Ellen Groves

Venue Partner: Chapter Arts Centre
Partners: Grangetown Primary School & Michaelston Community College

Cardiff based Ellen studied Modern Drama at Brunel University before completing a Masters at East 15 Acting School. Since graduating Ellen has toured several productions with Stopwatch Theatre Company, appeared in a viral film for Time to Change with 3 Angry Men, featured in Ruth Jones’ production Stella on Sky One and worked with Hijinx Theatre Company. Ellen is a founding member of Cardiff based Likely Story Theatre Company and has played several roles across their nine projects to date, most recently playing Jess in their Seatown Ladies research and development.

Green Balloons

Ellen was selected to be resident at Chapter Arts Centre to develop two separate projects for specific age groups. Green Balloons was a dynamic piece that used non-traditional theatre development techniques to engage with children who were less likely to have experienced a theatre performance or any broader artistic experience. The piece was developed through a series of school-based
workshops with Year 3 & 4 students (aged 7-9) from Grangetown Primary School a large school
in a local demographically complex, multi-ethnic, multi-lingual area. It was an improvised, Saturday-Night-Live style show for children and their families.

The aim during the Platfform residency was to create a loose narrative that was then shaped by the young audience contributing their own experiences. It was then work-shopped with children in schools and at Chapter Arts Centre. Workshops took place at Grangetown Primary School and were attended by all artists on the project. A two-day workshop / audition was held at Chapter Arts Centre with 15 artists from the wider sector to find 3 performers to join the ensemble and develop the idea with Ellen. Mathilde Lopez directed and led the project into stage one R&D during June 2016.

Dear Diary

Ellen’s 2nd piece, Dear Diary, was developed for audiences aged 14+ and was a reflective piece of theatre storytelling based on Ellen’s own teenage diaries which sought audience involvement and feedback to shape the work through a series of open sharing and reflective discussion sessions. Ellen used her teenage diaries as source material to create a piece of comedy theatre about what it’s like to be a teenager, drawing together a narrative and exploring and reminding the audience of the highs and lows of teen-dom.

Ellen worked with teenagers from Michaelston Community College to test out ideas and this was further developed through research and development, artist talks and invited sharings with teenagers, artists and industry professionals. Her collaborators were musician Tom Elstob and director and theatre-maker Laura Mugridge. As well as performances at her partner venue, Dear Diary was performed as a work-in-progress performance at Machynlleth Comedy Festival, at the On the Edge work-in-progress sharings in July 2016, at Clwyd Theatr Cymru as part of their inaugural young people’s theatre festival and at Battersea Arts Centre as part of All Tomorrow’s Theatre.