Nancy Lund
After joining RDG in the summer of 2002 Nancy Usher was immediately cast as Helene in Sweet Charity, following which she went on to enjoy the role of Sylvia, the sole female member of the concert party in Privates on Parade Nancy was nominated for Best Actress at the 2004 Elmbridge Drama Festival for her central role in Touching Tomorrow. In 2007 she played one of the daughters in our successful production of The House of Bernarda Alba and was one of the trio of actresses who appeared in our multi-award winning production of The Art of Remembering. InThe Lightning Play she made a wonderfully eccentric Jacklyn.
Nancy received further acting award nominations for her appearances in Land of the Dead and Helter Skelter at Leatherhead Festival in 2009. Those roles contrasted greatly with her sharp-tongued highly physical role in the popular comedy RolePlay. She went on to make a fun-loving, man-loving Mrs Waters in Tom Jones.
We were pleased when Nancy decided make her debut as a director and even more delighted when her first production - White Lies - won three major awards at the 2011 Elmbridge Drama festival.
In the two weeks before she married fellow RDG actor Nick Lund in 2013, Nancy made a feisty New York tough cookie in our mutli-award winning performance of Woody Allens's Riverside Drive. Having won two local festivals this production was selected for the prestigious All Winners festival in the Isle of Man
in 2014 Nancy decided to revive our Youth group using several older members of your children's group, the Sundowners. Their first production proved a huge success. The Spasm won four awards at the Spelthorne Festival including Best Youth Production while Nancy was nominated for Best Director. She ended the year with a wonderfully spirited performance as one on the convicts in Our Country's Good. 2015 began with her emotionally charged performance in Seven Year Twitch Later in the year her Youth production of Loose Connections won three awards at the Autumn festivals Including Best Youth play at the Spelthorne Festival. The following year she directed the gritty A + E for the Youth group. In 2017 Nancy made her debut as a director for one of the group's main plays when she produced the powerful psychodrama The Passion of Jerome. At the end of the year we were delighted when she was awarded the Adjudicator's Trophy for her spirited performance in Brighton Beach Scumbags. The following year her deeply-felt performance in Ghost Story was nominated for the Best Actress Trophy at Woking Festival. After the long pandemic hiatus one of the first RDG presentation was Caroline Ross's original play Madonna Della Media which was skilfully directed by Nancy. Almost immediately she went on to direct a very physical presentation of 100 which was highly placed at the Woking Drama Festival whilst at the Spelthorne Festival she received a nomination for the Best Director. In 2022 directed a very strong production of the Irish comic drama The Seafarer. She then moved on to Wales, appearing in two strongly contrasting roles in our lively production of Under Milk Wood. In 2023 Nancy skilfully directed her powerfully emotional production of The Father.