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Jane Bergeron is a professional actor, director and theatre-maker and co-artistic director of New York-based international theatre company, Escape Artists. US and UK theatre credits in over 40 productions include such favourite roles as Eliza in My Fair Lady, Maggie in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Viola in Twelfth Night. In 2010, she originated the role of Anne Askew in On the Borderline at The Bloomsbury Theatre in London’s off-West End. From 1992-2002 she served as artistic director of Vintage Repertory Company in Portland, Maine. As theatre-in-residence at the Oak Street Theater from 1994-97, Vintage Rep staged over 20 critically-acclaimed productions of modern and contemporary American and European plays, two of which were US premieres, along with original stage adaptations of works by Shakespeare, Chekov and Dylan Thomas. Since 2006, creative research interests have revolved around developing ensemble-devised performance work that explores issues related to living in our contemporary world. With Carrie Ann Quinn, she co-wrote, devised and performed the original play Possessions, based on the published memoirs of two extraordinary 17th century noblewomen who escaped their arranged marriages to live a dangerous life on the road. Possessions had its US debut in 2013 at Boston Playwrights Theatre, and premiered internationally in 2014 in Sydney, Australia. Recent performance work includes Richard III in Margaret of Anjou (Studio 1, UNSW, 2016); the Duchess of Worcester in SuperHal, a reimagining of Shakespeare’s Henry IV & V (NIDA Parade Theatre, 2017); Dorothy Sayers in Speak Easy (Sydney Fringe Festival, 2019); and various characters in Ms Middle (International Women’s Day, 2020).  Jane holds a BA/B.Ed from London University in her native England and a MFA in Theatre Education from Boston University in the US. Since 2006 she has served as head of the Theatre Studies program at the University of Notre Dame Australia in Sydney, where she teaches courses in theory and practice of acting, directing, Shakespeare studies and playwriting, and directs annual productions of devised and text-based theatre. She is the 2012 recipient of the Notre Dame Vice Chancellor’s Award for Initiatives that Enhance Student Learning, as well as a 2014 Citation for Outstanding Contributions to Student Learning awarded by the Australian Government's Office of Learning & Teaching. She has conducted numerous master classes internationally for both student and professional actors, as well as theatre making workshops for drama teachers at seminars and conferences both in Sydney and abroad. For the past few years she has been exploring the value of improvisational theatre processes to enhance inter-personal skills across a variety of professions through her interactive workshop Acting Collaboratively. Currently, she is engaged in developing a series of theatre games that aim to improve mood and cognition in residents in aged care.