Meet the Team
Photo by Eddie Pearce
Niki McCretton
Artistic Director and owner of The Lyric Theatre, and Artistic Director of Stuff & Nonsense Theatre Company
Niki has been producing theatre for over 25 years, with a reputation for contemporary artistic children’s theatre as well as writing and directing adaptations of existing stories. She joined forces with Stuff & Nonsense in 2008, bringing with her an incomparable array of theatre-making experience, including award-winning national and international tours with Heretic, Throw me a Bone, Wormhole, Relative, Space 50, Muttnik the First Dog in Space, Hoof! and Horseplay.
Niki bought The Lyric in 2010 (after selling her house to do so!) to bring about a creation space for artists to be able to immerse themselves in making work. Alongside her work with Stuff & Nonsense, Niki also creates solo productions, directs other theatre companies, and dabbles in stand-up comedy just for fun. Niki gifts her time to the Lyric and does not draw a wage from it.
Holly Miller
Puppet & Prop Maker
Holly is a professional puppet creator, prop maker and scenic painter whose workshop is upstairs at The Lyric. Holly creates the puppets, props and scenic staging for Stuff & Nonsense, as well as commissions for other theatre companies, and community arts projects making puppets with participants. She runs the highly popular Puppet Club and summer workshops at the Lyric, as well as delivering creative workshops for schools, community groups and clubs. Find out more about her work at www.hollymillerartist.com Holly is a huge help to the Lyric behind the scenes, keeping it ship-shape, and her inventory-like brain knows where every single item in the Lyric lives!
Jenny Harrold
Volunteer steward, duty manager, performer with Stuff & Nonsense
Jenny is a performer with Stuff & Nonsense, an aerialist and valued volunteer in the Lyric team. She moved to Bridport in 2018 from Peckham after coming here to work with the company a number of times and falling in love with the Lyric. Jenny gifts a lot of her time to helping the Lyric, cleaning and tidying, stewarding events when they’re on and running the bar.
Rosie Russell
Volunteer steward, duty manager, project leader, steering group member
Rosie has been involved with arts, culture, further and higher education, training for over 30 years, as a performer, leader, lecturer, mentor and coordinator. She is particularly keen on supporting the development of tomorrow’s cultural leaders and creatives, and demonstrating the impact of arts and culture on people’s lives. Rosie volunteers for the Lyric in a number of ways: stewarding, duty managing, running the bar, hosting artists, seeking funding, running projects and cleaning the loos.
Volunteers
From stewarding shows to serving drinks at the bar, putting up posters to cleaning the loos, hosting artists to fixing a crumbling bit of the building, they are the beating heart of the Lyric and are worth their weight in gold! We couldn’t do what we do without the support and power-hours of our completely fabulous and generous volunteer team.
The team of 30+ superstar volunteers is superbly organised by our volunteer coordinator, Susan Carter, whose unflappable organisation of rotas is second to none. If you are interested in volunteering your time to helping the Lyric please drop us a line.
Also any local companies who may be able to help us mend things – carpenters, plasterers, builders, gardeners – please do get in touch. We have great support from the local press who are always keen to cover a story of goodwill so it is a great way to do a good deed and get some media coverage.