Whose Green and Pleasant Land? – Creative team

Maya is a cellist, singer, composer and community leader. Her music explores the global threads of folk music and themes of belonging and connection.

She leads the London Youth Folk Ensemble, and runs Flotsam Sessions, an Arts Council supported intercultural music organisation, focused on bringing people from diverse communities together to create living and breathing folk music that reflects the city.

She plays as part of the award-winning Mediaeval Baebes, and can be found regularly on the stage across the country.

Jack is a contemporary music producer, sound artist and community musician with over 20 years’ experience both within the commercial music industry and working with young people across a huge range of settings.

After studying sound art and audio engineering in Bristol, Jack began his career in Bristol’s thriving music scene in the early 2000s, running a recording studio that served young people in the inner city.

After moving to Brighton in the 2010s, he went on to work with a wide range of artists, alongside running youth music projects, teaching music production at every level, and working on cutting-edge sound installation projects.

Jack has a strong belief in the power of music and songwriting to change lives. After working freelance for many years for Surrey Arts, he recently became the organisation’s Contemporary Music Lead.

Rosie May is a multidisciplinary artist and poet working across spoken word, storytelling, site-responsive performance and audio visual installation. Her work explores the relationship between place and identity – how narratives of landscape shape our sense of self and community.

Dialogue, deep listening and engaging communities in co-creation are central to Rosie’s practice. Much of her poetry is developed through verbatim techniques, working directly from recorded conversations conducted during her research. For Whose Green and Pleasant Land?, Rosie has been working in deep collaboration with communities across the Surrey Hills, gathering voices, memories and living histories of the land. As Spoken Word Artist, she will be weaving together oral history, stories of place and contemporary voices to explore themes of belonging and displacement in the landscape.

She has developed place-responsive and co-creative work with organisations including the National Trust, the Barbican Centre, Battersea Arts Centre, SkyArts and the British Council. She holds a distinction in her MA in Arts and Place from Dartington Arts School, and is currently pursuing a practice-based PhD at Worcester University, researching animist landscapes and multispecies frameworks for co-creative practice.

Rosie’s website

Insta: @rosie_may.jones

Substack: @rosiemayjones

For the past 25 years, Rachel Griffiths has worked as a participatory theatre maker, facilitator and coach using theatre to enable individuals and communities to make change.

Her recent work, using the Theatre of the Oppressed method, explores the intersection between community organising and community theatre-making; collaborating with Citizens UK to co-create theatre with communities affected by a range of issues including the Living Wage, temporary accommodation and barriers to healthcare. This year, she was lead Artist on a Legislative Theatre event in Lincoln, challenging the stigma and injustices within the PIP disability benefits system.

International work includes making theatre with women in a pavement-dwelling community in South India; with girls rescued from sex trafficking in Mumbai; Afghan men at the Good Chance Theatre in the ‘Jungle’ refugee camp; at-risk girls in La Paz, Bolivia; and teaching physical theatre to young performers in the Downtown Contemporary Arts Festival, Cairo.

In the business sector, Rachel uses theatre practice to enable clients to present and communicate dynamically and effectively. Clients include senior leaders from a variety of organisations and international business schools.

Rachel writes on theatre for change and speaks at conferences on arts, faith and justice. She holds an MA in Participatory and Community Arts from Goldsmiths College, University of London; a BA in French and Theatre Studies from the University of London, and trained as a performer at the internationally renowned L’Ecole Internationale de Théâtre, Jacques Lecoq in Paris.

Tony grew up in a family where theatre was a passion, and his own love affair with the stage started with a lead role in a gang show – awarded to him simply because, in the cub troop he had joined, he was one of the few who could read. He then progressed through school productions and student theatre before a career in pensions and investment took over. He never stopped writing though, and in 2008 he switched careers to make that his focus.

Following this switch, he found early success with his play The Door on the Edinburgh Fringe; it later transferred to a run at off-Broadway 59E59 Theaters in New York. Somewhere along the way Tony met Darren Cheek and the idea of forming Damn Cheek Productions was born. A double bill of a revised version of The Door along with Tony’s prophetic political The Speech became the new company’s first production and toured covering London, Birmingham and various fringes and other venues around the UK. Tony’s further work with Damn Cheek includes Sex is another Language, Fred and Georgie and Passion for the Planet.

Tony’s first novel, Blessed Assurance, was published in 2019 and has been adapted for the stage by Damn Cheek. His latest poetry collection, Paths and Digressions, was published in May 2021.

Tony’s other activities include a book for children, a millennium review and (as co-writer) a libretto for the choral pageant George and The Dragon. He also finds time for running writers’ groups, choral singing and playing saxophone. Tony is also a director of Terrestrial, a Bristol-based arts company.

Darren is an actor, director, writer and dramaturg with 3 decades of experience creating ambitious, socially engaged theatre across the UK. He co-founded Damn Cheek in 2013 with the aim of widening access to theatre through high-quality, professional work, deep community collaboration and authentic storytelling.

Darren’s own pathway into theatre was shaped by the support and encouragement of his secondary school drama teacher, and this formative influence continues to inform his practice. His work is driven by a belief in theatre’s capacity to create lasting ripple effects – supporting individuals, amplifying unheard voices and strengthening communities.

As a performer, Darren has worked extensively in leading regional theatres, on national tours and in the West End, alongside appearances in film and television. Prior to founding Damn Cheek, he was Associate Director of Krazy Kat Theatre Company, touring widely in sign-integrated productions. A fluent British Sign Language user, he has long championed accessible and inclusive performance, and has also held associate roles with UnFit Productions, YCT and Kipper Tie.

Since 1997, Darren has written and developed a wide range of original plays and adaptations. Current projects include Spilling the Beans! – a large-scale, site-specific community theatre project in Gateshead; Transitions, a primary schools tour exploring mental and emotional wellbeing; and a new performance centring authentic voices and lived experience of disordered eating. He continues to develop Damn Cheek’s hybrid live and online work, expanding the possibilities of digital and participatory performance.

Alongside his artistic practice, Darren is an experienced trainer, facilitator and role-player, working nationally and internationally with organisations including NHS trusts, the BBC Academy and the National Bank of Pakistan. He is also a fully qualified individual, relationship and group psychotherapist, a background that underpins his care-led, ethical and impactful approach to theatre-making.