Welcome Ava Brewster

 

Extant are delighted to announced that Ava Brewster has been appointed as our first Trainee Creative Producer and starts her role in June 2025.

Our Artistic Director, Maria Oshodi states that “with the current paucity of skilled theatre producers in the industry, I am proud that we are going some way to address this with creating the first ever role of in-house visually impaired Trainee Creative Producer. Thanks to the support of Esmée Fairbairn Foundation, the opportunity will bring new energy, ideas, and growth for both Ava and Extant and we welcome them to the team to begin this exciting journey!”

Ava has a BA in Applied Theatre from the Royal Birmingham Conservatoire at Birmingham City University, and an MA in Applied Theatre from Plymouth University. Ava has facilitated theatre workshops and supported arts projects since college, which includes working in schools, adults with disabilities and socially engaged community theatre projects. Ava has assisted on projects with companies like UCAN Productions in Wales, Stans Cafe Theatre Company, Midlands Actors Theatre, and Calico Dance, all in Birmingham, as well as assisting with work at the Barbican Theatre and Animate CIC in Plymouth. Ava is the project lead for the Cultural Education Partnerships at Questors Theatre, encouraging children and young people in the arts, making sure that these opportunities are inclusive for all.

Ava is passionate about community and socially engaged Arts and as an LGBT, blind practitioner, who’s had a long journey to this point in her career, cares about inclusivity for disabled and queer people, as well as supporting anyone from a minority background, and advocating for mental health and wellbeing. Ava loves making work that tells people’s stories, educates, and inspires creativity and learning. Ava has facilitated work with nursery children up to people in retirement communities, project assisted large scale community arts events, and for her degree, wrote a play named “Through the Dark”, which explored mental health at university, with comedic and fairytale elements.

“I am very excited to take on the Trainee Creative Producer role at Extant. I have always wanted to create my own work and produce creative ideas that other people have generated. As the only blind person in all of my projects, I have had to adapt resources and activities to make them accessible for myself, so I can’t wait to learn about ways of embedding more inclusive tools into the work that I make. I am highly passionate about work that is socially engaging, inclusive, leaves an impact and touches people’s lives, and I am very excited to learn how I can produce work with this ethos, with a supportive and inclusive team to learn from, so that I can apply these skills to my work with Extant, and help shape the future of the company.

June 2025