Who we are

Board 2026

Co-Chair

Rebecca Scroggs is an actor, graduating from RADA in 2009. Her work in theatre includes productions with the Tricycle Theatre (now the Kiln), Clean Break, Eclipse Theatre, The National Theatre, Chichester, The Crucible, Sheffield, and the Hampstead Theatre. 

Co-Chair

Sola Oyeleye is an award winning writer, director, producer and dramaturge working in opera, music theatre, visual arts, film and dance. Her theatre work in drama, opera and dance includes productions for Theatre Royal, Stratford East, English National Opera, Adzido Pan-African Dance Ensemble, UK regional theatres, Waterfront Belfast and the Royal National Theatre Studio. She ran Harmony Theatre, which produced Maria Oshodi’s play, Blood, Sweat and Tears. She is the Artistic director of Ariya, Britain’s first opera company dedicated to creating performance opportunities for black classically trained performers and composers. Her production of Dido and Aeneas for the Purcell Tercentenial Celebrations was highly acclaimed for its innovative use of Baroque and West African classical instruments. She has worked internationally in Hungary, Czech Republic, Ghana, South Africa and USA where she directed the premieres of the opera Chaka and the music-drama  Orunmila’s Voices by the renowned Nigerian composer Akin Euba. Her short film, The Flowering was shown at the BFI. Her poetry has been set to music by Akin Euba and performed at both Harvard and Cambridge Universities. 

Treasurer

Guy Holland Groen, after studying economics and business management in Amsterdam (1967/70), he entered the world of theatre in 1970 with the New York La Mama Theatre, working first as a freelance actor in theatre and television, but later found being in control of one’s own destiny a more rewarding experience. He co- founded Sidewalk Theatre cooperative in 1974 (now operating as Spare Tyre) and four years later he founded what is currently known as New Diorama Theatre (Ltd Co and registered charity), but initially known as Theatre of Thelema Ltd (from 1978/86, then renamed Quicksilver Theatre (1986/2009), then renamed New Diorama (2009/ to the present)where he was CEO/Artistic Director throughout until retirement. During the half century of being a theatre artist he wrote and co wrote some 20 plus plays – many supported with ACE Writing Awards -and performed across the UK and the world- in addition he: produced and directed double that number of plays by other writers, co founded and chaired professional associations in support of theatre, was a board member for several theatre companies and institutions: e.g. the Directors Guild of GB, the National Campaign for the Arts, ASSITEJ, CTA, Spare Tyre, Chats Palace, The Roundhouse Community and Youth centre and others. He was for many decades an active member on many lobbying and community advocating pressure groups in support of the arts, including being a founder member of ITC. For over three decades Guy was in receipt of generous (NPO) funding by the ACGB, ACE, RA’s, local government and education authorities, trust and foundations and many regional arts funding authorities across the UK. In addition Guy spent a great deal of his time supporting colleagues in other theatre companies of the period of interest to UH with advice on fundraising and management. Guy also has a great deal of international directing and teaching  experience, having worked regularly and over many decades in countries as wide apart as Russia, Japan, Mexico, Singapore, Israel, Germany, France, Australia, Sweden, Denmark, Italy ,the Netherlands and others. Many of his plays have been translated into other languages. Since retirement he has spent much time mentoring others and enjoying  being on the UH Board, where he’s once again in the  familiar role of Treasurer.

Sue Dunderdale is a director most known for fostering new talent and award winning writers. Her career in theatre has taken her from founding PENTABUS Theatre Company to the Cambridge Theatre Company, through the RSC to being Artistic Director of the Soho Theatre Company and of Greenwich Theatre. She was selected for the BBC Film/TV Directors Course and has directed many episodic dramas (Eastenders, Coronation Street, London Bridge, The Bill, Casualty, Holby, Peak Practice, Rockface, etc), three Drama/Documentaries and two single Dramas. The latest was two episodes of HOLBY in 2015/16. She has also directed numerous short films. She is in development for a feature film and a television series with Evolutionary Films. She has also written her own film script, BAD ENGLISH and co-written FOOD with Stephen Wyatt. From 2004 until 2014 she was Head of MAs at RADA and Leader of the MA in Directing. In that time and since then, as a free-lance theatre director, she directed, new plays by Chris Katic, Simon Burt, Pam Gems, Jonathan Larkin, Chloe Moss, Juan Radrigán, Melissa Murray, Stephen Wyatt and Joshua Val Martin. Most recently she directed GIDEON by Daniel Mawson a play for actors and professional musicians for Bradford City of Culture and a northern tour.

Alexander Gallimore is a Jamaican-born playwright, performer, and archivist based in London. Working across theatre, performance art, and choreo-poetry, he draws on Caribbean folk horror and European expressionism to investigate migration, race, sexuality, and inheritance. His practice channels archival research into fragmented, surreal landscapes, exploring how performance engages with ancestry, disappearance, desire, the body, and liberation. He has been a visiting module director at East 15 Acting School and has created performances for Battersea Arts Centre, Kettle’s Yard, the University of Cambridge, and the London Performance Studio. Recent work includes bodies over bodies under bullets, supported by Wysing Arts Centre and performed at Cambridge Junction in July 2026, and Under a Swollen Sun, commissioned by Selina Thompson Ltd. His play Boys Beware (longlisted for the Alfred Fagon Award and the Theatre503 International Playwriting Award) will be staged as part of Camden People’s Theatre’s Autumn 2026 season. His plays The Angel Riots, bloody and out of love, and bright silicone light were performed as part of the Gothenburg Theatre Festival. His work has been presented across the UK, Sweden, Mexico, Jamaica, and Canada. Alongside his theatrical practice, Gallimore is assistant curator and researcher to Dr. Susan Croft at Unfinished Histories, where he assistant-curated Homosexual Acts and Beyond, hosts conversations, conducts interviews, locates lost material, and helps deliver the organisation’s public programme. He is co-facilitator and co-director of the experimental performance collective A Woman Becomes a Wolf, with Scarlett Wolf and has served as a writer in residence at The Face magazine. He will continue this work, assistant curating and researching FYFFI 3: What Survives? Change, Continuity and Cultural Power, revisiting Naseem Khan’s The Arts Britain Ignores, the groundbreaking 1976 report on the ‘art of Britain’s Ethnic Minorities. He holds a Bachelor of Arts in Acting and Contemporary Theatre, where he received the David Garrick Scholarship.

Frances Rifkin is a British theatre director, facilitator and specialist in political and community theatre, with a career spanning more than four decades. Her work centres on theatre as a tool for social engagement, activism and collective empowerment.

Her roots lie in the radical theatre movement, including work during the 1984–85 UK miners’ strike, where she recorded stories from the picket lines. She went on to direct with politically engaged companies including Banner Theatre and Recreation Ground Theatre, developing a practice grounded in working-class experience, community participation and social change.

During the 1990s, Frances trained extensively with Brazilian theatre practitioner Augusto Boal, becoming a leading UK practitioner of his Theatre of the Oppressed and Forum Theatre methodologies. She has since applied these participatory approaches across community, cultural and professional settings.

Frances is the founder and Artistic Director of Utopia Arts, through which she has brought interactive theatre techniques to health professionals, service users and community groups. She also co-founded Implicated Theatre, working with the Serpentine Galleries and Unite the Union to explore migration, political speech and collective action through performance.

Alongside her theatre practice, Frances has worked as a facilitator and consultant across the NHS, trade unions and higher education, using theatre to open up conversations around workplace culture, ethics, inequality and systemic change. Throughout her career, she has remained committed to politically engaged, participatory theatre and its capacity to give voice to lived experience and create meaningful social change.