Writer and performer

Alison Skilbeck’s long and busy career includes London’s West End and Fringe, theatre all over the UK, and many tours abroad. Theatre highlights include five years with Alan Ayckbourn in Scarborough, where she created roles in six of his plays, and also directed Chris Godwin’s one-man play ‘The Guv’nor’, touring Shakespeare all over the USA with Actors From the London Stage, playing Pinter in Morocco, Vaclav Havel in Hong Kong, and Dryden in Spain. For the Greenwich Theatre, she was in the British premieres of A.R. Gurney Jr’s The Dining Room, and The Perfect Party. For the Godot Company she has performed Beckett’s Play and Enough. She was Enid Blyton in Frayn’s Balmoral for the Peter Hall Company. Are There More Of You?  previously received five stars at Edinburgh and toured the UK and Ireland. She had a near sell-out 10th anniversary run at Assembly for the 2018 Edinburgh Fringe. For her performance in Mrs Roosevelt Flies to London, she received a Best Female Performance Nomination for the Off-West End (Offie) Awards, and at the 2016 Edinburgh Fringe was described by The Guardian as “always a moving and bravura performance”, as well as being rated an Outstanding Show by Fringe Review. She was nominated for the Best Actress award (along with Best Production nomination for Hint of Lime Productions) at the Buxton Fringe Awards. The Power Behind The Crone, her serio comic celebration of Shakespeare’s old women at Assembly in 2017 received 5 stars.

Television includes: Sherlock Holmes, The Beiderbecke Affair, Miss Marple, Head Over Heels, Soldier Soldier, New Tricks, Doctor Who, Lovejoy, Midsomer Murders and Call the Midwife. She is soon to be seen in a major Netflix drama series.

She was Polly Perks in ‘The Archers’, until the character was killed off! 

Two recent projects have been Wimpole Street, an award-winning web series, and the acclaimed pod cast sitcom series Wooden Overcoats.

Alison is an Associate Teacher at RADA, specialising in directing Shakespeare, and serving on the Admissions Panel. She also trains non-actors in Communications Skills for RADA Business.