Theater Practitioner Panel Discussion

As part of the Paris Fringe Festival at Ground Control, this panel brings together anglophone theatre professionals based in Paris to explore the challenges, opportunities, and future of the community.

Panelists will share insights from their own experiences on topics ranging from producing and casting to artistic practices, international festivals, and creating work in France. The conversation will continue with a moderated discussion and audience Q&A, encouraging exchange and collaboration within Paris’s anglophone theatre community.

✶ off-site event → Ground Control – 81 Rue du Charolais, 75012 Paris

✶ discussion held in English.

Panelists :

Kester Lovelace – AI Rights Assosiation for Actors, Writers, and Voice-Over Artists

Topic : AI in the voice-over industry

Born in London, and trained in the UK, and at Ecole Jacques Lecoq in Paris, Kester has been living and working in France for over 30 years. He founded Drama Ties – a professional theatre-in-education company in 1999, and he directed the first French production of Jonathan Harvey’s Beautiful Thing in 2009 in Paris, and on tour.  He’s been a voice actor for over 25 years, working daily on commercials, documentaries, cartoons, video games and museum guides, and is currently president of Les Voix, a campaign group of professional voice artists in France, presently engaged in defending actors against the onslaught of generative AI.

On screen, he’s had roles as supporting actor in films with Léa Seydoux, Camille Cottin, Lambert Wilson, Karim Leklou, Clémence Poésy…  He’s a coach and acting teacher at theatre schools in Paris, including the CNSAD et ESAD.

Anton Bonnici – Writer, Publisher, and Theatre Professor

Topic : The Paris anglo-theatre scene as laboratory and incubator.

Anton Bonnici is a teacher, playwright, and dramaturg with more than twenty years of international classroom experience. His work brings together drama, literature, creative writing, and performance-based learning. He is also the creator of Performative Complex Realism, an educational and creative framework concerned with character-driven stories and the social worlds that shape them.

Through workshops, staged readings, and collaborative exercises, he encourages participants to approach drama as a living encounter, a practice he calls Not Theatre: a way of exploring ideas, testing interpretations, entering other perspectives, and discovering what becomes possible when a group gathers around a play where community and understanding surpass aesthetic concerns.

Charlotte Pleasants – Alchemy Theatre Company

Topic : Producing in Europe

Charlotte Pleasants is a New Zealand producer based in Paris, working internationally across theatre and film. Her producing credits include Luke Thornborough’s ALONE (Assembly, Edinburgh Festival Fringe 2026 & 2025; Theatre503 London), Maddie Rice’s Goodbye Dandelion co-produced with Underbelly and winner of the Underbelly Futures Fund (Underbelly, Edinburgh Festival Fringe 2026), TO BE FRANK (Pleasance, Edinburgh Festival Fringe 2026). In Paris she has produced a wide variety of work over the last decade most recently producing Hannah Coyle’s translation of Chekhov’s Three Sisters (Théâtre de l’Opprimé, 2025 Paris). She is a founding member of the Parisian theatre company: Alchemy Theatre, with whom she co-produced and co-directed Alchemy’s debut production, The Taming of the Shrew (Château de Bosgouet; Le 100 ECS, Paris 2023).

Charlotte was also part of the original producing team behind the launch of the Paris Fringe (2016 – 2018), helping establish the festival in its inaugural years.

She is the Artistic Director of the Paris-based scratch night Tapis Théâtre, which she founded in 2016 and has since grown into a platform supporting emerging international theatre-makers. Alongside her theatre work, Charlotte has expanded into film production, producing the short film Through the Window with Vis-à-Vis Films which will be screened tomorrow at the Paris Fringe. 

Virginia Vass – Online Global Theatre Community Leader and Influencer, American Performer in Europe

Topic : How language can open opportunities to artists in the entertainment industry.

Born in North Carolina and raised in the Philadelphia, PA area, Virginia has been surrounded by languages and art since a very young age. Her mother enrolled her into French immersion programs starting at the age of 5 where her interest in languages began. As an artist, she grew in the acting world, later becoming a graduate of Montclair State University with a BFA in Musical Theatre. After college, Virginia felt that going the traditional route straight to New York for theatre was not something that she wanted right away. She wanted to explore her options as a performer, and this exploration lead her to Los Angeles, Hamburg, Germany, and now Paris, France. With her social media presence, she hopes to lead a movement where artists know their options, giving them the opportunity to work all over the world in any language they can imagine.

Joelle Antonia Santiago– Choreographer, Professor, NYU Tisch School of the Arts

Topic : Developing a new piece of theatre and bringing it to Paris 

Joëlle Antonia Santiago (b. New York, NY) is a choreographer working in New York and Paris. She is a Fulbright Scholar and a recipient of the Harriet Hale-Woolley Award for the Arts, acting as Artist in Residence at the Fondation des États-Unis from 2023-2025 in Paris. Joëlle has presented work at venues such as X-Posed on the Chelsea Highline, Roulette Intermedium, Chelsea Piers, The Clark Art Institute, NYU Tisch School of the Arts, and la Fondation des États-Unis. Upcoming projects include premieres with director Anne Bogart (BAM Next Wave) and Pulitzer Prize Finalist playwright Nazareth Hassan (Performance Space New York). Her writing is published in The Whitney Review, Culturebot, and IMPULSE Magazine. Santiago began her training in the dance studios of NYC, Steps on Broadway, Broadway Dance Center, and the Joffrey School of Ballet. She graduated Cum Laude from Barnard College of Columbia University, studying with Jodi Melnick, Katie Glasner, Caroline Fermin, Dr. Seth Williams, and Dr. Janet Jacobsen (2020).

Nathalie Allison – Intimacy Coordinator

Topic : Paving the Way for Intimacy and Consent on Set

Nathalie Allison is a pioneer of intimacy coordination in France, having worked on almost 50 projects over the last 4 years. Her credits include Emily in Paris, La Vénus Électrique (film d’ouverture at Festival de Cannes), HBO’s Privilèges, and the upcoming feature film ‘Changer l’Eau des Fleurs, directed by Jean Pierre Jeunet. She is also a co-creator of France’s only certifying intimacy coordination training course.