Nicola Hollinshead

Liverpool, Merseyside, England, UK

A working-class woman originally from Liverpool, with a background in professional theatre, my first encounter with theatre was as a member of Liverpool's Everyman Youth Theatre (EYT), with punk theatre director & performance artist Roger Hill. Here we were introduced to a range of innovative practices in community and participatory theatre-making including using improvisation and devising methods to create theatre, performing our shows in the main house. Initial involvement with political theatre with EYT was acting in a devised CND (Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament) Street Theatre with giant puppets of bombs and the CND symbol, which we performed in a shopping centre and then in Williamson Square in the city centre. I also worked on Suffer The Children, a devised production based on the Toxteth riots that took place in the city in 1981.