About

Pauline is a multidisciplinary theatre-maker, movement director and performer based in the North of England. She creates and curates artistic experiences that opens audiences, artists, and communities to have conversations they wouldn’t usually have.

Beginning as a Rambert trained dancer, Pauline who has appeared in stage and television since the age of 15, began her career as a dancer in repertory dance companies across the UK including Janet Smith and Dancers, Diversions Dance (Wales), The Ensemble Group (Scotland), Phoenix Dance Theatre (England) as well as being acting artistic director for Teeside Dance Initiative, leaving dance for theatre in 2010.

Since then, Pauline has amassed a rich background as director, writer, movement director, performer, and facilitator and has collaborated with theatre and live art companies across the UK. Pauline's work as movement director and performer has been seen in collaborations with Selina Thompson LTD’s Twine (2024), live performance artist Paula Varjack’s Nine Sixteenths (2024), Improbable Theatre on An Improbable Musical (2022). In 2017 Pauline was Associate Director on the Leeds Playhouse’s Queen of Chapeltown working alongside director Amy Leach.

Pauline’s collaborations also included Tell Tale Hearts Children's Theatre on Yummm! (2013), Burmantofts Stories (2013) as director which featured in the programme for Transform Festival that same year, working with the community of Burmantofts in Leeds, and movement direction for Red Ladder’s Promised Land (2012).

In her own work, Pauline explores themes of identity, participation, intimacy, and care. Pauline’s previous work, the critically acclaimed What If I Told You written and performed by Pauline premiered at the Leeds Playhouse (formerly the West Yorkshire Playhouse) in 2016 and toured across the UK. The show was presented at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival (2017), where it was a shortlisted nominee for the Amnesty International Freedom of Expression Award. What If I Told You returned for a second successful run at Leeds Playhouse in 2018 and was part of the inaugural programme at Brixton House, London in 2022.

Pauline is the artistic director of the Mayers Ensemble, a company formed in 2022 as a vehicle for her work which has been described as ‘shaking up traditional theatre and power structures to put the audience in the picture’ (Lyn Gardner, The Guardian) and is a published contributor to the anthology, Weighted Words (Peepal Tree Press) edited by Jacob Ross.

Pauline has collaborated with over 200 arts organisations, schools and universities across the U.K. as a facilitator of workshops and masterclasses.

Pauline is also a public speaker and artist provocateur whose work in these fields has seen her partner with organisations including Leeds 2023, Serendipity, Leeds Dance Partnerships, Space Two and One Dance U.K.

Pauline is an Open Space facilitator with Improbable Theatre, London where she is also a trustee.

Now in a new season of her life and creativity Pauline continues to write, and enjoys walking, photography, zine-making.