About the Nurse

About Shakespeare’s Nurse:
She breast-fed Juliet when she was a baby and has cared for Juliet her entire life. A vulgar, long-winded, and sentimental character, the Nurse provides comic relief with her frequently inappropriate remarks and speeches. But, until a disagreement near the play’s end, the Nurse is Juliet’s faithful confidante and loyal intermediary in Juliet’s affair with Romeo. She provides a contrast with Juliet, given that her view of love is earthy and sexual, whereas Juliet is idealistic and intense. The Nurse believes in love and wants Juliet to have a nice-looking husband, but the idea that Juliet would want to sacrifice herself for love is incomprehensible to her.

About the writer

Julia Dean grew up in Chichester but moved to London in 2002 she moved to London where she was a member of the Young Writers’ Programme at the Royal Court Theatre (2003) and a student on the Actors’ Programme (2005 – 2010), followed by six months as a Stand-up Comic.  During this time she also wrote and produced three plays at the Camden and Belfast Fringe Festivals.

She published her first novel, And I Shall Be Healed on Christmas Eve 2013 and moved to Bonn in Germany in 2014 where she worked as a writer, editor and English teacher before returning to Chichester in 2017.  She now works as a freelance editor and tutor of English, German and History while wrestling with that “difficult” second novel.

Company

Biographies

Paddy Navin

Paddy played Babs/Baptista in The Taming of the Shrew at PSF. Theatre includes: The Old Vic, The National, The Noel Coward, Jermyn Street, The Arts, The Phoenix, Southwark Playhouse, Park Theatre, Finborough, Kings Head, Lyric Hammersmith, Birmingham Rep, Cambridge Theatre Company, Crucible Sheffield, Library Manchester, Haymarket Leicester, Theatre-by-the-Lake, Keswick, Theatre Royal York and many of the country’s top theatres in touring productions. Also Singapore, Mumbai and New York.

Television includes: Oi Pussy, Sliced, A Gert Lush Christmas, Threesome, Love’s Labour’s Lost, The Rivals, The Beggars’ Opera, London’s Burning, Second Thoughts, Brookside, EastEnders, Holby City, Casualty, The Bill, Tales From The Crypt.

She wrote and performed in her own one-woman show called Maurice at the King’s Head last December and hopes to  continue performing it as soon as possible.