Livestock was formed in 2006. It is a registered charity and a limited company. Its trustees are Alex Murray, Marcus Markou, Richmond Trew, Tom Barnes, Rebecca Lewis, Nigel Pilkington, Jeff Thompson and Millie Laws. Its personnel are Chris Johnston and Maggie Gordon-Walker.
Chris Johnston is a writer, director and performer.
He is the author of several plays, most recently Say Goodnight to the Bad Guy (Rideout, 2008) and Hadley's Experiment (Livestock 2008). Also The Bath, (Etcetera Theatre, London and Theatre Topos Allou, Athens, 2002-6) and Dead Reckonings, (Camden Peoples Theatre, 2003) and several by Greenwich Young Peoples Theatre including Chatbad (1985) and School on the Green, published Methuen (1986). He has two books published by Nick Hern: House of Games - Making Theatre from Everyday Life (1998) and The Improvisation Game - Discovering the Secrets of Spontaneous Performance (2008)
Chris has been consistently involved in arts and performance projects that occur within the context of the criminal justice system. He founded Insight Arts Trust and was its director between 1989 and 1999. He later co-founded Rideout with Saul Hewish, and is currently the Co-Director. In this context, Chris was the recipient of a Butler Trust Award for work with young offenders. Rideout was shortlisted for a community award by Arts and Business in 2007. Its innovative project, the Creative Prison, achieved a national prominence in 2007 by generating debate around the issue of prison architecture.
He is also the Director of Fluxx, a performing arts project that has been organizing training and performance events using improvisation, since 1998.
Maggie Gordon-Walker is an actor, comedy performer, writer, teacher and researcher.
She began acting professionally after graduating from Central School's postgraduate diploma course in 1994. Finally fed up with being at the bottom of the decision heap as an actor and in reality spending far too much time as a market researcher, she turned to comedy in the autumn of 2003. Venues performed at include Downstairs at The Kings Head, Comedy Cafe, Amused Moose Camden, Tattershall Castle, Balham Banana and Ginglik. In 2006 she reached the final of Funny Women, performing at London's Comedy Store and at The Assembly Rooms in Edinburgh.
She is a co-founder of Fluxx and has performed with the company around the UK, and in Athens and Amsterdam. She created the children's show The Quest!, which premiered at Warwick Arts Centre as part of Shifti in Jan 06. She also performs regularly with The Black Sheep, including Holy Days at the Soho and FairLy Tales at the Lyric Hammersmith and also with Sketch Club, purveyors of the 365 podcast. She's appeared as one of her alter-egos, Mary Christmas, on Resonance radio, Sky Digital and in her very own show at the Canal Cafe.
Film work has included promos for UKTV Food, the lead in Relent for Frank Films, Hooded for Silvertown films and a video for the band Embrace, directed by John Hillcoat. She recently worked on Legal Trade for You, Me & Him productions (Sky FX channel) and Have a Nice Day for Puppet Power productions. Maggie is the facilitator for Mothers Uncovered; she is also a freelance article writer and a researcher for AQA, which answers people's questions sent by text message.