David Furlong
Artistic Director And Founder
David Furlong is a mixed‑race Mauritian actor, director, dramaturg and educator, and the Artistic Director and Founder of Exchange Theatre, which he established in 2006 to champion multilingual voices and cross‑cultural performance in the UK. Over a 20‑year career spanning London and France, David has worked across stage, screen and street theatre, building a distinctive practice rooted in migration, identity and the decolonisation of representation.
As the Young Vic Jerwood Director in 2021, he created TEMPESTS, a multilingual piece exploring invisibilised mixed identities. He is an experienced deviser whose work includes Noor, The Great Experiment with Border Crossings, and The Cat in Reboots. David has also worked as assistant director at the Royal Opera House, National Theatre and Young Vic, and is a “Race & Allyship” trainer for Maya Productions with Tonic Theatre. He is a founder member of Migrants in Theatre and has been nominated for Best Director and Best Production at the Off West End Awards.
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David’s freelance work includes assistant directing at the Geneva Opera Studio and on major productions such as Madama Butterfly at the Royal Opera House, Hadestown at the National Theatre, and Orfeus – A House Music Opera at the Young Vic. For Exchange Theatre, he has directed and translated or adapted numerous bilingual productions, including The Exchange, Bal Trap, The Flies, Dom Juan, Misanthrope and Macbeth. His work has been recognised with nominations for Best Director (2018) and Best Production (2019) at the Off West End Awards, and his bilingual practice was featured in the 2021 documentary In Exchange.
As an actor, David has performed widely in both the UK and France, including stage, screen and street theatre. London credits include Love’s Labour’s Lost, The Rover and Red Oleander, as well as leading roles for Exchange Theatre such as Orestes in The Flies, Sganarelle in Dom Juan, Alceste in Misanthrope and Macbeth in Macbeth. In France, he has worked with directors including Muriel Sapinho, Hans‑Peter Cloos, Deborah Warner, Christophe Botti and Michel Lopez, performing in Romeo & Juliet, Monserrat, A Flea in Her Ear and numerous French classics as part of a repertory company.
Alongside his artistic work, David has taught for over fifteen years in both French and English, including at ArtsEd, Identity School of Acting and ISTA. He co‑produces cross‑cultural projects through Exchange Theatre and is a founder member of Migrants in Theatre, advocating for greater representation and equity across the sector.
Founders
Fanny Dulin
Fanny Dulin is originally from Bordeaux. She trained at the Bridge Theatre Training Company in London. After graduating, she was Christine in Miss Julie, Pilate in The Mystery Plays, Bella in Operation New Life and Hippolyta in A Midsummer night’s dreams. She regularly works on film from shorts to big productions (she appeared alongside Johnny Depp in Sweeney Todd by Tim Burton). Credits outside of Exchange Theatre include the Parisian comedy Post It (Café Theatre des Chartrons, Bordeaux), Anna Guérin, the creator of the symbol of the Poppy Red in the eponymous play (Hawth Theatre, Crawley) and Great Expectations (The playground London).
In 2006, she co-founded Exchange Theatre for which she performed and produced: Marthe in The Exchange (Paul Claudel), Bubble in Bal Trap (Durringer), Adelaide in a House Bath, Yvonne in a Madame’s Late Mother (Feydeau), Nourrice in Antigone (Anouilh), Ismene in Et Toi Ismene, (Nathalie Adam for Chemistry Theatre) and played Laurent Gaudet’s Médée Kali monologue at the Voila Festival. From 2013, she played parts alternatively in French and English: Yolande in A Family Affair (Bacri, Jaoui), Jacqueline in The Doctor In Spite of Himself and Eliante and Arsinoé in Misanthrope, Elvira in Dom Juan (Moliere) and Clytemnestra in The Flies (Sartre).
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She regularly worked at the French Institute where she created their monthly French tales. Being resident there for a couple of years, she performed many various parts during the “au theatre this Sunday” season: from a little girl in Nuts to a tour guide in Sleeping Beauty. She was the executive director of Exchange Theatre and still works as an administrative support. She also dedicates much of her time to music and is an associate producer at WEF Productions, which organizes musical comedy cabarets. Specializing in bilingualism for young children, she still teaches drama to kids in French and teaches children's classes at Exchange Theatre. She created Le Petit Théâtre, a French-language course for bilingual children, and also runs workshops in English schools that aim to teach French through theatre and play.
Benedict Cooper
Benedict first came across Exchange Theatre in 2007, whilst training at Royal Central School of Speech & Drama. Having lived in France for 10 years, Exchange provided a unique opportunity to work in French, in London, in the industry he loved. His first professional production with the Company was The Flies (Sartre), after which he continued to work with the company until 2015 alongside a teaching career at Arts Ed, working on over 40 productions in a variety of roles.
Despite his career taking him away from Exchange Theatre, his love of their work never kept him away long and, after many years of being a soft-spoken sounding board or occasional third-eye, was asked to become a director of the company with David, and it is a privilege to still play some small part in the future of Exchange Theatre.
