OUR PEOPLE
TUTORS
Madeline McNamara
Artistic DirectorMadeline McNamara has been an independent theatre practitioner for 50 years. Beginning in Aotearoa, she spent nearly a decade in the USA and The UK performing and honing her skills. Returning to Aotearoa the late 1980’s she has spent the last 40 years working as a performer, director, teacher and organiser.
Long time collaborator of Sally Rodwell of Red Mole Theatre she created works with her company Toadlilies, touring Aotearoa, Australia, the UK and Europe. She then co-founded and co-directed Magdalena Aotearoa, inspired by the Welsh based The Magdalena Project, an International Network of Women in Contemporary Theatre established in 1986. In the mid 2000’s she was the artistic director of Acting Up, a charitable trust offering drama and music programmes to adults with learning difficulties.
For the past 9 years she has been artistic director of Silver Noodle Soup Film and Theatre Company. 1n 2019 she was given the Wellington Theatre Award for Outstanding Performance for her solo work The Attitudes-Refusing Performance and in 2024 she received the award for Outstanding Contribution to Community.
Madeline holds a Masters of Theatre Arts in Directing from Toi Whakaari / The New Zealand Drama School and Te Herenga Waka Victoria University of Wellington.
Hannah Kelly
Tutor, co-directorHannah Kelly (she/her) is an actor, tutor & voice artist based in Te Whanganui-a-Tara, Aotearoa, working professionally across the motu for the past decade.
Hannah’s involvement with the Silver Noodle Soup crew began in 2019 when she worked as a casual support worker for Maggie-Rose (co-founder of SNS). During 2021 she occasionally tutored with the company and it was early 2023 when Hannah became a part of the weekly tutoring team alongside Mycah Keall and Madeline, and soon after that with Stevie. This mahi with SNS has been instrumental in growing her skills and confidence as a drama tutor.
Alongside SNS and teaching drama at Rātā studios, Hannah works as an actor for multiple Wellington-based theatre companies. She recently performed in two sold-out seasons of Binge Culture's Werewolf, as part of the Aotearoa NZ Festival of the Arts & Auckland Arts festival and will head to Edinburgh Fringe with the work later this year. She has toured internationally, with Binge Culture and with EBKM's award-winning show Yes, Yes, Yes.
Hannah is a graduate from Victoria University’s Theatre (Hons) programme, and John Bolton’s Theatre School in Melbourne.
Stevie Hancox-Monk
Tutor, co-directorStevie Hancox-Monk (they/them), a trans nonbinary theatre practitioner based in Te Whanganui-a-Tara, brings over a decade of experience in improvisation, theatre-making, and voice performance.
Stevie has toured internationally with the Prague Shakespeare Company and performed in the United States with Trick of the Light Theatre’s critically acclaimed work The Griegol (Production of the Year, Ngā Whakarākei o Whātaitai 2022). Stevie also received a nomination for Actor of the Year for their performance as Hamlet in David O’Donnell’s Hamlet (Ngā Whakarākei o Whātaitai 2019).
They are a founding member of improv troupe Tiny Dog (nominated for Best Improv Group at the 2023 NZ Comedy Guild Awards), and have collaborated widely across the sector on many independent theatre and film projects including To My Next Lover (dir. Kieran Charnock; Paula Harris; short film); A Traveller’s Guide to Turkish Dogs (dir. Jonathan Price); HOLE (Lynda Chanwai-Earle); Massive Crushes (dir. Isobel MacKinnon); The Maids (dir. Samuel Phillips); and The Chair (dir. Brooke Benton, DOP Matt Henley; short film);
Stevie started working with Silver Noodle Soup as a creative practitioner in early 2023, and values their earlier experience as a support worker for youth with disabilities as foundational to their arts practice. Stevie has worked extensively with inclusive theatre company Everybody Cool Lives Here, predominantly on their award-winning productions Wake Up Tomorrow and Forcefield, and on the 2017 short film Secrets of the Special Olympics.
Across 2019—2022, Stevie taught weekly performance classes for young home-schoolers through the Wellington Home Education Network, and in 2025 joined the team at Rātā Studios as an acting coach.
Further Collaborators
Over the many years of Silver Noodle Soup’s existence, we’ve worked with a number of wonderful theatre practitioners in various capacities, including Jo Randerson, Thomas LaHood, Sylvie McCreanor, Mycah Keall, Nathan Mudge, Michiel van Echten, Alex Ulrich Ker, Bethany Miller, Sabrina Martin, and Jthan Morgan.