The Players

Sonia Backers (IMBD)

Sonia is an English/Australian actor based in Paris. She studied in Australia and started acting with the theatre troupe Shakespeare Where You Like It, also playing Ophelia in Shakespeare by the Sea’s Hamlet and Viola in Iron Cove Theatre’s Twelfth Night.  On television she was in SBS’s English at Work, the TV film Les Amants du Flore (2006) and made every Australian’s obligatory appearance in Home and Away; in the cinema she had parts in Les Fanatiques and The Man in the Iron Mask (1998).  Since arriving in Paris her works has including a wide array of theatre, from the classic to the modern, as well as many short films, commercials, and voice overs.

Jolaine Beal (IMDB)

Jolaine Beal, a Californian native, was trained at the American Conservatory Theatre of San Francisco and the Berkeley Repertory School of Theatre.  In the beginning, she was either on the high school stage, with her favourite role being Viola of Twelfth Night, or auditioning for commercial work.  Jolaine’s adult life has been mainly dedicated to her career as an American family physician, but she nonetheless appeared on stage frequently, starring roles including Betty Meeks of The Foreigner and Suzanne in Don’t Dress for Dinner.  Now, residing mainly in France, she has contributed to English readings and discovered VoiceOver opportunities.

Nicolas Calderbank (Agent)

Nick Calderbank has lived in Paris for over 30 years, during which he has worked extensively in film, TV, and theatre as an actor and director. He is a founder member of The On Stage- New Open Space Theatre Company, producing works by Shakespeare, Pinter, Mamet, Ayckbourne, and more.  He has played both Prospero and King Lear directed by Rona Waddington at The Theatre de Nesle, and scores of credited television appearances as well as dubbing for films, cartoons and documentaries.

Stephanie Campion   (Agent) (IMDB)

Stephanie comes from the south of England, a country which she Brexited 28 years before it became fashionable, and has recently acquired French nationality to stop them getting at her. For a living she does a couple of things beginning with A : acting and accountancy. Guess which one pays the rent… Surprisingly, teaching finance is a lot like acting: you stand in front of an audience and make it up as you go along. She has done a bit of everything, including voiceovers and a month onstage at the Theatre du Chatelet as Mrs.Eynsford-Hill in “My Fair Lady”, and can be seen on television in “Versailles” (s3 ep 7 – viewable in 126 countries so you have no excuse). She runs a playreading workshop called “Moving Parts” in which actors have lots of fun giving life to authors’ new work and helping the audience tell the author how to rewrite the play.

Damian Corcoran

Damian Corcoran is an actor, director, voice artist and language coach.  He has been acting in France for over 25 years and has wide experience in theatre, film dubbing and voice overs, primarily in English. An accomplished voice actor and dubber, he has worked from some of the biggest production companies in Paris including Dubbing Bros, Arte and Canal+.  His theatre work has ranged from Shakespeare to Neil Labute, in theatres such as Le Nesle, L’Atelier, and Le Sudden. He performs public readings for Moving Parts Paris, his own poetry for Spoken Word Paris, and is co-founder of Brava Productions and Open Globe Theatre Paris.

David Gasman (IMBD)

David Gasman is an actor and director from Seattle, Washington who currently lives in Paris. He received a B.F.A from the professional actor training program at the Cornish College of the Arts, and studied with Polish theatre director Jerzy Grotowski. He has performed in more than fifty theatrical productions, including taking Shakespeare across the western United States, many small film roles, and works extensively as a voice actor and director in cartoons, video games, commercials and documentaries. I have a number of friends who are tremendously excited at the thought Little Wonder are working with the voice not only of Rayman but of a great many characters from Dragon Ball Z!

Meagan Lopez (IMBD)

Meagan Adele Lopez has been acting since she was five years old when she starred as the talking dog in Buster Brown and Tige. By day, she works at the New York Times as their international digital director in Paris managing teams in Hong Kong, Paris, and London. By night, she is finishing her second novel and acting with the theatre troupe International Players. She’s trained at the renowned Baltimore School for the Arts, University of Southern California and Cours Florent in Paris. Other credits include: CBS’ Numb3rs, independent film Sleepy Hollow High, and an upcoming film by filmmaker Penny Allen. You can follow her on Twitter simply @meagan.

Meagan’s first novel:   THREE QUESTIONS: because a quarter life crisis needs answers

Roger Surridge

Roger Surridge is a London-born graphic designer, illustrator, translator and voice artist who can often be found cycling around the Paris area. He makes frequent appearances in International Players stage productions and at Moving Parts readings. He naturally speaks in the most neutral Received Pronunciation ever recorded, which is probably why he enjoys the challenge of identifying and adopting regional accents from around the English-speaking world. At weekends he amuses himself, and sometimes others, by singing and playing the harmonica and ukulele.

Joe Wilkins

After graduation as a theatre major, Joe moved to Boston where he was cast in a production of a play entitled The Basic Training of Pavlo Hummel starring Al Pacino.  Over the next seven years, Joe worked as a stage actor with The Theatre Company of Boston, The Charles Playhouse, and a grass-roots theatre company called The Boston Repertory Theatre where he appeared in dozens of productions including The Little Prince, Uncle Vanya, God and Mrs Satan, Animal Farm, P.S. Your Cat is Dead, Sexual Perversity in Chicago and many others.

He spent nine years in New York doing film, soap opera and odd-broadway productions, and thirteen years in Atlanta doing film and TV work including Blue Sky directed by Tony Richardson, In the heat of the Night, I’ll Fly Away, and Savannah.  In 2000 he followed his wife to Paris, performing in Theatre and feature film work here in France.  In 2011 she passed away from lung cancer; in 2014 he returned to the city of lights to emerge from his funk and put his life back together.

The Writers

Anne Frith

Anne Frith has taught English at secondary schools in Bristol, Lisbon and Braga, and now works in Manchester. In an ideal world she would be back at university, studying something like linguistics, and going to lots of dance classes. Anne has been writing short stories and plays all her life, but it’s only recently she’s produced anything she’d like to send out into the world. No New Messages is her first radio play.

Toby Frost (Space Captain Smith Website)

When not being a semi-respectable lawyer, Toby Frost writes novels. He is the author of seven books: the six Space Captain Smith stories, which tell of the comical adventures of inept space explorer Isambard Smith, and Straken, a novel set in the Warhammer 40,000 universe. He has also written short stories for Snowbooks and Black Library. He is currently trying to write a book that doesn’t involve robots. Walking The Halls is his first radio play.

Kai Maristed Blog

Following early work in radio and drama in Germany (WDR, NDR), Kai published four books in the US including her story collection, Belong to Me (Random House), starred by Publisher’s Weekly. Regarding her third novel, Broken Ground, John Coetzee wrote, ‘It seems to me extraordinary that someone writing in English should…  make a significant contribution to the literature of contemporary Germany.’ Stories and essays have appeared in Zoetrope, Kenyon Review, The American Scholar and StoryQuarterly, among other places, and most recently in Agni, Southwest Review, Epiphany and Consequence. A new story is forthcoming in The Iowa Review. A new play is in search of three actors.  She reviews for the LA Times, ArtsFuse.org and the New York Times, and has taught writing and literature in the Emerson College and Warren Wilson MFA programs, the Harvard Extension School, and as a Writer-in-Residence at the Vermont Studio Center.  As a member of the board of The Wellfleet Harbor Actors Theater, she is perennially fighting over next year’s programming.

Lisa Pasold 

Lisa Pasold is a Canadian writer. In the course of research, she has been thrown off a train in Belarus, has taken the Lunatic Line in Kenya, and been cheated in the Venetian gambling halls of Ca’ Vendramin Calergi. She grew up in Montreal, which gave her the jaywalking skills to survive as a journalist. Her 2012 book of poetry, Any Bright Horse was shortlisted for the Governor General’s Award. Her fifth book, The Riparian, has just come out with Frontenac House, Calgary. She is the host and co-writer of Discovery World’s TV travel show “Paris Next Stop.” Lisa is the creator of “Improbable Walks”, story-telling walks focusing on legends and place memory. She has created these art walks to critical acclaim for festivals and gallery residencies in cities such as New Orleans, Toronto, and Paris.  Find her on twitter at @pasoldla

Oliver Warren

Twitter, Instagram, Vimeo & Facebook: @oliverwarren

Oliver is a London-born and New York-based award-winning writer-director who has been obsessed with fiction from an early age.  Driven to write and direct screen fiction, Oliver has a growing catalogue of screenplays for TV, Film & Web, and is now beginning to realise them on screen.  With Operation: Semen, his first radio play, however, he has leapt at the chance to write this otherwise un-filmable tale.

Anni Walsh

Anni Walsh is a retired lawyer – and milliner –  living in Cardiff, and dividing her time between Wales and Paris.  As a practising lawyer she was involved in the miners strikes of the 1980s and her work is informed by her experiences of justice on both sides of the power divide. She has had poetry published in several anthologies, including  Tandem – issue No 3 1995, Tears and Tenderness – Anchor Books 1996 and The C Word edited by Kate North  – Cinnamon Press – 2011, and was runner up in the TW one act play contest 2016 for ‘Benchmarks’

The Crew

Chris Taylor

Keith Crawford @keithcrawford77

Seriously, I have to put a bio on my own website?  Ok, fine, just to prove I can join in the suffering with the others.  I am an ex-Navy officer, disabled veteran (of dodgy foreign cocktails), doctor of law and economics and a barrister.  I set up @littlwonder radio plays to improve my writing, learn how to make radio plays (in order to improve my writing), and work with some of the very best talent in Paris and worldwide (in order to…  yeah, you get the idea.)  Generally, if the job could have been done better by one of the other members of the crew but they didn’t have time, then I did it.