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Ceridwen Theatre Company (CTC) produce professional, high quality arts experiences for audiences and clients around the UK.

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We make theatre shows, specialising in new writing and immersive experiences, for all sorts of venues that inspire us creatively - theatres, caves, forests, historic buildings, steam trains, museums and more. We provide creative services to companies and individuals for a wide variety of events including bespoke murder mysteries, historically costumed interpretation, themed entertainment evenings, live and online workshops, online events as well as corporate and medical roleplay.

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We are a female-led, not-for-profit company with proud Welsh roots and take our name from a legendary female figure in Welsh folklore - the goddess Ceridwen. At the helm we have Company Directors Helena Devereux, Gemma Mann and Nadia Devereux, alongside Artistic Director Vivien Lesley Jones. 

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Freelancers are the backbone of the arts industries and we are proud to work with talented independent artists to create our work.

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Since forming in 2014 we've created 8 new productions, received numerous commissions from theatre, councils, museums & heritage venues to create new work and been successful in securing funding from Arts Council England.

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"Ceridwen, according to Welsh legends and folklore, was a white witch or goddess, and is considered to be the goddess of poetry, inspiration and of the cauldron of transfiguration." ​

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The Ceridwen Theatre Company family includes our trading arms Zoom Through History and InterAct Imaginations

Also in the CTC family
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ZTH provide specialist actors for online and in-school workshops, as well as working with some of the UK's leading heritage attractions on their education, entertainment and corporate events.

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IAI provide top quality children's entertainment and family arts experiences. Work includes walkabout entertainment, children's parties, drama and arts & crafts workshops, as well as the popular seasonal 'Elf to Yourself' visits and Day Out with Thomas.

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Here's a little bit about our core team. We work with highly experienced and talented freelancers on all of our projects.

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Helena Devereux
Company Director
Creative Producer

Helena is a co-founder of Ceridwen Theatre Company and now serves as our Creative Producer. She has also been involved in most of our projects as either an actor, director, producer or project manager. Helena also works freelance in all of these capacities.

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Helena recently co-directed our ACE funded R&D of Monarch's Anonymous. Helena produced our productions of The Snow Queen, Peter Pan, Neverland Underground, Macbeth: a Mind Tormented and many more. 

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As an actress Helena has worked on Danny Boyle's film Yesterday as well as BBC TV series Pitching In. 

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In 2020, as an independent producer Helena was successful in gaining Arts Council England funding to run 'Hive Mind: Skills & Ideas sharing', a project working alongside other producers to share knowledge.

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Helena is an experienced workshop leader and regularly works for the Coram Shakespeare Schools Foundation. Other work includes running Masterclasses in Acting for PQA Academy Cheltenham and offering acting tuition to private individuals.

 

Helena holds a PGCE (PCET). She also holds an MA in Acting from East 15 Acting School. Other qualifications include a BA Hons in Dance and Drama, Business and Administration (Level 2) and British Sign Language (Level 1).

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Nadia Devereux
Company Director
Manager of Zoom Through History

Nadia is thrilled to have recently been made a company director for Ceridwen Theatre Company. Nadia has been a member of Ceridwen's core actor team since it's creation. 

 

She trained at East 15 Acting School and graduated in 2016. Nadia has worked on stage, in the heritage industry and in education for over 15 years. She is equally passionate about all sectors and has managed to combine them perfectly when working at Hampton Court Palace, The Tower of London, Kensington Palace, The Natural History Museum, Tower Bridge and Dover Castle playing various people from history. In 2015 Nadia was part of the small team that performed on Bosworth Battlefield for The Reinterment of King Richard III. ''What Remains of Richard'' started life on a farm in Wales with a group of creatives working collaboratively to put the show together. As a direct result of the global pandemic Nadia co created our online historical platform called Zoom Through History. She also co-created an online sitcom on YouTube called Monarchs Anonymous which is about royals from history going through a vigorous therapy programme. Both Zoom Through History and Monarchs Anonymous have provided income and a creative outlet for the historical interpreters they have delivering the sessions and performing in the sitcom.

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Gemma Mann
Company Director
Company Manager

Gemma Mann is Company Director of Ceridwen Theatre Company. 

 

Gemma is an accomplished practitioner and performer specialising in comedy and children’s entertainment. 

 

Gemma trained in Theatre and Performance at Glyndwr University and has contributed extensively to Ceridwen productions, as a founder member, both on and off the stage. 

 

She played Elizabeth Woodville in our seminal production What Remains of Richard which featured at the Reinterment of King Richard III as well as Lady MacDuff in Macbeth: A Mind Tormented. She has performed in every single Ceridwen murder mystery as well as writing several. Recently she played Smee in Hook and Pan’s Adventures in the Garden at Castle Bromwich Historic Garden’s which she also fight directed.  She was also a visiting practitioner for our Monarchs Anonymous R&D.  

 

Gemma can often be seen entertaining crowds as Rusty or Dusty; characters we provide for Heritage Railways’ Day Out with Thomas events. You may even see her expertly turning balloons into steam engines while she does it. 

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Vivien Lesley Jones
Artistic Director

Vivien is a co-founder of Ceridwen Theatre Company and has been our Artistic Director from the start. She has been involved in most of our projects as a freelance director or producer. Vivien is skilled at seeking out opportunities for the company and negotiating with venues and partners. She also directs for other companies. 

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Additionally, Vivien works as a freelance director, producer and project manager. She is also a lecturer in Performing and Production Arts at Coleg Cambria.

 

Recent directing credits for Ceridwen are ‘Hook and Pan’s Adventures in The Gardens’and ‘Talk Like A Pirate Day’ in Castle Bromwich Hall Gardens, ‘Murder on The Forest Express (a murder mystery at Dean Forest Railway), ‘Neverland Underground’ and ‘Armistice’ in Clearwell Caves and ‘Macbeth’, ‘Peter Pan’ and ‘The Snow Queen’ at The Albany Theatre, Coventry. 

Vivien also directed ‘As You Like It’ in the grounds of Ludlow Castle and Harold Pinter’s ‘The Collection’ for Here To There Productions and will be directing Natalya Vorozhibit’s ‘Bad Roads’ for them, in the Midlands and in the Ukraine, in 2022.

 

During lockdown Vivien was involved in creating various online projects including our Zoom Show ‘T’was the Night Before Christmas’ and is the manager for Zoom Through History’s online commissions from Historic Royal Palaces 2021/22.

 

Vivien has been the Project Manager/Producer for commissions from various theatres, libraries, Museums & Heritage Railways, including directing ‘What Remains of Richard’ for the Edinburgh Fringe and at Bosworth Battlefield and ‘Hell Was Passchendaele’ at the National Museum, Cardiff.

 

Vivien holds a PGCert (Directing Text with Young People) from Royal Central School of Speech and Drama, a PGCE (Special Educational Needs) and a BA (Hons) Psychology with Sociology. She is an experienced teacher of KS’s 1 to 5, specialising in behaviour management for Primary teachers and teaching pupils with ALN / SEND and also Performing and Production Arts in Secondary schools and FE Colleges.

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Joshua Poole
Company Director
Manager of Zoom Through History
Company Administrator

Joshua has been part of Ceridwen Theatre Company’s Core Team since 2018. He was appointed Director in 2023.

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Some of Joshua's earlier roles with Ceridwen include Assistant Director on Peter Pan at the Albany Theatre. 

Kai/Jack Frost in The Snow Queen at the Albany Theatre. 

 

Since 2020 he has co-managed Zoom Through History and is Research and Design Lead. These role includes writing & delivering workshops, researching historical topics, designing content and performing at events in collaboration with the heritage organisations we work with.  

 

Joshua trained at the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama and graduated in 2016.  Since then he has been an actor, director, writer and educator. His work includes credits from: BBC One, BBC Two, CBS, Netflix, Shakespeare’s Globe, Theatre 503 and The Kings Head, Islington.

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He has also worked as a freelance historical interpreter since 2017 and has played everyone from a Chimney Sweep to King James I.  

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Joshua and Nadia are the managers of Zoom Through History and the team has educated nearly eight thousand school children.

 

Since 2021 they have been the inaugural supplier of online education to Historic Royal Palaces.

 

Other collaborations include with The Natural History Museum, The Royal Parks, The London Museum of Water and Steam, St. Paul's Cathedral and The London Transport Museum.

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Joshua is also Company Administrator.  

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Dr Katrina Marchant
Associate Artist

Katrina earned her PhD in early modern literature and culture from the
University of Sussex in 2015. Her thesis – ‘Things “Necessary” and “Unnecessary”: Trash and Trifles in Early Modern  England’ – illustrates how the
deployment of the terms trash and trifles in early modern England can be productively used to trace the shaping of the Protestant English commonwealth as a distinct, secure and valuable entity in an unstable and increasingly global post-Reformation world.

 

She is the creator of the YouTube channel “Reading the Past”. Every week she researches, writes, films, edits, uploads and promotes historical education content to the channel. The channel explores, among other things, biographies (particularly relating to women’s history), significant moments in our past and material and textual history. “Reading the Past” has  90,000+ subscribers, 6.9M total views and 1.5 million hours of watch time.

 

Katrina has worked as a freelance Globe Education Lecturer at Shakespeare’s
Globe, in this role she wrote and delivered lectures, workshops and tours for visiting higher education students. In these sessions she explored theatrical,
social, material and literary history to provide context for the reconstructed
spaces on the Globe site and the plays by William Shakespeare that are
performed there.


She is also an educator (for primary and secondary aged visiting school groups)
and live costumed historic interpreter at various heritage sites for Past
Pleasures. As an educator, she delivers curriculum specific sessions on the
historic events connected to the specific site; for example, leading key stage 3
sessions at the Natural History Museum as the nineteenth-century
palaeontologist Mary Anning. Her interpretation work takes the form of first-person performance (both scripted and improvised) as various individuals from the span of British History; again, these individuals will be connected to the
site in which the performance is taking place (i.e. representing Sarah Churchill,
Duchess of Marlborough and companion of Queen Anne in scripted scenes and
improvised “meet and greet” sessions at Hampton Court Palace).

 

She was an expert contributor for 5Select’s “Lady Rochford”; a documentary
about the life and legacy of Jane Boleyn, Lady Rochford (Anne Boleyn’s sister-

in-law), which was presented by Tracy Borman and that first aired on 4th
December 2021.

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