Joan Plunkett

UK, Performer

Born in Dublin, Joan has spent more than half her life in London, where she pursued a teaching career. In the Eighties, she decided to return to university to fulfil a lifelong ambition to study dance. She graduated with a degree in Dance and Religious Studies in 1984 and, the following year, obtained an MA in Dance Studies from the University of Surrey. Upon leaving university, she choreographed masques, and period and modern dances for plays by Chapman, Middleton and Shakespeare. She then returned to teaching, at the same time, periodically leading experimental movement workshops for The Hammer of Los Theatre Company. She also played Mrs Henderson in W.B. Yeats’s The Words Upon the Window Pane for the same company. When she gave up teaching in 1999, Joan worked for a couple of years as a Community and Youth Officer and then decided that she would pursue an acting career.

Acting Credits include: The House of Atreus (Waterloo East Theatre and, shortly, Seoul Fringe Festival); Crime and Punishment (The Lord Stanley); O Crewel World and Discovering Dad (Theatre 503); The 9:21 to Shrub Hill (New Diorama); The Woman Who…, Transactions, Seems I’ve got too much…, and No Signal (blank pages); Games [For Two] (The Kings Head); The Lower Depths and The Wildes of Essex (Pentameters); Che Guevara’s Motorbike or how I found my father (Rosemary Branch Theatre); Anthony and Cleopatra (BAC). Credits also include site-specific plays, immersive theatre, rehearsed readings and performance art. She has also re-incarnated as both Virginia Woolf and Charles Dickens for Maverick Theatre’s Literary Pub Crawl. Joan has appeared in feature and short films, the most recent being Parting by award-winning director, Gabriele Paoli. In 2011, she was able to combine acting and dance, when she played the part of an ex-dancer in the early stages of Alzheimers in Clinging to the Rock Face.