Cast and Creatives – Secret Life of Humans

Peter Clements  (Jacob “Bruno” Bronowski) 

Peter trained at Drama Centre London. Recent theatre includes 80,000 Suspects, We The Young Strong (Bloomsbury Theatre); The Incident Room, Then Silence, A Dashing Fellow (New Diorama Theatre); Woman From Mars (Jermyn Street Theatre); Nosocomial (Camden People’s Theatre); Words and Music (Round Chapel); Fatzer: Downfall of an Egoist (North Wall Arts Centre); Splendid’s (Trafalgar Studios); The 39 Steps (Vienna’s English Theatre); Love Me Do (Watford Palace Theatre); Remembrance of Things Past (92 Street Y, New York City); Afraid of the Dark (Charing Cross Theatre); All Saints (Kings Head); Deathwatch (Roundhouse); Interval (Arcola); The Criminals (Platform Theatre); Dracula (Cochrane); Looking for Vi (Riverside Studios).

Film credits include: Anton in Femme (BBC Film/Agile) to be released in 2023; Ballet of the Nations (Impermanence). Television credits include The Baby (HBO/Sky), Pennyworth (Warner Bros/HBO Max), Escape from Sobibor (PBS).

Peter created, and performs as, drag alter-ego Frau Welt, a delusional grande dame of theatre. Her solo show Frau Welt, co-written with Oliver Dawe (nominated for 3 Off-West End Awards: Best Male, Best Director, TBC Award), played to critical acclaim at Hackney Showroom in 2017, before transferring to the Edinburgh Festival. Her cabaret night, Masterclass, has gained a cult following in London. 

Suzy Kohane (Ava) 

Suzy is an actor and deviser originally from the USA and based in London where she graduated from the Central School of Speech and Drama in 2019. She is one half of performance duo Secretariat, their first show Hexenhammer has been performed at venues across London including The Yard theatre and The Lion and Unicorn. She performed in and co-produced short The Cartographer, winner of the Audience Choice Award at the Berlin Short Film Festival. Other credits include The People We Hate at the Wedding (Amazon/Film Nation).

Olivia Hirst (Rita Bronowski) 

Olivia is an actor, writer for stage and screen and artistic director of Lost Watch Theatre. She has previously collaborated with David Byrne on the hugely successful productions of The Incident Room and Secret Life Of Humans touring to Edinburgh, London and New York. With Lost Watch, shows include Left My Desk, Goodstock and Shorts and Socks Included (All at New Diorama). Other credits include The Green Knight (UK tour); The Golden Fleece (Sheffield Theatres); The Annex (Leeds Playhouse) and Hopscotch (Royal Court Pimlico Project). Olivia trained on the Contemporary Theatre Course at East 15.  Her debut work Play for September won the 2013 NDSF Emerging Artist Award. 

Jamie Samuel  (Jamie Bronowski) 

Theatre credits include: Light Falls (Royal Exchange Theatre); The Incident Room (New Diorama/Pleasance Edinburgh); Operation Black Antler (Southbank Centre/Blast Theory); Left My Desk (New Diorama/HOME/Lost Watch); Amédée (Birmingham Rep); Plastic Figurines (Off West End Award Nomination: Best Actor – Box of Tricks); Chamaco (HOME); Jumpers for Goalposts (Off West End Award Winner: Best Actor – Paines Plough/Bush Theatre); Cosmic (Hull Truck); The Kitchen Sink (Hull Truck); 66 Books (Bush Theatre); Pushing Up Poppies (Theatre 503); 2nd May 1997 (Royal Exchange Theatre/Bush Theatre); The English Game (Headlong). Television: The Promise (HBO/Channel 4), A Touch of Frost (ITV), The Bill (ITV), Doctors (BBC).  Film/Short Film: Golden Boy (London Short Film Festival), Territory (50 West), Own Worst Enemy (Grosvenor Television). 

Alex Wilson (George) 

Alex trained at the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School. Recent theatre credits include: Much Ado About Nothing (Shakespeare at the Tobacco Factory); Jane Eyre (The Watermill Theatre); The Elephant Man (Bristol Old Vic); A Merchant of Venice (Shakespeare in Italy); An Act of Care (HOME Manchester/Archipelago); A Midsummer Night’s Dream (The Lord Chamberlain’s Men); Much Ado About Nothing, Treasure Island, Twelfth Night, The Canterbury Tales (Half Cut Theatre); Measure for Measure (Sam Wanamaker Festival at Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre).

Alex was nominated for the 2018 The Stage Debut Award for Best Actor for his performance of Frederick Treves in The Elephant Man at Bristol Old Vic. He is co-founder of Half Cut Theatre for whom he has adapted versions of A Christmas Carol, Twelfth Night, Much Ado About Nothing, A Midsummer Night’s Dream and Treasure Island.

DAVID BYRNE – AUTHOR AND DIRECTOR 

David is a theatre director, playwright and is Artistic Director & CEO of London’s New Diorama Theatre. His latest play The Incident Room, about the police investigation in the Yorkshire Ripper murders, was co-written with Olivia Hirst and first performed at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in 2019, transferring to London in 2020, ahead of an Off-Broadway run. It is now being developed to television.

His previous productions, Secret Life Of Humans and a radical adaptation of George Orwell’s Down And Out In Paris And London both played to sold out audiences at the Edinburgh Festival and in London, receiving four and five star national press reviews, with both transferring Off-Broadway. Secret Life Of Humans and The Incident Room are published by Nick Hern Books, and have multiple new productions planned for the UK and worldwide. David is the recipient of several Peter Brook Awards, the Off-West End Award for Best Artistic Director, the Enfant Terribles Prize, with New Diorama having won Off-West End Theatre of the Year multiple times. David is listed as one of The Stage’s 100 most influential people currently working in UK theatre.

Richard Delaney (Co-Director)

Richard is a performer, theatre making and educator. He trained at Mountview Academy of Theatre Arts, the National Youth Theatre of Great Britain and The Royal Central School of Speech and Drama. He runs a private coaching practice for professional actors and is Course Leader of the BA Acting Course at Fourth Monkey Actor Training Company.

As an actor, his credits include: Secret Life of Humans (Edinburgh, London and Off-Broadway); Down & Out In Paris and London (Edinburgh and London); The Universal Machine (all with New Diorama Theatre). Richard III, Fiesco, Three Sisters, Blood Wedding, Mary Stuart (London, UK and International Tour); Twelfth Night (London, Bath and UK Tour); Strindberg’s Apartment, The Robbers, Intrigue/Love, The Tempest, Macbeth, and Richard III (all with The Faction Theatre Company). See How They Run, My Fair Lady and Trelawny of the Wells (all for Pitlochry Festival Theatre). The Importance of Being Earnest, As You Like It (both for Guildford Shakespeare Company). Charles Marowitz’s Caesar (Broadway Theatre); Phil Wilmott’s A Christmas Carol (King’s Head Theatre). Rope, Boeing Boeing, September Tide, The Late Edwina Black, Bedroom Farce, Living Together, House Guest, The Unexpected Guest, The Return of Sherlock Holmes (all for CV Productions). Loves Lost (for Black Bull Films).

Associate Director credits include: Fahrenheit 451 (Co-Production between Complicité and The Royal Central School of Speech and Drama); The American Clock (RCSSD); The Sociable Companions (RCSSD). Deviser and Movement Director for Down and Out In Paris and London and Secret Life of Humans (both New Diorama Theatre). Movement Director credits: Left My Desk (Lost Watch Theatre Company); Miss Julie (The Faction Theatre Company); A Warwickshire Testimony (Albany Theatre). Assistant Director for Queen Lear (Assembly Rooms, Edinburgh). www.RichardDDelaney

Melanie Schöberl  (Costume Designer)

Melanie`s first experience as a costume designer was for the Chaincourt Theatre Company at the Johann Wolfgang Goethe-Universität in Frankfurt am Main. In 2006 she worked as a costume assistant for the choreographer/director Wanda Golonka on Crave by Sarah Kane. During the same year she was part of the creative team of the Sebastian Hartmann production Being Lawinky. She did costume design for The Threepenny Opera, The Crucible and Master Class.

Her work for ETF as assistant costume designer includes The Who`s Tommy, Rain Man, Breaking the Code, Sweet Charity, Good People, The Ruling Class, Saturday Night Fever, Venus in Fur, The Collector, Other Desert Cities, Death and the Maiden, The Glass Menagerie, The Life, Disgraced, The Picture of Dorian Gray, Spamalot, Handbagged, The Hound of the Baskervilles, Pygmalion, Jekyll & Hyde, Hand to God, The Lion in Winter, Cabaret, Apologia, The Children, One flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Sweeney Todd, The Effect, Switzerland, The Girl on the Train and Young Frankenstein and The Totalitarians.

Charlie Morgan Jones (Light Designer)

Welsh Lighting Designer Charlie has lit theatre and opera in the UK and Internationally. Theatre includes: Derren Brown – Underground, Cool Rider, The Blues Brothers, Dracula (West End); REDD (Barbican); Mixtape (Zoo Nation/Sadler’s Wells); Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Unmasked (The Other Palace); Passion (Hope Mill); Avenue Q, Gobsmacked!, The Producers, Seussical, James and the Giant Peach (International Tour); Derren Brown – Showman, Little Shop Of Horrors, The Lady Vanishes, Posh (UK Tour); 71 Coltman Street (Hull Truck); 3am (Curve, Leicester); The Snow Queen (Rose, Kingston); Macbeth (Theatre Severn); A Little Night Music (Royal Birmingham Conservatoire); Bat Boy (Royal Conservatoire of Scotland); The Burnt Part Boys (Park Theatre); Love On Trial, And Crocodiles Are Hungry At Night (Bilimankwhe); Into The Woods (Lowry, Manchester).

Opera credits include: La Bohème (Norwegian National Opera); Gianni Schicci (Canadian Opera Company); Das Rheingold, Die Walküre, Siegfried (Longborough Festival Opera); Tristan I Izolda (Polish National Opera); La Bohème, Gianni Schicci, Il Tabarro, Lisbon Floor (Copenhagen Opera Festival); Romeo et Juliette (Malmö Opera); Aida, Fidelio (Dorset Opera 40th Anniversary Season); Mansfield Park, The Magic Flute, The Marriage Of Figaro, The Beggar’s Opera, Savitri, Riders to the Sea, L’Enfant et les Sortilèges, Venus and Adonis, Actéon, Ava’s Wedding, Dialogues Des Carmelites (Royal Birmingham Conservatoire); Street Scene (Royal Conservatoire of Scotland); Dubai – Rostov – New York (National Opera Studio). Immersive Theatre  credits include: Inside Pussy Riot, The Time Portal, Capturing The Future, The Golden Needle – Hong Kong (Les Enfants Terribles); An Alien Encounter, The Rainforest at Christmas (Eden Project); The Fabulous Fund Fair (London Fashion Week), Goosebumps Alive (The Vaults).

Yaiza Varona (Sound Designer)

Yaiza Varona is an award winning composer and sound designer based between London, UK and Madrid, Spain.She divides her time between writing music and curating sound design for the media (theatre, film, TV , installations, libraries, etc) and some personal projects, among them immersive sound works.

Built around experimental music and bold sound design, both are weaved in complex sonic languages. Her unique sound is deeply rooted in History, non traditional instrumentation, and a strong use of sound design and the spoken word as musical elements.

Zakk Hein  (Video Designer)

Zakk is a video designer for live performance and installation. Theatre credits: Two Palestinians Go Dogging (Royal Court); La Belle Sauvage: The Book of Dust, A Christmas Carol (Co-Designs with Luke Halls, The Bridge); The Incident Room, Secret Life of Humans (New Diorama); The Writer (Almeida); Occupational Hazards (Hampstead Theatre);  The Effect, Looking Through Glass, The Mountaintop (The Other Room);  A Good Clean Heart (Wales Millennium Centre/tour).

Opera credits include: La Traviata (Paris Opera; Wiener Staatsoper); Silent City (Matera, Capital of Culture); Ariodante (Royal College of Music); Pelléas et Mélisande; The Tales of Hoffmann (English Touring Opera).

As Associate: Frameless (Marble Arch, London); The Poem Pavilion, UK – Expo 2020; Masterclass – Es Devlin; Forest of Us (SUPERBLUE, Miami); Talking Heads, Alys, Always, My Name Is Lucy Barton (Bridge Theatre); Den Glade Enke 2.0, Hobbitten (KGL, Copenhagen); Michael Kohlhaas (Schaubühne, Berlin); Mary Poppins; Frozen; Everybody’s Talking About Jamie; The Starry Messenger (West End); The Lehman Trilogy (National Theatre/NY/West End); The Great Wave, Ugly Lies the Bone (National Theatre); Louis Vuitton SS19; Please Feed the Lions (LDF 2018); MASK (Photo London); Epic Iran, Alice: Curioser & Curioser, Cars, The Singing Tree (V&A Museum); Bottega Veneta AW20; The Band (Berlin/West End/Tour); Local Hero (Lyceum Theatre, Edinburgh); Shipwreck (Almeida); Pelle Erobreren (Østre Gasværk Teater); Girls & Boys (Royal Court/New York);  Desire Under The Elms (Sheffield Theatre). Zakk is Technical Manager & Creative Associate at Luke Halls Studio.

Marc Frankum CDG  (Casting Director)

Marc trained as an actor at Drama Centre London before moving into casting. He is working mostly in live theatre. He has cast numerous plays and musicals in the West End and for many theatres and producers throughout the UK.  Marc is also the in-house casting director for the English Theatre Frankfurt and a member of the Casting Directors’ Guild. 

For The English Theatre Frankfurt, Marc has cast The Totalitarians, Young Frankenstein, The Girl on the Train, Switzerland, Secret Life of Humans, The Effect, Sweeney Todd, One flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest, The Children, Apologia, Cabaret, The Lion in Winter, Jekyll & Hyde – the Musical, Hand to God, Pygmalion, The Hound of the Baskervilles, Handbagged, Spamalot, The Picture of Dorian Gray, The Glass Menagerie, Disgraced, Death and the Maiden, Other Desert Cities, Ghost – the Musical and Strangers on a Train.