Artistic Director Theatre Studio West (http://www.theatrestudiowest.co.uk/about.html).

Founded to help young people realise their potential (http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20080513/local/white-romeo-mee...)

Her non-Shakespearean classical credits include playing Dido in Christopher Marlowe's Dido, Queen of Carthage in Stage One Theatre Company's touring production, which played in London (and was reviewed) from 6 - 23 October 1993 at the Rudolph Steiner Theatre. She also played the title role in Oscar Wilde's Salome for Jon Pope at the Citizens Theatre, Glasgow in April 1994. Also at the Citizens Theatre in 1995, Saunders played Princess Eboli in Philip Prowse's production of Friedrich Schiller's Don Carlos and Mrs. Margery Pinchwife in William Wycherley's The Country Wife in 1996 (directed by Antony McDonald).

Julie Saunders's leading roles at the Citizens, Glasgow extended to playing Maggie in Philip Prowse's production of Tennessee Williams's Cat on a Hot Tin Roof in 1997 to reviews as controversial as those that accompanied Josette Simon's portrayal of another Maggie in Arthur Miller's After the Fall in 1990 at the NT: "Julie Saunders's Maggie smoulders in gentility: a far cry from her excellent Eboli in Don Carlos two years ago. Mind you, she may be inhibited by the sheer improbability of a black actress having to play the white heroine of a quintessentially Deep South play. Mixed casting has made huge strides, but there are a few roles (Desdemona, Lady Bracknell, and Maggie the Cat) that will always defy it." ~ John Peter, Sunday Times, 23 March 1997, in Theatre Record, Vol. XVII, Issue 6, 12 - 25 March 1997;"Is casting a black actress as Maggie, the 'cat' in Tennessee Williams's inter-familial drama of sex, lies and red tape, a bold piece of integrated casting that one is supposed to overlook? Or is it an even bolder attempt to suggest that, on the wrong side of the tracks from which Maggie comes, trash is trash whatever colour it is? Either way, in the big house of an old-time cotton plantation in the deep south, where both parents use the word, 'n***** [The Guardian printed the word]', once in Maggie's presence, it's a problem, even with the play set in something like the present....Perhaps if Julie Saunders rose to the challenges of the part with more conviction, especially in the celebrated first act, we might notice less. But as she exposes the sense of uncertainty and alienation from Brick - the favoured but feckless son of the family she has married into - and the family at large, one gets only rare flashes of her pain." ~ Robert Dawson Scott, Guardian, 26 March 1997, in Theatre Record, Vol. XVII, Issue 6, 12 - 25 March 1997