Janis Marshall Reilly Freelance Performer/Director/Producer Also Performance Programmer (Children and Families) for Renfrewshire Leisure (Paisley Arts Centre and venues across the region)
JANIS has been unravelling the fun and fickle thread of the arts for 40 years. Born into a flat filled with theatre and puppetry in the Johnstone Castle housing scheme - and fuelled by influences including Easterhouse Festival Society and early Fablevision – a move to Argyll saw 10-year-old Janis establish the Cowal Youth Theatre which ran for just over a decade.
ON leaving school, Janis worked as a Singer before moving into Public Relations and Events Management at The Scottish Parliament and Edinburgh Fringe. Surviving an MA Theatre Studies at Glasgow Uni, she then spent 15 years as a freelance Performer, Director and Producer working across Scotland.
IN 2021 Janis returned to Cowal with a husband and two children in tow and is currently focussed on her role as Performance Programmer for Renfrewshire, specialising in work for Children and Families.
LIVED experience (and as a mother of two) fuels Janis’ conviction that children are not ‘audiences of tomorrow’ – they are audiences now. She thrives on the ever-evolving needs of programming for Children and Families - and battles to improve conditions for parents working in the Arts sector.