Gerda Stevenson

 1956 –

Actor, Writer, Director, Singer, Songwriter

Gerda Stevenson, actor/writer/director/singer/songwriter, was born and brought up in the Scottish Borders. She trained at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, London, where she won the Vanbrugh Award. She has worked for over 30 years on stage, television, radio and film throughout Britain and abroad. She founded Stellar Quines, Scotland’s leading women’s theatre company, is an Associate Artist of Communicado Theatre Co., a trustee of the Scottish International Education Trust, and a Scots Language Ambassador for Education Scotland.

In 2011, she was nominated by the International Committee of the League of Professional Theatre Women(New York) for the Rosamond Gilder/Martha Coigney International Award.

She received a BAFTA Scotland Best Film Actress Award for her performance in Margaret Tait’s feature film BLUE BLACK PERMANENT, andhas been nominated twice for the CATS awards(Critics Awards for Theatre in Scotland). She appeared in BRAVEHEART, and played Anne Muir in THE BOYHOOD OF JOHN MUIR,an American film for PBS TV. Her many TV appearances includeMIDSOMER MURDERS, HEARTBEAT, TAGGART and THE BILL.

Gerda can be heard regularly on the ‘wireless’ in BBC Radio 4’s hugely popular PAUL TEMPLE MYSTERIESplaying the role of Steve,feisty wife of the eponymous hero.

She has directed productions in theatre, opera, film, and radio, and many plays at Glasgow's legendary lunch-time theatre venue ORAN MOR.

Recipient of a Scottish Arts Council Writer’s Bursary, she is a widely published author of poetry, drama and prose, and a visiting lecturer at Glasgow University. She performed in, and directed, her own stage play,FEDERER VERSUS MURRAY, which was runner-up for the Best contribution to Scottish Drama on the Edinburgh Fringe, 2011, touring toNew York in 2012, as part ofthe Scottish Government’s NYC SCOTLAND WEEKcelebrations. Published by the prestigious American literary magazine SALMAGUNDI, FEDERER VERSUS MURRAY is studied on the Contemporary Scottish Literature course at Glasgow University.

She has written extensively for BBC Radio - her own original plays, and dramatisations of novels by neglected Scottish women writers such as Mary Brunton and Nancy Brysson Morrison.

Gerda’s poetry collection, IF THIS WERE REAL, was published in 2013 by Smokestack Books, reviewed in The Sunday Herald as: The best of the new in contemporary Scottish poetry - not to be missed.”

Gerda comes from a renowned family of musicians – her father the distinguished composer/pianist Ronald Stevenson, her sister harper/composer Savourna, and niece fiddler/composer Anna-Wendy. Supported by Creative Scotland in 2014, Gerda recorded a CD of her own songs, NIGHT TOUCHES DAY, (Gean Records), accompanied by an array of fine Scottish musicians.

The mother of a daughter with Down’s Syndrome, Gerda has worked extensively on early intervention techniques in Speech and Language development, combining her own skills as a professional communicator/story-teller with the practice of trail-blazing organisations Down Syndrome International, and Symbol UK. As a result of her experience in this field, Gerda was invited to address the Royal College of Speech and Language Therapists in 2010.

Gerda lives in the Scottish Borders with her husband, the Skye poet Aonghas  MacNeacail, and their two children.

To make your own nomination download the nomination form here