Chris Cresswell

Chris Cresswell is a cabaret artist, actor and director. He studied drama at Loughborough University and has an MA in Circus and Theatre from Middlesex University. He is artistic director of Voodoo Vaudeville, and artistic director of junk percussionist Clatteratti. His training and work have included 5 years touring with comedy circus Ra Ra Zoo playing to international audiences including tours of the USA and the Far East. He has appeared on numerous television commercials around the world, as well as appearing on Blue Peter, The Generation Game, and recently appeared as Prodnose in Tim Burton’s “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory”. Chris has taught at Circus Space in London, Italia Conti Academy of Theatre Arts, Die Etage Theatre School Berlin and most recently at Chichester University.

Interview with Chris Cresswell

Ruth Glaser

Like Agnetha Falksgog, Ruth Glaser was co-founder of the comedic excitement of Voodoo. From Leonora Dancer to doing different things like grow vegetables, create the Self Referential Nomenclative Lexicon of War Dead, get a job and have a baby. This photograph is 25 years old

Baby Warhol

Baby Warhol is an oracle for the new age, a guru with no message, just a coruscating wit and waspish sense of logic. Whilst bearing an uncanny beyond the grave resemblance, the baby is no relation to the artist. Over the years the baby has built up a reputation for ruthless repartee and a cult following by appearing during other shows including DNA Cabaret and The Lennie and Morris Show manifesting at odd intervals to answer questions from the audience covering the personal, the philosophical and the improper. Knowing that audiences are hungry for the baby he is now in free orbit.

KT Simpson

KT Simpson started performing back in 1985 at the beginning of the new circus/theatre movement, where she point blankly refused to wear spangley lycra leotards and flesh coloured tights. She flew through the air in radical urban street shows, and balanced on anything from motorbikes to Cuban acrobats. In 2002 she co-founded Can Booty Can the notorious Can Can troupe that headlined Lost Vagueness at Glastonbury. Whilst shakin’ her arse and kicking her legs she discovered the delights of Voodoo Vaudeville and started to wield her riding crop, performing and co-directing some of the crazy scenarios and dances that make Voodoo Vaudeville the unforgettable experience that it is.

Rachel Blackman

Rachel Blackman is a multiskilled performer and theatre maker. She makes her own work as Still Point, is a founding member of award winning comedy outfit, The Maydays and notoriously, played the bazooka wielding dyke in Matrix Revolutions. Voodoo adventures have included time-travel, cunniligual gorillas and landing planes using her famed semaphore nipple-tassle techniques.

Sally Best

Sally Best is a lively, professional actress who has a warm and sultry personality and is adept at performing in both comic and dramatic roles. She trained at the Italia Conti Academy of Theatre Arts where she gained a degree in Acting. Since then she has worked in theatre, film, tv and radio.

Claire Corfield

Claire Corfield trained at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama, graduating in 2002. Since then she has worked extensively as a comedy actress in TV, Film and Radio. Working with Voodoo Vaudeville also provided the opportunity to direct and she worked closely with Chris on a number of projects; The Roaring 20’s, Fantasmagoria, Vampires of Variety and Skin of the Moon.

Jolie Pierce

Jolie Pierce is an experienced and versatile artist who relishes working in the realms of the macabre, the humorous, and the twisted. After spending twenty years living each summer as Jolly Cabbage the Mummer’s Player at Kentwell Hall Tudor Re-Creation, she went on to follow a career in clowning, acting, and stand-up comedy, training in Contemporary Clowning with Angela De Castro at the Why Not? Institute, completing a two year Diploma in Acting at the Academy of Creative Training, and getting through to the semi-finals of the Channel 4, So You Think You’re Funny? Awards in 2004. Jolie also works regularly in film as part of the Nothing to See Here new media collective.

Cassandra Tomaz

Cassandra Tomaz is a half- Brazilian actress, dance choreographer and teacher. After training as an actress and spending 5 years experimenting in a variety of different dance styles, Cassandra now specialises in practising and teaching Brazilian dance- Samba and Afro fusion. She has performed with various groups including Claudio kron do Brazil, Estrella de Norte, Maracatu Nao E, Niteroi Samba school, Brighton school of Samba, Cyba Drummers and Danca Kaito. Cassandra also produces her own work combining physical theatre and dance and is currently producing and helping direct the new stage show “Mondo” with Maco Theatre Company.

Emma Franieczek

Emma is a young, multi-talented professional performer. She has been dancing since the age of 3 and is trained in Ballet, Tap, Pointe, Modern, Contemporary, Laban notation, intermediate salsa and since 2007 Voodoo! She also indulges in Acting, Extra’s work, Teaching dance, Film making for her own and other’s pleasure, Unique Fashion design, and jewellery by Beadifferent.

Miriam (Mim) King

Mim King is an Artist, Choreographer, Dancer, Performer, and Filmmaker born in London, living in Brighton, working internationally. She commenced her professional performance career in 1984. Cabaret work involves some charming strangeness and occasional contortion. Current work is as Artist in Residence at The Point, Eastleigh, Hants.

Anita Clements

Anita Clements is a member of two comedy troupes, Dodgy Totty and Logical Stupidity. A prolific writer, Anita has recenty completed a Feature Screenplay. Currently playing the lead in a short film for BAFTA winning director Vincent O’Connell and for Second Impression Theatre’s spoof, “007 – My Other Life” for Brighton Festival.

John Hinton

John Hinton appeared in Voodoo Vaudeville shows Skin of the Moon, The Roaring 20’s, The Baby Warhol Experience, Mardi Gras and Fantasmagoria. Trained in physical theatre at Jacques Lecoq in Paris. Lead singer in intergalactic pop combo Spalien Acecraft. GSOH.

Rosaria Gracia

Rosaria Gracia is a renown dancer, choreographer, researcher and university lecturer, who specialises in Samba, Afro-Brazilian and Afro-Cuban Dance. She has performed and choreographed pieces which have been shown nationally and internationally in Festivals such as Glastonbury and WOMAD. She has performed largely with groups such as Carnival Collective, Maracatu Estrela do Norte, Verde Vai since 2000. President and choreographer of the Commissao de Frente of Paraiso School of Samba, she is also a street arts performer working with groups such as Emergency Exit Arts.

Katy Schutte

Katy Schutte is a burlesque and comedy performer. She’s been doing shows with Voodoo Vaudeville since their 2007 Edinburgh show. Katy works with Pole Passion and Seven Veils Productions teaching and performing pole, lap, strip and burlesque techniques. She’s also a voice-over artist, Funny Woman finalist and improv comic.

Avis Cockbill

Avis Cockbill is a dancer, clown, comedian and artist. She has been one half of the Perverted Turkeys: purveyors of supreme dance comedy cabaret and co-founded The Two Wrongies performance company. Her love of music is leading to new artistic collaborations with musicians and producers in the not too distant future.

Helen Kane

Helen Kane is a comedienne and musician. She has played her accordian all over the UK including ‘Watch this Space’ at the National Theatre and at the Tour de France in Greenwich. Her latest cabaret incarnation is Frankie Chalet – a beatnik poet/accordionist. She also fronts her own 1920’s band ‘Tula and the Bakelites‘ and plays trumpet with jump jive band The Fat 45.

Jenny Clarke AKA Jentheroo

Jenny Clarke AKA Jentheroo is a well accomplished performer, with over seven years experience as a full time professional.

Recent collaborations include choreographed fire and angle grinding shows with Voodoo Vaudeville.

Hilde Cannoodt

Hilde Cannoodt had been teaching, performing and choreographing belly dance for many years. With her experience in street dance, Egyptian dance, tribal belly dance and flamenco dance she has created an eclectic dance style where East meets West and it has made her a popular teacher and performer throughout the UK.

Katerina Ioannou

Katerina comes from Athens, Greece and has studied Contemporary Dance at Middlesex University and at Birkbeck University. She also has a Bachelor in Fine Arts. Katerina has danced for Freefall Physical Theatre Company, for ‘Scarlett Perdereau’s Dance Company’ and for ‘Exodos’ Dance Company in Athens where she had also taught dance and worked as an Art Director.

Caroline Milne

Caroline Milne is a dancer from Australia. Since graduating from the Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts she has turned her back on her balletic roots and has delighted in filling her mother with despair by working variously as a showgirl, street performer and stripper around the UK.

Dan Shelton

Dan Shelton trained in the depths of the Voodoo Vaudeville dungeons a physical performer who has been a clown, a gorilla and a circus strongman. Since 2001 he has been performing with High Spin dance company, touring festivals and events angle grinding and stiltwalking with WE3, posted himself to Tate Britain after winning the creative minority award, and passed on his skills as a workshop leader with young people and community groups. Dan is currently training at Central School of Speech and Drama exploring screen acting.

Catrin Seren Rees

Catrin Seren Rees is a mixed genre performer. with over twenty years experience in Live Performance, including lead roles in musical theatre, countless chorus and cabaret performances as a singer/dancer including burlesque performances, and screen acting for film. A passionate writer, with poetry in publication, her first novel will be finished shortly.

Lux Velvet

Lux Velvet, the dark and saucy hostess will greet you as you enter the world of Voodoo Vaudeville. Chris found her locked in an attic feeding on bats and young boys , and now lets her out to have fun on the condition that she looks after the audience as if they were her own. She only comes out at night when all her simmering carnal desires are allowed to wander freely, so let her usher you into the world of Voodoo.

Marc Ellis AKA Stylus

Marc Ellis AKA Stylus is the resident DJ, booker and collective pioneer for the Lost Vagueness Casino since 1999. Previously he produced kicking underground parties in London and toured with European performance art companies such as DNTT, Turbo Unit, and The Mutoid Waste Co, compiling and producing soundtracks for the shows and spectacular after parties.

Lorne Rawling AKA DJ Lornegerie

Lorne Rawling is an international DJ to the stars, and indoors with a canny knack of playing records in succession that will make your ears prick and your legs kick. Residencies include Voodoo Vaudeville, the Bananafana Social Club, the Famous Spiegeltent, the Red Sea Social Club, Lost Vagueness and the Brighton Festival Club.

Simon Wilkinson

Simon Wilkinson is a Brighton based artist and film
maker and Director of prodction company JUNK TV. Since 1997
he has been working as a writer and film director on
a massive range of video shorts, theatrical video inserts, viral ads
and is currently completing a new feature film ‘The Phoenix Club’.

Briony Dace

Character accordion extraordinaire! From sea shanties to Klezma, french
waltzes to cockney Briony Dace, a.k.a Betsy Lace, plays them all…
Including her own compositions of love and unrequited murder.
She has voodoo-ed from Brighton to Edinburgh leaving a trail of irish
hearts a flutter behind her