The Vamos Theatre team

Artistic Director: Rachael Savage
After working nationally and internationally for fifteen years, Rachael founded Vamos Theatre in 2006. As Artistic Director, her roles include writer, director, actor, and consultant for change in the care sector; she is a member of the Prime Minister’s Focus Group on Dementia. Rachael trained at Glasgow’s RSAMD, after which she performed with a range of major theatre companies including Birmingham Rep, Northern Stage, Coventry Belgrade, Trestle Theatre and with three international theatre companies. With Vamos Theatre, she has pioneered work with the education and health sectors, led residences in South Africa and China, been Mask Director at The RSC, led mask training at London Business School, created Vamos Theatre apprenticeships and driven the company's artistic and strategic vision, leading to it becoming a regularly funded Arts Council NPO. Since creating Finding Joy in 2013, Vamos Theatre’s award-winning show about dementia, Rachael has continued to create connections with the health and social care sectors to promote the arts as a powerful tool for change. Rachael’s work in the field emphasises non-verbal communication, empathy, listening, trust and truthful connections. 

Creative Producer: Honor Hoskins
Honor joined Vamos Theatre in 2007 and has worked as part of the Core Team as a performer, practitioner, Tour Manager and Marketing and Development Manager. As Creative Producer, Honor oversees the company’s Learning and Participation programme, as well as regularly delivering workshops, training and residencies. Prior to joining Vamos Theatre, Honor worked for The Roses Theatre, Tewkesbury as Outreach Officer. She has also delivered and managed projects with The Everyman Theatre, Cheltenham; Snap Children’s Theatre Company; and three County Youth Offending Services; she also trained with TiPP (Theatre in Prison and Probation).

Engagement Producer: Claire Birch
Claire has over 20 years' experience as a producer in the arts working across small to large scale and across the UK. Most recently for Sonia Sabri Company, the UK’s leading South Asian dance and music company, producing accessible, high quality indoor and outdoor work for festivals, rural touring, unusual spaces and studio theatres. She was a producer for the Birmingham 2022 Festival, a 6-month arts festival as part of the Birmingham 2022 Commonwealth Games, supporting 11 large scale projects across arts forms. She was a producer for the Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC) delivering work across all three houses and on tour. This includes the flagship production A Midsummer Night’s Dream, a Play for the Nation in 2016. She reopened The Other Place and produced each season of radical new work there until 2020. Prior to the RSC, she was Associate Producer at English Touring Theatre and a freelance producer. She has worked for the Rifco, Royal Court Theatre, Jackson’s Lane and The Albany, Deptford.

Executive Producer: Sarah Hawkins
Sarah began her Vamos Theatre journey in the Young People’s Theatre, training for three years before making her first professional appearance in 2010. She went on to perform in nine tours across Nursing Lives, Finding Joy, Sharing Joy and The Best Thing. The call of home comforts led to stage management roles, and the arrival of her family brought her to join the office team in 2018, first as Administrator, then Operations Manager and now as Vamos Theatre’s Executive Producer.

Head of Communications/Associate Artist (Composer): Janie Armour
Janie has been part of the Vamos Theatre  team since its beginnings in 2006, composing the music for all of Vamos Theatre's shows. In 2014 she also took on the role of Head of Communications, where her responsibilities include overseeing the company brand, website and messaging strategies. She also acts as Vamos Theatre's Sustainability Lead.

Health Connector: Hazel Ratcliffe
Hazel is the director and founder of Ratcliffe Training Consultancy and has worked in Social and Health Care for over thirty years. As a qualified nurse, psychotherapist and social worker, she has worked with most client groups, but more intensively with people living with dementia, those with learning disabilities and in mental health. Hazel has been an Associate Specialist in Learning and Development for the Association for Dementia Studies since 2010 at Worcester University. She is a Dementia Champion and has worked closely with communities over the past five years building awareness and reducing stigma around memory loss.  She also co - founded ‘Buddies’, a support group for people living with dementia, run by people living with dementia.

Marketing Officer: Abbie Payton
Abbie started her career in travel and went to many lovely places around the world, after which she studied at Chichester University and graduated with a 2:1 degree in contemporary dance and business studies. After leaving university, she worked in marketing for an outdoor activity centre in Birmingham for 11 years, alongside teaching dance classes and workshops to children. She currently teaches wedding couples' first dances in her spare time.

Vamos Central Lead Facilitator: Sam Strachan
Sam is a facilitator and theatre-maker based in Birmingham, UK. With a creative background in SEN and the mental health sector, Sam puts participants’ choices and voices at the centre of his improvised practice. His playful non-verbal style is inspired by clown training under Angela de Castro, his time working with Open Theatre and the Vamos Emerging Artists programme. You can usually hear Sam coming before you see him, as he’ll usually be laughing, chatting or making some kind of strange noise. Sam is also a songwriter under the alter-ego Sweaty Wednesday, and regularly plays live in Birmingham and beyond.

Carl Davies: Associate Artist (Set and Costume Designer)
Carl first worked for Vamos on the first tour of Finding Joy in 2013. He trained at the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama, and was a finalist in the prestigious Linbury Biennial Prize for Stage Design 2005. He has worked in a huge variety of performance genres including opera, panto, Shakespeare, site-specific performance, and circus; and with companies as diverse as Forest Forge, Hijinx, NOFITSTATE, and Theatre Royal, Plymouth.