Richard Barrington "Rikki" Beadle-Blair MBE (born 25 July 1961) is a British actor, director, and playwright. He is the artistic director of multi-media production company Team Angelica.

Early life

Beadle-Blair was born in Camberwell and raised in Bermondsey, both in south London, by a single mother, Monica. Rikki was brought up with a brother, Gary Beadle (also an actor, of Eastenders fame), and a sister. He attended Lois Acton's Experimental Bermondsey Lampost Free School and, later, Old Vic Youth Theatre.

Career

Beadle-Blair wrote the screenplay for the 1995 feature film Stonewall (dir. Nigel Finch, 1995). He adapted his own screenplay of Stonewall for the stage and his production company Team Angelica, which he took to the 2007 Edinburgh Festival. He also directed, produced, designed both sets & costumes, & choreographed on the show. The play was nominated for "Best Ensemble" at The Stage Awards for Acting Excellence. In Autumn 2007, FIT, a play for young people commissioned by the Manchester-based arts organisation queerupnorth and the gay equality organisation Stonewall, went on tour around the UK. The play was developed to help tackle homophobic bullying in Britain's schools. Beadle-Blair subsequently adapted it into a film (2010). Beadle-Blair was appointed Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) in the 2016 Birthday Honours for services to drama.

Selected plays

Four one-hour ensemble plays

Radio/Audio

Roots of Homophobia (writer/presenter, Radio 4, 2001) an exploration of Jamaican homophobia. It won a 2002 Sony Best Feature Award. Whoopsie (writer; directed by Turan Ali for Bona Broadcasting/Radio 4, 2021) - gay comedy-drama, 28 mins. Scooters, Shooters & Shottas: a Curious Tale (director, written by John R Gordon, a Team Angelica/The Art Machine co-production, 2022) - a 40 minute podcast drama of raucous Black queer lives in 'the endz' of South London.

Team Angelica

In 2011 with long term creative partner John R. Gordon, Beadle-Blair founded Team Angelica Publishing, a queer-of-colour-centric press. Their first book was Beadle-Blair's inspirational What I Learned Today. They have since published gay Somali Diriye Osman's groundbreaking short story collection, Fairytales For Lost Children, which won the Polari prize in 2014, and Gordon's Drapetomania, favourably reviewed in the Financial Times, which won the Ferro-Grumley Award for Best LGBTQ Fiction in 2019. Most recently they published Larry Duplechan's memoir through his love of film, Movies That Made Me Gay (2024).

Publications

External links and sources