Our team

David Parrish

Artistic and Executive Producer

After a business degree and four years with Barclays, David ran away to the theatre. While training to be an actor (a harder training than anything he had ever done) in Birmingham he produced his first show, Huis Clos by Sartre, in 1995 and Creation Theatre Company was born.

While acting in a Shakespeare in an Oxford college garden he and three cast mates decided to produce a show themselves. A year later in summer 1996, and still knowing almost nothing about producing, everyone involved was nearly killed by the stress of staging Romeo & Juliet. Inspite of 3,500 ticket sales it might have been most sensible to have walked away from the industry at that point and had an easier life. Never knowing when to quit David pushed on and Macbeth in summer 1997 attracted 8,000 people and David’s fate was sealed.

Over 40 shows, well over 300,000 thousand ticket sales and 15 years later David has come to realise that Shakespeare really was a genius, theatre in wacky locations is better than anything, endless growth is not the route to happiness, people working in the theatre are truly amazing, and the people of Oxfordshire are a magnificent audience.

David never wants to work in London and his continuing aim is to produce shows that “would make even me want to come back again, even after I have had to already watch them five times already.”

David is married to Ida-Eline and they have two girls Sunniva and Lucia. He speaks fluent Norwegian, previously fluent but now rusty German and French. He meditates and loves cooking, hills and mountains.

Nicola Cartlidge

Producer and Operations Manager

Nicola is one of the many Warwick graduates working at Creation and has been with the company long enough to be worried about the number of crepes she has consumed over the years! A perk of being the Creation producer – you get to have a go at crawling along the tunnels under the Mirror Tent stage, which everyone secretly wants to do! People would be surprised by how much Nicola knows about porta toilets, drainage and other such glamorous areas which are all part of the magic. Nicola likes to do triathlons because she thinks they are fun but everyone else at Creation thinks she is miss-guided.

Lucy Askew

Marketing and Education Business Development Director

Lucy started the millennium with two weeks work experience at Creation Theatre Company. She left with happy memories of making masks with children, learning stage combat and the art of lighting a barbeque. Little did she know that 8 years later she would find herself pulled back to that crazy world to take on the role of Education Development Manager. Whilst the excitement of working with the children of Oxford never waned the lure of Creation’s sparkly marketing team beckoned and Lucy now greedily sits with fingers in both pies as Marketing and Education Development Director.

Rebecca de la Bedoyere

Fundraising Manager

A long time ago Rebecca went to Warwick to read lots of books. After three years they gave her a degree in English & American Literature, which was all very lovely but not especially practical, so she also studied for a certificate in Marketing. She worked for Cherwell District Council for a few years as Marketing Manager for the leisure centres, but her inner dramatis personae was scratching to be let out, so she headed off to the charming Chipping Norton Theatre to oversee press and marketing there. In her spare time she also managed PR for a national tour of Kathakali South Asian dance.

Just as she was starting to get itchy feet she read in the paper that her very favourite theatre company in the whole world was seeking a Marketing & Sales Manager. Coincidence? Serendipity? Either way, she applied, and is very glad she did too! Rebecca joined the team in 2006 before leaving in 2008 to explore England on her narrow boat with her husband Dan. She had a beautiful baby girl, Freya, in 2009 and returned part-time in 2010 as Fundraising Manager.

When she isn’t working, playing with Freya or messing about on boats, she does border Morris dancing.

Cheryl Pearce

Marketing and Sales Manager

After university, Cheryl assisted at various arts organisations gaining diverse experiences, from writing press releases to clearing a way through the crowd for a giant insect. Discovering a love of spreading the word to audiences about amazing performances, she moved to Oxford to work in marketing whilst running local music events, and joined Creation in 2007.

Samantha Knipe

Education Manager

Sam has been involved with Creation Theatre Company since 2001 when she first volunteered for Front of House at our summer production of Romeo and Juliet. Since then she has been chipping away at our edges: as a volunteer, a community chorus member for the Oxford Passion in 2007, a workshop assistant, and Drama Club leader. After continual knocking at the gates, we finally let her into the office in June 2009 when she joined us as Education Assistant. This tenacity, along with the flair of assistant Helen Morley, has made the Education Team a strong and vibrant part of the Creation family.

Katie Catling

Administration Manager

Katie’s first theatre experience was playing a circus pony in ‘Sago the Clown’ at Whitley Bay Playhouse aged 7. Since then she has graduated from The University of Manchester with a BA (Hons) in English Language and Literature where, as a permanent member of the production team for the annual university pantomime, she acted as producer and designer making various things out of cardboard, a wolf’s costume from a baseball cap and some egg boxes, and made her cast up to look like the members of Kiss. She was also the producer and designer for an original work put on as part of the Manchester InFringe Drama Festival involving a couple of live fish.

After receiving a piece of paper to say she was clever, Katie left Manchester and lived in Canada working and travelling for a year. Here she learnt how to ski (badly), clean rooms at top speed (surprisingly well) and how to pronounce various Italian dishes (mmm…). She also acquired a love of large open spaces, bears, moose and maple syrup though not necessarily all at the same time. On her return to England she worked in catering as a restaurant manager in her native land of Northumberland before moving to Oxford to work for Creation in 2008. Katie acclimatised to the strange southern land quickly while her colleagues enjoy speaking to her in ‘Northern’ to make her feel at home.