Meet the team!
Dynamic Duo: Show Director and Musical Director
James Hayward - Show Director
A lawyer by profession, James has had a lifelong interest in the theatre. He spent three years as a member of the National Youth Theatre and, as a student, appeared in productions by the Oxford University Dramatic Society and sang in his college choir. He now sings tenor in the Suffolk based singing group Musicology. He has acted regularly with local theatre companies, including the IODS Theatre Company and Gallery Players, and, with his wife Lynne, co-authored many Christmas Pantomimes.
He has directed a wide range of plays and musicals, including Twelfth Night, Oh What a Lovely War, West Side Story, Anything Goes, Oliver!, The Producers and, most recently an adaptation of Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall. James has previously directed The Gondoliers, Ruddigore, The Mikado and H.M.S. pinafore for the Society.
James has now joined the ranks of tenors for our Spring Showcase, where you will see him taking several solo roles.
"The whole production was amazing , the set was beautiful and James really knows how to put on a fantastic show!"
Sue Wightman - Musical Director
Sue was born and educated in Banbury, Oxfordshire. After university, she embarked on a career of 30+ years in education teaching Music and Drama, moving onto become Vice Principal for Performing Arts in a Specialist Arts College, and finally working across the UK as a Senior Consultant in all aspects of education. After taking early retirement in 2012, Sue started a Fine Art degree and completed a Masters in September 2016.
Sue’s musical career began early with the recorder, then onto the violin, viola, piano and voice. Throughout her life she has played, sung and been involved with a number of stage productions from Gilbert & Sullivan to Mozart, and everything in between. Her favourite on-stage roles include Anita in West Side Story, Nellie in South Pacific, Dolly in Hello Dolly, Ida in the first amateur production of Honk!, and many of the G&S mezzo soprano roles.
As Musical Director, she has waved her baton for numerous choirs, choral societies and opera groups. As a child, Sue would be taken to The Doyle Carte Company in Oxford each year as a birthday treat from her Godmother, so was overjoyed to learn that the Ipswich Gilbert and Sullivan Society were looking for a new Musical Director shortly after she moved to Suffolk in 2021. Sue is delighted to continue her role as the Musical Director for this year’s production of Iolanthe, and (to quote her reaction at the end of this year’s Spring Showcase) to be musically directing “the absolute best group of singers she has ever worked with in forty years of conducting”.
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©Copyright. All rights reserved. Stage photography by Mike Kwasniak.
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