Our People

Ivan Cutting is the Artistic Director and Chief Executive of Eastern Angles. As one of the founding members of the touring theatre company, which was set up in 1982 and is based at the Sir John Mills Theatre in Ipswich, he has directed most of the company’s work as well as devising and writing many new plays inspired by East Anglia’s rich heritage. Under his leadership Eastern Angles has produced over 100 high-quality theatre productions which have toured to venues across East Anglia, to the Edinburgh Festival and to several London theatres. Most recently Ivan has directed a number of nationally-acclaimed productions including Arthur Ransome’s We Didn’t Mean To Go To Sea, staged at the former Bentwaters airbase and The Long Life & Great John Fortune of John Clare, the story of the much-loved chronicler of the East Anglian countryside. Ivan also researched and directed the company’s recent Heritage Lottery-funded Peterborough documentary musical, Parkway Dreams, wrote Private Resistance, a play about World War II East Anglian Auxiliary Units which toured to over 50 venues during 2012 and is currently preparing a project around the old medieval drama and pageants of Ipswich and East Anglia. Ivan contributes to the Birkbeck Theatre Directing course at University of London, is a Fellow of Suffolk New College, Trustee of East Anglian Traditional Music Trust and helped form New Heritage Solutions which manages the Eighth In the East project. In 2004 he was awarded an honorary Doctorate of Letters from UEA through University Campus Suffolk.