KELLY HUNTER MBE

Kelly is an award winning actor, director and writer.   Over the last thirty years she has played major roles for the RSC, National theatre, English Touring theatre and the Icelandic company Vesturport, working with Jerome Savary, Hal Prince, Sir Peter Hall and Sir Trevor Nunn.  She has also worked extensively in film, TV and radio.  Kelly is the Artistic Director of Flute Theatre, for whom her most recent production of Hamlet, Who’s There? performed at the Gdansk Shakespeare Festival in August 2015. In 2014 she directed a production of The Tempest for the RSC which she adapted for children with autism.   She is the author of two books, Shakespeare’s Heartbeat, drama games for children with autism published by Routledge and Cracking Shakespeare; A hands-on guide for actors and directors published by Methuen in December 2015.   From 2002-2006 she was the Artistic director of Touchstone Shakespeare Theatre, which she created to offer Shakespeare to children with no access to the arts. Kelly has created a series of sensory drama games named The Hunter Heartbeat Method, which form her work with children with autism. This methodology has the basis of a longitudinal study at Ohio State University since 2011.