About us

Artistic Directors:

Sara Masters

Sara trained at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama and worked as an actor before forming the award winning theatre company fervour in 2002. She joined iceandfire in 2004 producing all of its mainstage productions and creating its education and participation strands. Sara holds an MA in Human Rights from University College London. Plays for iceandfire include Separated; Bind; Getting On; Seven Years with Hard Labour (with Christine Bacon) and Listen to Me (with Christine Bacon) Sara is currently on maternity leave, after the birth of Nell on June 13, 2010.

Christine Bacon

Christine is originally from Australia, where she was an actor for many years until the Australian government’s actions towards asylum seekers and refugees urged her (and thousands of other Australians) to take action. She has a postgraduate degree in Political Science, has been involved in numerous grassroots campaigns, including Actors for Refugees Australia, where she remained one of the core members until she moved to the UK in 2004 to complete an MSc. in Forced Migration at Oxford University. She founded and runs iceandfire’s outreach network Actors for Human Rights. Plays for iceandfire include On the Record (with Noah Birksted-Breen); Rendition Monologues; The Illegals; Seven Years with Hard Labour (with Sara Masters); Broke; and Listen to Me (with Sara Masters)

Creative Producer:

Sara Doctors

Sara is a producer, writer, director and designer, working to critical acclaim in London, New York and on the festival circuit. She has produced and collaborated with The Old Vic Theatre, The 24 Hour Play Company, LIFT, Scarabeus and many others, and spent the last two years creating Molten Festival in East London. Sara graduated from Cambridge University in 2004 and is Director of Wicked Theatre.

Founding Artistic Director:

Sonja Linden

Sonja is an award winning playwright whose plays have been produced  in  theatres across the UK and the USA.  As writer in residence at the Medical Foundation for the Care of Victims of Torture (1997-2004) she created a testimonial and creative writing programme,  Write to Life, for their asylum seeker  and refugee clients. Her concern to make these voices public led to her founding of iceandfire theatre  in 2003. The company was launched with  the London premiere of  her play I  Have Before Me A Young Lady from Rwanda,  which was subsequently broadcast on Radio 4. The play  went on to have have   22 highly acclaimed productions in the United States and earned her a nomination for  best playwright in the Hollywood 2007 NAACP awards. Her most recent play for the company, Welcome to Ramallah, co-written with Adah Kay,  was  subsequently presented at a theatre festival in San Diego  in 2009. Other work  for iceandfire includes Crocodile Seeking Refuge and four documentary plays : Asylum Monologues, Asylum Dialogues, Palestine Monologues and  most recently  On A Clear Day You Can See Dover.  Previous plays include: Present Continuous, (Trouble and Strife), Call me Judas (Paines Plough),  The Jewish Daughter, sequel to Brecht’s The Jewish Wife (New End Theatre) and The Strange Passenger (Paines Plough and  Northern Stage USA).   Sonja stepped  down from her artistic director role in 2008 in order to focus more on her writing and now acts in a consultative capacity with the company as well as an associate writer.

Media & Communications Officer:

Charlotte George

Charlotte George began working part-time for iceandfire in November 2008, although her association with iceandfire’s outreach network Actors for Human Rights dates back to its original inception, as a volunteer for Actors for Refugees in Australia. Charlotte has also volunteered for ‘Spare Lawyers for Refugees’ film project Detention Remembered and for FilmAid. Charlotte has worked as a writer and director on short films and music videos since 1998. Before relocating to London, she was the Communications Officer at the Australian Drug Foundation.

Regional Co-ordinator, Actors For Human Rights:

Clea Langton

Clea is based in Sheffield and has been working part-time as the Regional Coordinator of Actors for Human Rights since September 2008. She has over ten years professional experience in performing arts and education in Australia and moved to the UK in 2004. In the UK, Clea has directed new writing theatre for the London and Edinburgh Fringe and worked as a Drama and EAL Teacher in Secondary schools and has been an active member of Actors for Human Rights since May 2007. Clea’s work with refugees in education has prompted her to focus both her teaching and theatre practice on themes of forced migration and she has completed an MA Refugee Studies at University of East London with a focus on young refugees.

Administrator

Lil Binham

Lil trained as an actress at Guildford School of Acting, and worked professionally before moving into theatre administration. She worked as Company Administrator and Tour Booker for Penny Dreadful Productions and with Icarus Theatre Collective before joining iceandfire in Feb 2010. In her spare time she runs children’s drama classes which although exhausting, she finds incredibly rewarding. Lil is a passionate believer in the arts’ ability to be educational, inclusive and challenging.

Associate Artist

Kieran Sheehan

In addition to running iceandfire’s Children Together project, Kieran is the associate artist of Upswing: an aerial theatre company based in London. He was the recipient of the 2008 Marion North Mentoring Scheme Award from the Bonnie Bird Choreography Fund. Kieran is currently developing work as an independent artist and freelancing as a movement director within theatre.

For iceandfire: movement direction Separated (dir. Sara Masters, 2008), Asylum Monologues, Rendition and Asylum Dialogues (dir. Christine Bacon, 2008)