Jason
Maher Parkes
Jason
began his career in 1994 with the now sadly demised Belfast
Community Theatre and was lucky enough to be able to train
at the Lyric Theatre in Belfast. His first play Ring
o roses was performed in 1996 in which year he
also received his first theatrical acclaim - The McClintok
Award. He went on to read English and Drama at Cambridge University
during which time he directed many student and profit-share
productions and lost lots of money taking a play to the Edinburgh
Fringe. Whilst at Cambridge he was also member of a little
known comic troupe known as the Footlights. After Cambridge
he bummed around Europe for a while and wrote
a couple of plays. Since then he has gone on to direct numerous
plays including Waiting for Godot for the company
at Bath Theatre Royal, The Hunting of the Snark
and Spies for Cheltenham Everyman.
His own
plays include My Dark Rosaleen(1998), Me
and You in the Greatest Pub on Earth (2002), The
Bog Men(2003) and Don Quixote - The Last Knight
in La Mancha (2005). He has written a collection of
short stories, Cul-de-sac and poetry, The
Waves both of which are due to be published early in
2006.
He was
co-founder of Theatre Without Walls in 2002 which
as well as producing critically acclaimed professional theatre
productions undertakes corporate training and consultancy
contracts, devises education programmes and works with numerous
community groups including adults with learning difficulties,
recovering addicts.
In addition
to his theatre work Jason has held residencies at several
national museums and has just devised a literacy programme
for the National Arboretum at Westonbirt. His on going research
project on the positive effect that high level brain activities
such as creative writing can have on Alzheimers sufferers
won a Community Learning award in 2004.
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