About Us

Jonathan Race

Founder and Artistic Director

Jonathan trained at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art. He has worked as an actor in numerous theatre roles, in the West End and across the UK. Roles include Peter in The Railway Children, the Secret Service Agent in Patient No.1, Hamlet in Hamlet, Galileo in Science Friction, Malcolm in Macbeth, Wilfred Owen in Not About Heroes, Richard Hannay in The 39 Steps, the Fool, the Jongleur and Boniface in Dario Fo's Mistero Buffo, Peter in The Diary of Anne Frank, Detective Trotter in The Mousetrap, Williams in John Mighton's Possible Worlds, Danny in the musical premier of the Charlie Chaplin musical City Lights, the title role in the premier of Augustus Carp by Himself, Dymotron in The Night Before Christmas, the Fox, the Owl and the Snake in the acclaimed tour of The Gruffalo, Thomas Sprott in The Trumpeters' Tale, Harris, one of the Three Men in a Boat and the Beast in Beauty and The Beast.

An admirer of the storytelling genius of writers such as Shakespeare and Dario Fo, the Useful Donkey Theatre Company was founded by Jonathan to produce simple, yet powerful and entertaining theatre.

Gail Kemp

Artistic Associate

Gail started acting at the age of thirteen with the Central Television Workshop in Nottingham. Soon after joining, Gail appeared in the hit children's comedy series Palace Hill as Binky Spoon. A number of television roles followed including Resnick alongside Tom Wilkinson, Peak Practice, and the award winning Coping With...

After training at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art screen roles continued in The Inspector Lynley Mysteries, Ready when You Are Mr. McGill, A Thing Called Love, The Rotters' Club, Harry Batt, Primeval, Holby City, Jack Dee's Lead Balloon, The Legend of Dick and Dom and numerous commercials including the award winning John Smiths commercial with Peter Kay

Theatre roles include Viola in Twelfth Night, Marion in Science Friction, a female Polonius in Hamlet, and a number of roles including Medea in Franca Rame’s Female Parts.

Antony Dunn

Artistic Associate

Antony Dunn is an English poet and dramatist. He attended Oxford University where he won the Newdigate Prize in 1995 and received a Society of Authors Eric Gregory Award in 2000. He has published three collections of poems, Pilots and Navigators (Oxford University Press 1998), Flying Fish (Carcanet OxfordPoets 2002) and Bugs (Carcanet OxfordPoets 2009).

Antony lives in Leeds, where he works as Head of Communications at Yorkshire Dance, as well as Artistic Associate for Useful Donkey. He is Assistant Director of the Bridlington Poetry Festival 2010 and has been appointed Poet in Residence to the Ilkley Literature Festival 2010.

Antony is a regular tutor for The Poetry School and the Arvon Foundation. He has worked on a number of translation projects with poets from Holland, Hungary, China and Israel, and was Poet in Residence at the University of York for 2006. His writing for film and theatre includes Dog Blue, Goose Chase, Shepherds' Delight, Timewarp 2000 and a screen adaption of Albert Camus' stageplay, Cross Purpose. In 2006 he contributed lyrics to Mark Ravenhill's pantomime, Dick Whittington and His Cat at The Barbican, London.

Love Poetry from Antony's collection Bugs is included in The Forward Book of Poetry 2010.

For more information visit www.antonydunn.org and www.poetryschool.com

Vicki Hackett

Artistic Associate

Vicki trained at Rose Bruford College of Speech & Drama and since leaving her theatre credits include Care and Clotched at West Yorkshire Playhouse; Chameleon at Sheffield Crucible; Augustus Carp By Himself, Mistero Buffo, The Passion and Walkout for Riding Lights Theatre Company and Pinnochio and Nineteen Seventy Seven at York Theatre Royal.

Television credits include Always and Everyone III; Kiszko; The M Word; Sky Horses and presenting GMTV's The Review. Vicki also presented Living Icons: Tyndale, a film by the BBC. Vicki has also been immortalised in plasticine as Matilda the Performing Cow in the Aardman Animations series of Creature Comforts -The Circus, for ITV.

Radio credits include Bumblema, The Sign of the Fish and Jonah for BBC; and Around the World in Eighty Days and Treasure Island for CN Productions.

Vicki has worked for Sheffield Crucible and West Yorkshire Playhouse as a workshop leader for schools, and for Pilot Theatre Company’s tours of Bloodtide, Lord of The Flies and East is East. She has also worked as Director for a number of musical theatre projects for the National Centre for Early Music and the Three Choirs Festival, Worcester.