for Stillpoint that was created with commission money by White Night and the Nightingale Theatre.
Emma Roberts is a freelance performer, director and Stillpoint associate artist. Emma co-created and directed The Art of Catastrophe with Rachel Blackman in 2007/8 and more recently collaborated on the movement score for the remount of Triptych: Three Attempts at Love.
Recent projects include Out of The Darkness, with Julian Marshall and her own ongoing investigation into improvisation as a performance language: Shaping The Invisible. (‘Emma Roberts has a sublime presence’ Total Theatre). Prior to this, Emma began her professional path as an actress and worked extensively in film, (Persuasion BBC films, Prime Time Focus Films), TV (Revelations) and theatre. She studied physical theatre with David Glass, Dah theatre, Piezan Kozla, and Complicite and has a rich
background in dance, with an extensive knowledge in Laban and improvisation.
Emma is an accredited 5 Rhythms teacher and movement therapist and runs classes and workshops nationally and internationally. She also lectures in performing arts at Sussex Downs College where she has a residency investigating movement languages. She lives in Lewes with her son Finn and partner Mark.
Lucy Moore has supported artists to create, fundraise, tour and promote their work in various roles within a number of arts organisations including ArtsAgenda, Battersea Arts Centre and the Arts Council England, South East.
Lucy has produced work with award winning companies including Inspector Sands and Stillpoint Theatre and booked and project managed tours for Rotozaza, Hydrocracker and Inconvenient Spoof. In 2011, Lucy produced ‘Portrait of the Ordinary Festival-goer’ with Inspector Sands, at the Southbank Centre and Hydrocracker’s ‘The New World Order’, co-produced with the Barbican and supported by Amnesty International at Shoreditch Town Hall.
Also in 2011, Lucy began work as Co-ordinator of Visual Arts London Strategy Group (VALS), the London group of the National Turning Point Network. Turning Point was created in 2006 by the Arts Council as a 10-year strategy to strengthen the visual arts in England. In 2012, Lucy will produce (with Ed Collier as Executive Producer) the final development stage of Inspector Sands’ new show ‘Mass Observation’, which premieres at the Almeida in July.
Ella Thompson is a composer and pianist. After graduating from Birmingham university in 2008 where she specialised in composition, ella began to move into sound design for theatre. In 2010 she produced a sound design for the Brighton Young actors performance of Huis Clos at Upstairs Three and Ten followed by sound research and design assistant for Stillpoints Steal Compass. Ella will also be working on Stillpoints sound design for its forthcoming production of The Growing Room.
