Butterfly Theatre Company

Artistic Director & Company Founder 

Aileen trained as an actor at the Central School of Speech and Drama and works professionally in film, theatre, television and radio. She was Assistant Director to Tim Supple on Midnight’s Children and Greg Doran on All’s Well That Ends Well at the RSC. She has been the RSC International and National Youth Ensemble director since 2008, as well as an RSC education practitioner.

Most recently Aileen has written and directed a piece in association with the LSO for The Barbican, called Play On Shakespeare. Aileen was Head of the MA in Acting for the last four years at Arts Educational Schools London. 

Aileen has directed the RSC First Encounters The Tempest which opened at the Swan theatre in Stratford this month and is touring around the country.

Creative Producer & Designer

Kate trained as a Costume Designer at Arts University Bournemouth. Her passion is working on performances in unusual spaces, becoming her specialism as both a designer and producer. Kate's proudest moment to date with Butterfly is creation The Tempest at Leigh Woods upon Luke Jerram's art installation Withdrawn in Bristol, raising the company Arts Council funding. 

Kate's work has included; Assistant Producer on Inside Out Dorset Festival (2014, 2016 and 2017), Producer for Pop-up Opera's 2016 tours, and touring her own performative art commission through Heritage Lottery Funding on the history of the Somerset & Dorset Railway. Earlier in the year, she designed a touring production of 'First Encounter' Tempest with The Royal Shakespeare Company, and Punk Rock performed by Prime Theatre. 

Associate Producer & Director

Caroline is an Actor, Producer and Director with Butterfly, as well as working widely as an actress with other companies, including being an Audio Describer with Sky. Most recently Caroline returned from  a nine-month international tour with The Merchant of Venice, where she played Portia with ADGE. 

Caroline's roles with Butterfly's have included being company manager and performing at the beautiful Tiefburg castle in Heidelberg, Germany in; Macbeth, Hamlet and Romeo & Juliet, as well as starring in various productions across the UK. Caroline Co-Directed California Suite at St. James Theatre and is Butterfly's Producer for all London work, whilst additionally Co-Producing many other regional productions. 

Associate Director & Producer

Nick is a graduate of the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art and Birkbeck, University of London, where he specialised in directing. Being both British and German, his great passion lies in bringing together people from different walks of life, cultures and ages through theatre. He runs his own inter-cultural youth ensemble in Germany consisting of up to 70 teenage English language learners, who stage and tour plays in the original English.

It is in co-operation with this group that he has produced and directed Butterfly’s site-specific productions of Macbeth, Hamlet and Romeo & Juliet across Germany at Heidelberg, Würzburg, Rothenburg ob der Tauber. He recently Directed Educating Rita at the English Theatre Hamburg.

Associate Director and Writer

Ed trained as an actor at ArtsEd and has been working with Butterfly for the last five years.

Ed wrote the adaptation of Alice in Wonderland which toured Germany in 2016 and the UK in 2017. As Assistant Director, Ed worked on Alice In Wonderland, and for Macbeth, Butterfly's very first production in Germany.

As a director Ed has worked with Butterfly on California Suite (St James Studio, London), as well as writing and directing Dracula’s Women (Buxton Fringe) and Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (St James Studio and Above the Arts, London) which he wrote with Oliver Towse.

Aside from his work with Butterfly, Ed is Co-Artistic Director of Stack 10 Theatre and has written for Palikuku Films, Six40 Theatre and as dramaturg for a youth ensemble in Germany.

Associate Director

Hayley's  a Mancunian living in London and works for Butterfly as an Actor, Director and occasional Co-producer. She's about making theatre fun, energetic, accessible and relevant. She loved directing the bonkers As You Like It cast last year and her favourite moment during the tour was watching an 80-year-old man dance to 'Timber' in a cave.

For Butterfly Hayley's Directing credits include; The Importance of Being Earnest (Above the Arts, London), California Suite (St James studio, London) and As You Like It (UK tour). She also co-directed An Ideal Husband (St James Studio, London).  Hayley's other directing credits include, Daybreak (Tristan Bates), Nevermore the musical (Courtyard), as well as having written and directed Angels In Heels (Edinbirgh Fringe). 
 

Associate Director & Photographer

Elle directed An Ideal Husband and The Importance of Being Earnest for Butterfly in Jersey, and Twelfth Night scenes for Butterfly’s collaboration with the London Symphony Orchestra. She also directed Closure for Stack 10 Theatre, and Sari: The Whole Five Yards at the Tristan Bates Theatre, both in 2017.

Assistant Director credits include; Hamlet in Bristol & Germany, Comedy of Errors, Macbeth, The Tempest in Bristol, and Play On Shakespeare with the LSO at the Barbican.

Elle’s acting roles with Butterfly have included Gwendoline in The Importance of Being Earnest, Lady Capulet in Romeo & Juliet,  and most recently, the Red Queen/March Hare in Alice In Wonderland.

See more of Elle’s photos of Butterfly productions on elledeburgh.com

Education

Tracy is a practitioner, writer and researcher who develops work across national and international projects with students and teachers from Primary to Postgraduate levels, working regularly with the Royal Shakespeare Company as an Education Associate Practitioner, with Warwick Business School as a Teaching Associate, and as a Visiting Lecturer at the University of Birmingham. She is a trustee for the British Shakespeare Association, and a director-governor for her local secondary school.

Tracy has written a series of books for the classroom called The Shorter Shakespeare. She holds an MA in Shakespeare Studies from the Shakespeare Institute at the University of Birmingham and a PhD from Warwick Business School at the University of Warwick.