Meet our trainers

Donna Ruane became a BSL/English interpreter having grown up in a bilingual family. She started her career as a communication professional in education while working her way up through BSL Stages 1, 2 and 3, qualifying as a graduate from City Lit in 2001. Donna’s passion is performing arts, which she studied, specialising in dance and musical theatre.

Her vibrant persona and love of people and development led her to qualify as an AQA (A1 assessor) and later an IQA (independent verifier) for NVQ qualifications at levels 1 to 6. She also holds PTLLS (Preparing to Teach in the Lifelong Learning Sector), ILM Level 3 Line Management and NVQ 3 ‘Promoting independence’.

She has been a lead and co-tutor for THEATRESIGN for over 10 years, is part of the training development team and has co-created many of the courses THEATRESIGN is proud to deliver.

Leigh Bish is a native British Sign Language user and has been teaching for over 25 years. A qualified teacher and assessor, his specialist subject is British Sign Language Levels 1 to 6.

With the guidance of Terry Ruane, Leigh realised that teaching was the perfect way to share his love of language. He started as a Deaf Instructor at Thomas Tallis School in South London and has taught at RAD, Appa, Signamic, Sarona and The Deaf Academy, Exeter.

THEATRESIGN invited Leigh to deliver a Making It Visual course with Donna Ruane in 2017. He hasn’t looked back since, and continues to work with THEATRESIGN on a variety of visual language courses.