EXTANT DIRECTORS and OFFICERS

Artistic Director: Maria Oshodi

Maria graduated 1992 from Middlesex University with a 1st BA honors in Drama and English. Maria’s first play, the S Bend, was produced as part of the Royal Court Young Writers Festival and later by the Cockpit Theatre. She wrote four more stage plays that toured nationally, published by Methuen Longmans and John Murray.
She has written a short drama produced by Channel 4, and worked in arts development, performed, and founded Extant Limited.

From 2000 to 2003, Maria worked in BBC Drama production, and also works as a freelance writer, having been commissioned by Braunarts as writer on the Dark, a touring 3D sound installation, which can also be found at www.thedark.net

Secretary of Extant: June Bretherton

June Bretherton was born partially sighted and became totally blind in 1984. She had trained and worked as a teacher, but started her own Consultancy Business in 1988. She was Administrator of the Blind Business Association for nine years a Trustee of Action for Blind People for five years, and has been Extant secretary since 2004. JBC Consultancy has expanded and grown in scope, now employing several visually impaired people. Now called 'JBC - London', June and her colleagues offer disability equality training, carry out access audits and project manage a wide variety of events and activities, many in the field of The Arts, including some internationally based

Director and Chair of Extant: John Beaumont

John joins Extant as a Project Manager with over 10 years of experience of delivering large IT programmes and projects throughout the UK and Europe. John has been involved in the management of several Sports Tours for Visually Impaired sports men and women including the first ever tour of an England Blind Cricket Team to Australia in 2002. John is looking to work with Extant to strengthen its Project Management Capability and to translate his business and industry management skills to this exciting Arts and Theatre organization.

Director of Extant: IAN JENTLE

I began my career in entertainment in the 1960’s as an itinerant folk – singer, playing clubs at night and busking where I could during the day. In 1969 I quit singing to take up acting and after attending L.A.M.D.A, I got my first acting job at Regent spark Theatre playing a whole host of walk – on parts and learning how to paint props. For the following 25 years or so I made a living working in theatre, film and T.V., mainly as an actor, sometimes as a song and dance man,sometimes as a writer or director. When my failing sight resulted in a severe decline in success at auditions, I retired from performing and ever since I have been increasingly involved in working with disabled people, particularly in the field of the arts where access for disabled artists and arts consumers has been my driving passion. I was involved with the “Free For All “ project which aimed to make the re – building of Sadler’s Wells as accessible as possible to disabled people. I then served as a director on the board of Sadler’s for six years and I am now on the board of governors there. I worked with Maria Oshodi on a project funded by the Arts Council to ascertain the unmet needs of blind and paritaly sighted performers and audiences and was the editor of the “Changing The Scene” report which came out of that exercise.

Director of Extant: Chris Thomas

Chris Formerly worked for Open University and Trade Union education . He set up Team Video in 1986 to make and distribute educational videos for schools and adult education. He became aware of disability arts through his involvement with Paddington Arts that started an extensive collaboration on various projects with Maria Oshodi and Extant. He is the Producer of Team Video, an Educational publisher of DVDs for the secondary classroom, specializing in social awareness, Human rights and civil liberties citizenship and democracy. Team Video has been working in the education field for over 20 years and has established itself as a leading producer of audio visual materials for this market.

Director and Tresurer of Extant: Maria Tuffy

My career has been primarily within the IT and Risk industry. I initially gained experience as a Developer, Team Leader and then Project Leader. I migrated onto Audit and Risk Management within the Investment Banking Sector and have worked at NatWest Markets , BZW and Barclays Capital. I am currently working for Deutsche Bank where I head up an IT Risk and Control Unit. My experience in the corporate world has included both development and consultancy work, and has given me global exposure to differing cultural approaches and varied operating models. i wanted to become involved with an Arts focussed group that was exploring experimental areas and was not too large or mainstream

Lifetime Honorary Extant Member: Damien O'Connor

Between 1990/93 he trained in Drama/Theatre Arts at Goldsmiths College, London and Trinity College, Dublin. Since then, he has worked as a workshop leader, delivering drama workshops to a wide variety of community groups. He performed at a story telling festival, London 1996. During this year he also delivered a drama workshop at the Second International Festival of Therapy and Theatre, Lodz, Poland.

It was here, that he saw for the first time, groups of visually impaired performers from a number of European countries, presenting their work. He worked as producer for New Breed theatre company, Manchester, for five years and successfully re-launched the company's touring programme with a new play entitled The Irish Giant by Garry Robson. The play won the Manchester Evening news Award for the best fringe production of 2002.

In 2003, Damien became self employed, working as a freelance arts consultant with companies such as North West Disability Arts Forum, Liverpool and Touchdown Dance, Manchester.

His involvement with Extant began at its inception in 1997. He worked as an actor on three Extant projects, co-led a workshop in Madrid for 20 theatre directors, and co-presented a workshop for Extant at the Blind In Theatre festival, Zagreb 2001, and hosted a research presentation there later in 2003. He held the title of Extant co-director with Maria Oshodi for five years and supported the organisation administratively, technically and morally over 10 years, before his retirement to Ireland in 2007.