ZOË WAITES

Zoë is an actor, theatre maker and teaching artist. She trained at RADA, where she is now an Associate, and has performed in theatres all over the world, as well as throughout the UK. Shortly after graduating Zoë was invited to play Juliet for the Royal Shakespeare Company, for which she was nominated for the Ian Charleson Award for Outstanding Performance in a Classical Role. Multiple leading roles for the company followed, including Desdemona in Othello, Mary in The Family Reunion, and Viola in Twelfth Night (winner of 2nd prize for Ian Charleson) alongside world premieres of new plays The Prisoner’s Dilemma and Night Of The Soul, and latterly Mrs Frail in Love For Love. Other classical roles include Rosalind at STC in Washington DC, Goneril to Jonathan Pryce’s King Lear at the Almeida, and Cassius in Julius Caesar for Sheffield Crucible Theatre. Other new work includes world premieres of Edward Albee’s The Play About The Baby (Almeida), Sir Trevor Nunn’s production of Birdsong (West End), the 24 hour Sixty-Six Books (Bush Theatre) and David Edgar’s ‘Nicholas Nickleby’ (Chichester Festival Theatre, West End, UK tour, Princess of Wales Theatre, Toronto.) Zoë is also the co-founder and joint Artistic Director of two theatre companies – the multi award-nominated Bee Jar Theatre, and ShakespeareMoves, a physical theatre collective. She is a founder member of the Creative Learning Panel for Digital Theatre, and is currently the Associate Lecturer for Acting Shakespeare on the MA/MFA in Actor Performer Training at Rose Bruford, where she also directed Julius Caesar in September 2020. Zoë has performed extensively for BBC radio, and on television has most recently been seen as series regular in Netflix’s Cursed.