Core Team

Liz Muge - Artistic and Executive Director

Liz Muge has worked in and around Music since graduating from Leeds University in 1999.  On discovering there wasn’t much need for second rate Oboists in the world she has focussed instead on bringing the best possible musical experiences to children and young people.  This journey has included spending time as the Education Director at Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival, a Regional Officer for charity Youth Music, the Chief Executive Officer of a small music charity Make Some Noise and more recently as Business Development Manager at the Nottingham Music Service. 

Liz is passionate about music and the impact great music can have on all people, particularly small people.  After 15 years working in Music Education, and following a period of research funded by Arts Council England, Liz established MishMash Productions in 2014 to create magical, original music for young audiences.

Olivia Watson - Assistant Producer

Olivia comes from a theatre background and has worked extensively in project management for regional producing theatres. Having studied and the University of Warwick, and then the University of Nottingham, she is passionate about access and diversity in the arts - in the Midlands and beyond. Career development for underrepresented industry groups is championed throughout Olivia’s producing work.

Olivia is also an IDTA dance teacher, and has choreographed for companies across the UK. In the theatre world, she is a stage manager and rising director, having most recently worked as Assistant Director on Nottingham Playhouse’s production of Twelfth Night. In terms of musical ability, she plays percussion at a primary school aged level, and despite never having picked up a reed instrument, has visions of being a saxophonist in a jazz band.

Sophie Rivlin - Creative Director

Sophie is a London-based cellist who works primarily as a chamber musician, touring widely across the UK and abroad. In addition to playing traditional concerts, Sophie has a particular interest presenting chamber music imaginatively to audiences via the means of theatrical concerts. She is a founding member of TROUPE who perform at venues including Wigmore Hall, Snape Maltings and in festivals such as Spitalfields, Oxford Lieder and the SESC Festival Música de Câmara in Brazil. Sophie is associate musical director for MishMash Productions who she has collaborated with on three shows that have toured to venues including Clywd Theatre and the Big Bang Festival in Dublin. Alongside this chamber-music theatre work, Sophie plays regularly with various orchestras, contemporary music groups and chamber ensembles including the Oliveros Ensemble. She has also performed with dancers at venues such as the Place and Rich Mix and is featured on several best-selling recordings and on BBC Radio and television. Sophie has a keen interest in education work, teaching the cello and chamber music to students of all ages, doing workshops for orchestras such as ENO and the Aurora orchestra as well as founding the Singing Tree children's choir in Mumbai, India. After studying at Cambridge University and the Royal Academy of Music, Sophie specialised in chamber music with a ‘Quartet Masters’ under the Maggini Quartet and Sir Peter Maxwell Davies.

Board of Directors:

MishMash Music (trading as MishMash Productions) is a not-for-profit Company Limited by Guarantee governed by a board of 5 directors (including the Artistic and Executive Director, Liz Muge and Creative Director Sophie Rivlin).

Our 5 wonderful non-executive directors are:

Carmen Flores

Carmen Flores is a musician dedicated to creating new pathways for experiencing and performing classical music. Carmen is a recipient of the prestigious US Fulbright Award and she has given performance masterclasses at the University of Nottingham, Oxford University, Dartmouth College, Birmingham Conservatoire, and Sheffield University, among others. Carmen has performed throughout the United States, Canada, Asia, and Europe and she has been featured on several BBC Radio and Television broadcasts, including BBC Radio 3’s In Tune and The Andrew Marr Show with the Villiers Quartet, and at the Les Jardins Musicaux, Tanglewood, Pacific, and Boyne Music Festivals. She is a founding member of the Villiers Quartet. Based in Nottingham, she is Director of the Nottingham Chamber Music Festival.

Shonagh Reid

Shonagh is a Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Consultant working primarily in the fields of education and the arts. Shonagh has an extensive background in leadership in education, specialising in Performing Arts and Pastoral Senior Leadership and has worked as a DEI Leader in the East Midlands, UK for five years. She is currently working with The Old Vic Theatre, London and many education organisations across the UK in a range of ways, including strategic Inclusion planning, creation of and embedding of robust and effective DEI networks, mentoring, and training. Shonagh has recently conducted extensive research into the experiences of Black and Global Majority female leaders which she has published as an eBook this month.  

Website: www.shonaghreid.com Twitter: www.twitter.com/_ShonaghReid LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/shonaghreid/

Matt Turpin

Matt Turpin is a writer, publisher and lecturer. He was part of the team that persuaded UNESCO to award Nottingham City of Literature status, and still works there running the communications operation. He set up the hyperlocal magazine The Beestonian in 2011, which is still thriving, and has written for multiple publications in the UK, Australia, Italy, India and Indonesia. He is currently working on a book about Nottinghamshire.

Associate Artists:

Martin Berry - Theatre Director

Martin is the new Creative Director and Joint CEO of Exeter Northcott Theatre, having been Head of Participation at Nottingham Playhouse for the past 5 years. He has directed 41 productions, 3 radio plays and 3 national and international tours and has worked at regional and London venues including the Queens Theatre Hornchurch, the Royal Festival Hall, RADA, Nottingham Playhouse and the Bristol Old Vic.  He has a masters degree in directing, is an international examiner for Trinity College, a fellow of the Royal Society of Arts and sits on the board of Stage Directors UK.  He also has an insatiable penchant for lemon drizzle cake.

Previous credits include: The Tempest (Nottingham Playhouse), 3 pantomimes at Queens Theatre Hornchurch, Smile and Strange Creatures (MishMash Productions and 3 UK tours), Playing with Fire with Aurora Orchestra (Royal Festival Hall and European tour), Cinderalla (Queens Theatre Hornchurch), Hubbub A Musical Adventure (MishMash Productions and 2 UK tours), The Libertine (Ovalhouse London), Harvest, Julius Caesar, Richard the Third, Macbeth (Italia Conti and RADA), The Last Five Years (Brewery Theatre/Lakeside), The Lonesome West (Alma Tavern), Neverland, A Christmas Carol, Sweeney Todd, Into The Woods, Lysistrata, Oh What a Lovely War, Little Shop of Horrors, Doctor Faustus, A Midsummer Night's Dream, The Wiz (Lakeside), Savage Children, Pictures at an Exhibition, The Last Days of Mankind (Bristol Old Vic and on tour), Joseph and the Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat (West End and tour), Spirit House (Snape Maltings), To Kill A Mocking Bird with Harriet Walter (Bath Literature Festival) and The League of Youth, Our Man in Havana (as assistant at Nottingham Playhouse).

Credits in TV and radio include associating on The Archers for Radio 4, and a shamefully bad attempt to win The Weakest Link.​

Helen Fownes-Davies - Designer

Helen graduated from BA (hons) Theatre Design at Nottingham Trent University in the mid 90’s and is a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy, UK. She has worked extensively as a Designer in live performance for over 25 years. Her designs have toured into national and international venues and transferred into the West End. She has worked in regional theatres and small-scale venues on classic, pantomime and emerging theatre, dance and music pieces with some of The UK’s finest directors and choreographers. She has also worked as designer/art director on events, site specific, exhibitions and in museums.

In 2010 Helen co-founded a Theatre Company with a consortium of artists developing links between two distinct theatre practices by looking at audience and community engagement in the UK and China, funded by the Arts Council and culminating in a live rural theatre tour in the Midlands. She is passionate about how genres and culture can intertwine cutting across borders.

Companies Helen has designed with across the UK include – Birmingham Royal Ballet, Nottingham Playhouse, York Theatre Royal, Liverpool Royal Court, Birmingham Rep, Birmingham mac, Harrogate Theatre, Lakeside Arts and touring companies such as New Perspectives, Action Transport, Red Earth, Roundabout, Women in Theatre, Oxford Touring Theatre Company, The Fionnbarr Factory Eclipse Theatre and with Mish Mash.

Helen is a strong advocate of widening the visual and performing arts to a broader society, she loves working with companies devising and testing out new ways to entertain and enlighten audiences of all ages through different and diverse storytelling methods.

Trina Haldar - Theatre Director

Trina Haldar is Associate & Co-Festival Director of The Spark in Leicester. She also works as a Freelance Director, and Giggle Doctor with the Theodora Children’s Charity.

Trina is the Founder and Artistic Director of Mashi Theatre. Mashi Theatre was set up in response to the lack of diverse work on offer, particularly for young people.  

As a Director Trina recently directed Wind in the Willows with Derby Theatre (until 11th July 2021). Credits include productions at Curve Theatre, Nottingham Playhouse, Tara Arts, Soho Theatre and Prithvi Theatre, Mumbai, India. She was awarded the Naseem Khan commission with Curve, Bristol Old Vic and The Lowry to develop a new piece of theatre for adults.

Trina is former participant with the National Theatre - Step Change programme, The Optimists with China Plate and a Clore50 SC Alumni. She consults with Theatres and consortium to increase representation on and off our stages and has spoken at a number of platforms including the Guardians “Our Nations Theatre” conversations with Lyn Gardner and recently on Radio 4s Front Row programme. 

Trina is on the board of Theatre-Rites an award-winning company and leader in the creation of experimental theatre for children.

Sophia Lovell Smith - Designer

Sophia Lovell Smith studied Theatre Arts at Bretton Hall and designs for theatre, opera, dance and interactive performance for children. She designs and makes masks, props and costume and loves working with paint, cane and fabrics. Sophia is at present designing with Polka Theatre creating a new show for 3-6 year olds called Maanika and the Wolf, a modern twist on Little Red Riding Hood. Recent productions include Jina & the STEM Sisters for HMDT, The Bed for Little Angel Theatre (Offies 2020 finalist), My Mother Said I Never Should for the Crucible, Sheffield Theatres & fingersmiths, Paper Aeroplane for Half Moon Theatre (Offies 2021 finalist), Full House Theatre’s Little Darling, Peace At Last for Opera Up Close and Spitalfields Music (Musical Rumpus Programme, inc. Catch A Sea Star, Run Rindle Rill, The Fairy Queen).

Past work incl. Polka Theatre (Hatch, Operation Magic Carpet, Property of Polka), Southbank Centre (A Child's Guide To Brutalism), Barbican & ZArts (Sponge), Trestle Theatre (Rachel, Tonight we Fly), Royal & Derngate Theatres (Flathampton), Nottingham Playhouse (Wave), Theatre By The Lake (seasons inc. The Caretaker, Hello & Goodbye, Flame, The Bogus Woman), Unicorn (The Snow Queen), plus shows for Royal Opera House, Regents Open Air Park Theatre, Theatre Rites, Kali, English Touring Opera, Theatre Centre and GLYPT.  www.sophialovellsmith.co.uk

Zoë Waterman - Director

Zoë is co-director of Illumine Theatre; she was Associate Director of the New Vic, Stoke-on-Trent 2018-19 and won the New Wimbledon Theatre’s Emerging Directors Award 2007.

 Theatre includes: The Blonde Bombshells of 1943 (Bolton Octagon, Stephen Joseph Theatre and Theatre by the Lake, Keswick); The Borrowers, The Rise and Fall of Little Voice, Remarkable Invisible, The Vertical Hour, Enlightenment, Shining City and The Bogus Woman (Theatre by the Lake); Mumsy (Hull Truck); Jane Eyre (Stephen Joseph Theatre and The New Vic); Rhymes Live! (UK Tour); Intemperance, Table, Playhouse Creatures and The Kitchen Sink (The New Vic); Dick Whittington, Jack and the Beanstalk and Sleeping Beauty (Theatr Clwyd); The Rubenstein Kiss, Amy’s View and After Miss Julie (Nottingham Playhouse); 2023, Tremolo and Deuce (Illumine Theatre); Swan Song: An Evening of Music and Song (The Swan, RSC).

Ria Ashcroft - Director

Ria is a director, storyteller, aerialist and artist who makes work which is exceptional, inclusive and innovative, and is passionate about telling stories which put three dimensional women with agency centre stage and empowering audiences. She is also passionate about creating engaging theatre experiences which encourages audiences to be active spectators.

As Co-Artistic Director of The Gramophones Theatre Company, Ria has produced & devised 11 shows which all toured nationally & received excellent feedback & reviews. The Gramophones are Creative Residents at Curve & part of the EVOLVE scheme with Oxford Playhouse. They make family theatre that place girls in hero roles. Ria co-directed Tarzanna commissioned by Derby Féste and ANOTHER PLANET commissioned by Lakeside Arts. In 2022 she co-directed Aidy the Awesome commissioned by Curve Leicester which did a digital tour and was described as "Fast moving & feisty – a comic heroine for girls to emulate"(The Stage).