Alan Cheesman was educated at the University of North Wales, Bangor and is an experienced professional director & actor who has worked in theatre for over 30 years. He has appeared extensively in London’s West End, repertory theatre, theatre-in-education and television. As associate director of Wiltshire’s Theatre-in-the-Downs, he directed and co-directed large-scale community plays with casts of over 500, set up and ran youth theatre groups throughout Wiltshire, and ran a series of writers’ workshops in conjunction with the Royal Court theatre and the Theatre Royal, Stratford East. Having a keen interest in promoting environmental issues, he also directed both ‘The Rising Tide’ – a community play exploring the phenomenon of global warming, which took as its starting point the Rio earth summit of 1992 and ‘Antarctica’ , a production which looked at the political and moral issues of mining and whaling in Antarctica. As researcher, devisor and actor he collaborated on this project with Paul Brown from the Guardian newspaper and Pete Wilkinson from Greenpeace.

For many years Alan has also worked as an actor and co-devisor with the Globe Players Theatre Company, but it was his work with the pioneering Young National Trust Theatre Company, as an actor, researcher and devisor which particularly inspired him to set up his own company, Theatre Merchants, in order to produce bespoke theatrical productions, bringing history to life through the media of drama, dance and music.