JuliaBolden grew up in Surrey, brought up her daughters (now 27 and 23) in High Wycombe, Buckinghamshire and joined WRiTEON on moving to Cambridge in October 2007, to live with Michael, after they met on matchdotcom, following the break up of her marriage. She is hugely grateful to WRiTEON for providing her with so many opportunities and many more friends than she had in 20 years in High Wycombe.
 
Julia wrote, directed and starred in her first play, The Bossy Aunt, in primary school and first had her writing produced at the Edinburgh Fringe in 1980. The Power and the Purpose, described as “a play about itself” was a classic novice writer’s naive attempt to emulate Pirandello/Pinter/Stoppard/Beckett etc. She went on to perform a solo play in Edinburgh in 1982, wrote/co-wrote eight children’s shows and a pantomime and won a Buckinghamshire playwriting competition with Two Birds  in 1998. In recent years she has had pieces performed in Offcut and the Lost Theatre 5 Minute Festival and returned to Edinburgh in 2009 with Venus and Mars and Other Myths of Mr and Ms.
 
Julia, who clambered into the WRiTEON chair vacated by Michelle in December 2011, is no stranger to chairs. The highlights of her WRiTEON directing career have included Gill Saxon’s TV play, My Dancing Bones (in which two static chairs represented numerous locations including old people’s home, hospital ward, cafe and houseboat), Forrester and Fletcher’s Twenty-Two Thousand CVs  (in which one repeatedly relocated chair played various offices and a motorbike sidecar) and Paul Richards’ To The Brink (in which the cast of five whizzed around on office chairs). WRiTEON has also staged several pieces of her writing; including, in 2011, Joy and Vivienne (based on her mother’s wartime diaries) and her sitcom tryout, Wild Geese.

Photograph by Chris Boland.