People

We work with a rolling collective of artists with varied perspectives, including emerging artists who work with us through our Cuckoo Collective development scheme.

A team photo taken in a park: 10 people of varied ethnicity and gender from their teens to middle age sit on the ground while a little blonde-haired girl in a red coat watches from the swing behind them.
A white woman with curly hair and glasses holds out a prop with live herb plants in to a little girl, who eyes them cautiously

Katerina Pushkin (Artistic Director)

Katerina has directed all our CCL productions as lead writer/dramaturg: she’s keen to share these responsibilities out with some of our brilliant emerging artists soon! Outside Cloud Cuckoo Land, she’s a Trustee for Assitej UK, the umbrella body supporting the performances for young audiences sector in the UK. Her other directing includes plays with Birmingham REP, Jane English, and she also dabbles in sensory design and songwriting.

Katerina’s taught actors and musicians studying at Royal Birmingham Conservatoire and Rose Burford College: her own training includes an MA in Digital Arts for Performance and studying with Lev Dodin (St Petersburg’s Maly Drama Theatre), Paul Hunter (Told By An Idiot) and Justin Audibert (JMK Residency).

KATERINA’S WEBSITE

A white woman with a banjo glows in a warm orange light and matching rust-coloured pantsuit

Beth Hopkins (Musical Director)

Composer, actor-musician and facilitator Beth loves swimming, singing and playing the banjo, clarinet, and other instruments. Her non-Cuckoo composing includes Follow The Bookworm for The Play House and OnComm-award-winning When for Little Angel / Pinwheel Theatre. Beth facilitates composition for Natalie Mason’s Multicultural Music Making project with Friction Arts in Ladywood and Walsall. She also plays on the folk circuit as a singer-songwriter, and writes, plays and sings with avant-pop band The Nature Centre (whose first album, Never Not, was released in 2019) .

BETH’S WEBSITE

Two amazing and amazed babies lie on their backs in a cavern of silver reflective bubbly material, which is held up by a white woman with a bob. In the background there are grass and a glockenspiel.

Jess Clixby (Company Co-Director)

Jess has co-designed all our installation projects, inc. Sensory Street, Dooville & Technicolor Town (Bham REP), Northfield Robofest (Fun Palaces), Stardust (Theatre Hullabaloo) and Elmer’s Swamp (mac Birmingham). She has a portfolio of diverse skills from sensory prop making and textiles design (she made the giant patchwork canopy for Elmer’s Swamp) to writing, dramaturgy and an MA in children’s literature. Jess is our Head of Safeguarding.