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 Poets 1998), Flying Fish (Carcanet Oxford Poets 2002) and Bugs (Carcanet Oxford Poets 2009).
Antony was Poet in Residence at the University of York for 2006. Along with Valerie Bloom, Colette Bryce, Michael Donaghy and Ruth Padel, was commissioned to write a poem for the Victoria & Albert Museum.
His writing for theatre and film has included Goose Chase and Shepherds' Delight (both for Riding Lights Theatre Company), Timewarp 2000 (Barbican, York) and a screen adaption of Albert Camus' stageplay, Cross Purpose (First Man Productions). 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.
Antony is also one of the tutors for the Poetry School. 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.
Useful Donkey Goes Green!
At Useful Donkey Theatre we really feel every little bit helps, so our loo paper is recycled as are the envelopes in which we post your CDs. So even when the office is intent on repelling any warmth whatsoever, we would rather put on another jumper instead of turning the heating up... Although we can't guarantee that all the energy we use on tour in the theatres we visit is environmentally friendly, we'll do all we can to ensure the company's credentials are as green as we can make them.
Visit us again for more eco-updates or drop us a line with some suggestions of the green kind at info@usefuldonkeytheatre.co.uk