Meet Our Tutors

Alex Marker

Artistic Director, Youth Theatre Director and Senior Tutor

Alex is the current director of The Questors Youth Theatre and has taught on the programme for thirty years. He is a qualified teacher (PGCE: University of Greenwich) and taught theatre craft subjects at Kingston Upon Thames College’s Production Arts course for 14 years. He also spent 6 years lecturing on the University of West London’s Technical Theatre BA (Hons) course. He has run workshops and masterclasses for a wide range of clients including:  The Royal Shakespeare Company’s Open Stages Project, The Little Theatre’s Guild of Great Britain, The National Operatic and Dramatic Association and The National Student Drama Festival. Parallel to his teaching career Alex is a critically acclaimed stage designer. Since graduating (BA Hons in Theatre Design: Wimbledon School of Art), Alex has designed over 200 productions for fringe, regional, touring, site-specific and West End venues. He is also Resident Designer at the Finborough Theatre and the Artistic Director of The Questors Theatre.

Caitlyn Vary

QYT Tutor/TA

Caitlyn Vary started her acting journey with us at the age of eight! Since then, she has completed her drama school training at Drama Studio London with a BA in Professional Acting! As a Questors acting member, she has appeared in Robin Hood (2019), Snow White (2022), The Anniversary (2025) and Emma (2025). For the past three years whilst training, she has been working with our Youth Theatre too! As Caitlyn is in the industry herself, she is so excited to mentor our youth theatre members in their acting journey. She strives to deliver fun, inspiring and creativity-filled lessons involving devising, script work and confidence building!

Claudia Carroll

QYT Tutor

Claudia has been at the Questors since 2010. She was in Student Group 65 and has been in productions ever since, enjoying everything but particularly travelling to Slovenia for the Questival, and The Minack Theatre for She Stoops to Conquer and The Country Wife. Claude has been involved in many areas of the theatre: touring, the Grapevine, Get ins and so on. She organised the 60th Anniversary of the Grapevine, initiated new members with the Thursday Night Drinks and all the aftershow parties of all her plays.

She is Senior Tutor of the Youth Theatre years 8 & 12-13 and is a constant presence around the theatre.

Dominic Murray

QYT Tutor

Dominic Gray has been a teacher and assistant teacher for Questors Youth Theatre since 2018. In this time he has taught for all manner of different ages ranging from year 3 to 12&13. In his younger year group classes he looks at adapting stories to stage, improve, puppetry and much more. In his older groups he looks at the differences and similarities of acting for screen and stage, the studying of scripts, which range from classical to modern, the clowning technique and mask work, all of which is show off in their end of year showcase.

During his career as an actor he has been trained by The Artist Theatre School, The National Youth Theatre, The Arts Educational School and The London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art. Since then he has gone on to act for stage, film, TV and radio.

In his spare time as a teacher he assists with the acting auditions for The National Youth Theatre and The London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art.

Irina Granovskaya

QYT TA

Irina is a Professional Actress, Voice and Acting Tutor with 18 years of teaching and 25 years of professional performance experience across theatre, film, television and voice-over. She specialises in stage speech, voice, text work and actor training, with experience in both higher education and youth theatre.

She graduated from the Mikhail Shchepkin Higher Theatre School of the State Academic Maly Theatre of Russia in 2001 and completed an MA there in the Stage Speech Department in 2015. She taught Stage Speech at the Mikhail Shchepkin Higher Theatre School to students and applicants, preparing them for entrance examinations to leading theatre universities. She also created and led Fundamentals of Oratory and Speech Culture at Russian State University, named after A.N. Kosygin for students and academic staff. Additionally, she has worked as an acting coach for children in film and television projects and currently teaches drama and speech at schools.

She has performed at drama and music theatres and in screen projects and is a laureate of the International Music Festival “Time to Sing”. Since 2008, her voice-over work has included dubbing, advertising and documentaries, and she now also works as an audiobook narrator in Russian.

Since moving to London in 2018, she has continued teaching and delivering voice workshops. Since 2023, she has worked at Questors Youth Theatre, where she also delivers voice training for QYT+ and our Acting for All course

Her teaching is informed by an international conservatoire background and a student-centred approach to voice and actor training.

Jamie Gould

QYT Tutor/TA

Jamie attended the Questors Youth Theatre for 13 years from age 6-19 before returning to join the teaching staff in 2021. He has been involved with the photography and videography for a number of Questors productions over the past few years and was Assistant Director for the QYT production of “Lionboy”. He has been on stage at Questors in a number of roles during his time in the Youth Theatre and participated in the Overnight Plays in 2024 & 2025. He became an acting member in May 2025.

Jessica Balmer

Lead Tutor, Acting for All; Senior QYT Tutor

Jessica is an actor, director, facilitator and Associate of the National Youth Theatre. She has worked with a plethora of arts organisations and youth theatres across London and Berkshire to share her process, knowledge and love of the creative industry.

As an actor she has worked in TV, Film and Theatre and has recently finished a U.K. tour of ‘Macbeth’ and ‘A Strange Case of Dr Jekyll & Mr Hyde’ with Dickens Theatre Company. You can see her star along side Simon Pegg, Minnie Driver and Christopher Llyod in ‘Nandor Fodor and the Talking Mongoose’ streaming on Amazon Prime and as Mia in horror film ‘Pinocchio Unstrung’ alongside Richard Brake releasing this summer in cinemas.

Kavita Sedov

QYT Tutor/TA

Kavita is the founder of Dreams in Motion Academy, providing personalised 1-to-1 drama, music and movement sessions for children with additional needs in their own homes. She also runs inclusive group classes at Questors, where she has been teaching for the past year. Kavita has extensive experience working with children and young people with disabilities. She previously ran a NeuroMovement disability centre and now manages therapy programmes overseas. As a parent of a disabled child herself, she understands the importance of connection, inclusion and celebrating each child’s individuality, rather than focusing on “fixing” them.

Lolade Ajala

QYT Senior Tutor

Lolade has 20 years’ experience of working in schools and creative learning environments. She is a highly adaptive drama practitioner and has a gift for working creatively with children and young people. She is passionate about the power of using drama to nurture confidence, wellbeing and life skills, as well as important values in students. A creative magpie, Lolade regularly takes part in a wide variety of workshops in order to learn new skills which she adapts to create a dynamic and positive learning experience. Her classes are always fun and inclusive to meet individual needs.