Nicola Hollinshead
Acting
Biography
A working-class woman originally from Liverpool, with a background in professional theatre, my first encounter with theatre was as a member of Liverpool's Everyman Youth Theatre (EYT), with punk theatre director & performance artist Roger Hill. Here we were introduced to a range of innovative practices in community and participatory theatre-making including using improvisation and devising methods to create theatre, performing our shows in the main house. Initial involvement with political theatre with EYT was acting in a devised CND (Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament) Street Theatre with giant puppets of bombs and the CND symbol, which we performed in a shopping centre and then in Williamson Square in the city centre. I also worked on Suffer The Children, a devised production based on the Toxteth riots that took place in the city in 1981.
Known For
Alan Bleasdale's five-part series relates the further experiences of unemployed Liverpudlian tarmac layers Dixie, Chrissie, Loggo and Yosser, and their revered older friend, retired longshoreman and union leader, George Malone. As they struggle to make ends meet in a depressed economy, and to hold together their financially battered families, they are harrassed by the petty bureaucrats of the DHSS. But the lumbering investigational juggernaut is, both comically and tragically, guided by drivers with only a provisional license.
Boys from the Blackstuff
The story of the rise of morals crusader Mary Whitehouse in the UK in the 1960's.
Filth: The Mary Whitehouse Story
Recently-dumped and on the verge of admitting she'll never make any money doing something she loves, a young artist takes a job in a top London advertising agency and, much to her surprise, after connecting with a disillusioned colleague, starts to enjoy life as a grown-up - and the wild lifestyle that follows; but when the pull of the carefree life she left behind gets in the way of responsibilities, she must learn to behave like an adult, personally and professionally, to hang on to the life and people she's started to fall for.