Chris Johnston is a writer, director and performer. Over recent years he has been researching improvisation with a three-year fellowship from the Arts and Humanities Research Fund. This led to the publication of The Improvisation Game (Discovering the Secrets of Spontaneous Performance), published by Nick Hern Books. NHB also published an earlier work, House of Games (Making Theatre from Everyday Life). As part of this work, Chris founded E.S.P. (Experiments in Spontaneous Performance) and also directs the work of Fluxx.
He is the author of several plays, most recently The Bath, Etcetera Theatre, London and Theatre Topos Allou, Athens (2002-6). Also Dead Reckonings, Camden Peoples Theatre (2003) and several by Greenwich Young Peoples Theatre including Chatbad (1985) and School on the Green, published Methuen (1986).
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, has been achieving a national prominence this year by generating debate around the issue of prison architecture.
Maggie Gordon-Walker is an actor, comedy performer, writer, teacher and researcher. She began acting after graduating from Central School's postgraduate diploma course in 1994 and did a range of productions from Shakespeare to new writing to panto. 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 The Kings Head, Comedy Cafe, Amused Moose Camden, Tattershall Castle, Balham Banana and Ginglik. Last year 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, 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, Man/Woman and a video for the band Embrace, directed by John Hillcoat. She recently worked on Hooded for Silvertown films (sponsored by Working Title) and Happy New Year for ZZ Productions. Maggie is also a freelance article writer, a history teller in schools and a researcher for AQA, which answers people's questions sent by text message.