Natasha is a Theatre Practitioner & Director with 28 years industry experience; directing, writing, acting and teaching.

About Natasha

 

Natasha’s career began with Riverside Theatre, and includes working with Kneehigh, Miracle , Wolf and Water, NT and RSC . Continued her professional development with Tina Packer (Shakespeare & Co, USA), and was employed by The Mercury Theatre as first ever UK role of Actor/Practitioner, developing actor training programmes and directing youth and community work.

She returned to the South West to drive and deliver an extensive range of work including international youth theatre exchange projects: new writing festivals, and large community shows. She has lectured at HE level and has worked as Associate Artist with The Actor’s Wheel, The Lab, TRP.

More recently Natasha directed audio drama Tissues.Water. Clock for Invisible ME (David Oddie) during lockdown and is currently developing work with new writers and performers for this year’s Villages in Action and Exeter Fringe Festival.

Tissues. Water. Clock. is a radio play of the highest technical and moral quality which brilliantly fulfils its brief of raising awareness about the debilitating condition of Myalgic Encephalomyelitis (ME) in the general population. Directed by Natasha Buckley, its spare, witty dialogue never fails to bring the listener into a state of questioning of all the easy assumptions and misrepresentations which have dogged research into ME. With the minimum necessary words both relatives and the ‘caring’ professions are held to account for the casual, careless manner in which those struggling with the condition have been treated. The play’s superbly effective, complex, controlling feature is the multi-layered pun on ME which is used to plot the devasting fragmentation of personality so subtly created by Jayne Newton Chance and realised by Jo Loyn. The incremental despair and the sucking out of energy leave the character of Rachel in a crumpled heap resembling the flaccid contours of a punctured balloon. This play richly deserves wider dissemination and should be offered for broadcast.”

— Tim Prentki

Emeritus Professor of Theatre for Development, University of Winchester