Artistic Director

Gaye Poole

Gaye spent years as a professional actor with the Queensland Theatre Company (Brisbane), the Hole in the Wall Theatre (Perth), The Old Tote Theatre Company and Marian St Theatre (Sydney). Roles she recalls with particular affection: Eurydice in Jean Anouilh’s Point of Departure and Lady Teazle in Sheridan’s The School for Scandal. She also had huge fun doing pub theatre in Newtown, Sydney.

Since moving to New Zealand Gaye has directed Carving in Ice shows Cosi (2007), Half Life (2007), Marmalade: 3 short New Zealand plays (2008), Compleat Female Stage Beauty (2008), Neighborhood 3: Requisition of Doom (2009), The Dispute (2010), W;t (2010), Away (2011), and Aftershocks (2011).

For Theatre Studies at Waikato she has directed: The Laramie Project (2006), Pride and Prejudice (2009), Attempts on her Life (2009), and The Last Days of Don Juan (2011).

Gaye has taught Theatre Studies and Film Studies at the University of New South Wales, Australia, the University of Newcastle, Australia, University of Lodz, Poland, and for shorter periods of time at the University of Debrecen, Hungary and the University of Turku, Finland.

Particular recent professional highlights since working at The University of Waikato have included an International Office staff exchange to the University of Aristotle, Thessaloniki, and a period of Study Leave as an assistant director at the Humana Festival of New American plays, in Louisville Kentucky, where she worked on Lee Blessing ‘s Great Falls. There Gaye met playwright Jennifer Haley; that contact led to 2009's Carving in Ice staging of Neighborhood 3: Requisition of Doom.