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Angela Brinkworth, professional theatre worker

Angela and friends in Ethiopia last yearAngela Brinkworth has worked extensively in professional theatre for thirty years as a performer, director and writer, both in the UK and abroad. Her roles as an actress range from classical theatre to TV soap. She was a co-founder of the Chung Ying theatre in Hong Kong, funded by the British Council, where she worked for three years. Angela also co-founded the London women’s theatre co-operative ‘ReSisters’ touring the London fringe with seven productions. During this time she teamed up with writer April Di Angelis to work with young mums on their experience of birth and parenting. This work resulted in a book The Best kept Secrets and a play Mum’s the Word which Angela directed.

In 1995, at the age of 51 and a single parent, Angela decided on a change of career. With the help of the Elizabeth Nuffield Educational Fund she completed a postgraduate diploma in drama therapy at the University of Hertfordshire. After University she worked with children with emotional and behavioural difficulties in four London inner city schools. Her work on bullying was featured in Channel 4’s Diverse Reports and the BT Forum funded her to work with a class of children for a year. This resulted in a West End performance by primary school children at the Mayfair theatre of The Flowering Tree which Angela adapted for the stage and directed.

In 1997 Angela returned to Wales and set up a clinical practice in Brynmawr working with children referred by social services. In 2002 she joined Wildfire, a community arts organisation, and co-facilitated drama therapy sessions with young mums and young people at risk. In 2001 she became involved with Valley and Vale Community Arts and CSV training, Cardiff, working on drama and film projects in schools, community education and prison settings.

Last year Angela visited Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, to work with young people on a film project comparing and contrasting the lives of two young women in Cardiff, Wales and Addis, Ethiopia.

She is presently project manager of Make A Change, a voluntary organisation which she co-founded in 2002. She has raised over £50,000 for projects initiated by people recovering from long-term heroin addiction. This included a drug prevention forum theatre project, Jamie’s story, for schools, community youth groups, excluded children and young offenders; The Journey Home, a relapse prevention film and resource pack; and the training and founding of RAPS, a recovering addicts peer support group. Angela trained and directed the first group of ex-offenders to be allowed back into a Welsh prison to perform and facilitate a forum ‘Drugs in Prison’. Angela is a Millennium Awards winner for a research project, ‘Changing the Script’, based in three Welsh prisons.

Angela has managed to synthesise a wide rang of experience and skills drawn from her dual role as a theatre practitioner and therapist. She has also had the privilege of working and training with some of the worlds leading theatre and therapy practitioners including Augusto Boal, Viola Brody, Alida Gersie and Joe Samuels.

Now 62, Angela hopes to go on learning and working until she retires and to fulfil her ambition to write stories for children and a TV comedy series Late Bloomers!