Dame Harriet Walter DBE
Patron Astraea Productions
Benjamin Zephaniah
Patron Astraea Productions 2020 - 7.12.23
ASTRAEA realises the importance of Accessability. To remove barriers that prevent anybody from being able to understand or interact with our digital content we are currently working directly with Arts Council England on Accessability for this site.
Madeleine Wynn
Artistic Director & Producer
Company Director of Astraea Productions
Madeleine is founder of Astraea Productions set up in 2020 to stimulate and share new creative initiatives in theatre and film. "Merman" is her first short film. Her full length award winning feature script "Losing Gloria" is being selected for many festivals and has won best screenplay at New York, California and Miami Indies, nominated at Toronto and Art Film Spirit Awards and is currently a finalist at the Academy qualifying Flickers Rhode Island International Film Festival. Her TV series “Only a Woman” is currently selected at City of Angels Women’s Film Festival in LA.
A 2020/21 Mercury Theatre Creative, Madeleine is also an Associate Director at RADA and directs for the INK Festival of New Writing in East Anglia. She is recipient of a 2022 Arts Council England DYCP Award and has been selected for the BFI and Creative England's 'Foundations in Film and TV' (2022/23) as well as being invited to join the competitive Screen Skills Cohort 2023/24. She recently enjoyed a five month placement on Amazon Prime series "The Devil's Hour" (Season 2) where she took on second unit and splinter units. Currently, Madeleine is writing a six part TV series and in pre-production to direct her first feature. She is producer of a new short for Astraea who also have two theatre plays in development which she will direct.
Madeleine was a staff director at the National Theatre. She directed "Strangers on a Train" adapted from the Patricia High-Smith novel which premiered in the main house at Chester Gateway Theatre. The show later went to the West End. Trained as an actor Madeleine appeared in episodes of Frederic Raphael's "After the War" and American mini series "The Nightmare Years". Her first theatre company Zenana was backed by The Stoll Moss Theatre Foundation and, among others, she directed award winning playwright Tom Kempinski's "When The Past is Still to Come", the poet Billy Marshall Stoneking's "Sixteen Words for Water" and "Albertine in Five Times" with Marion Bailey and Miriam Karlin. She was Associate Director of The London New Play Festival and for The Finborough Theatre where she was joint winner of a Time Out Award for 'A Season of Women's Writing'. Madeleine has been involved in script development with many theatres in London and directs workshops on the Speaking of Shakespearean Verse.
Liz Cook
Company Manager & Director of Astraea Productions
After graduating from London University, Liz took up a post at a top theatrical agency liaising with producers and casting agents, managing the careers of over 40 leading actors. From there she moved into production and worked for an international media agency organising large scale corporate events all over the world with clients such as BMW, Porsche and Duracell and producing corporate films and creative content
More recently, she has worked as General Manager for Theatre on the Coast, who in 2019 re-launched the summer season of theatre in Southwold. Liz is a producer of Merman.
Abigail McKern
Executive Producer
Abigail trained at the Webber Douglas at the same time as Madeleine Wynn and has been acting for 40 years.
At the beginning of her career, Abigail won an Olivier Award for Best Supporting Actress and was nominated for Best Newcomer, both in the same year. She went on to work with the likes of Dame Judi Dench, Sir Sam Mendes, Sir Kenneth Branagh, Sir Ian McKellen, Dustin Hoffman and Sir Peter Hall. She played Cordelia opposite Sir Robert Stephens at The R.S.C and has worked at nearly every theatre in the West End as well as at The Royal Court, The National, The Almeida and The Sheffield Crucible to name but a few. Her last TV appearance was one of the leads in the award winning series 'Married to a Paedophile' for Channel 4. Her most recent work has been playing Clara in “A Quiet Place:Day One” for Paramount Pictures due out next year and Penelope in “Lovely” for MonkeyDog Pictures also due out in 2024.
Angela Hart
Producer
Angela set up Boxer Films with director Philip Goodhew in 1994 and they produced ‘Intimate Relations’ in 1996 on a budget of £1.2m, starring Julie Walters and Rupert Graves. They also cast Nicholas Hoult in his first film role. It was picked up by Fox Searchlight at its first screening and distributed worldwide theatrically. This was followed by ‘Another Life’ in 2001 with a budget of £2.5m, part funded by the Arts Council of England Lottery Film Fund and starring Natasha Little, Nick Moran, Ioan Gruffudd, Tom Wilkinson and Imelda Staunton. The film was distributed by Winchester Film Distribution.
Fiona Darrington
Producer
Born in Yorkshire, educated at the L.S.E. and Harvard. Lived in Boston, London and New York before moving to Suffolk.
Worked in the U.S.A. for the Boston Consulting Group and C.F.O. magazine. Recruited in the U.S.A. for the Economist Group (Marketing Manager) before later moving to The Telegraph (Marketing and Distribution Manager/Publisher, The Weekly Telegraph) and Le Monde Diplomatique (Publisher). She established her own consultancy, Littlefield Brown, clients included H.R.H. Prince Charles (Perspectives on Architecture Magazine) T.L.S. The Spectator and The Telegraph Group. She is an enthusiastic supporter of the Arts, funding community outreach programmes in Suffolk.