Founder & Creative Director, Sally McLean

An award-winning, multi-hyphenate creative, Sally McLean began her work in the entertainment biz in her mid-teens as an actor and has since performed lead, guest and supporting roles in numerous Australian, US and UK film, theatre and television productions.

A graduate of The Actors Institute UK, Sally’s notable screen acting credits include “Angie Powers” in the BAFTA Award-winning BBC mini series Bootleg, “Stacy” in the AACTA Award-winning ABC TV series Utopia and recurring guest roles of “Miss Giddens” in the ABC/CBBC TV series The Worst Year of My Life – Again! and “Barb” in the USA Sony/AMC TV series, Preacher opposite Pip Torrens & Christopher Kirby.

Predominately working in comedy on screen, Sally is also an experienced dramatic Shakespearean actor with Musical Theatre roots, playing over thirty lead and supporting roles in theatre in both Australia and the UK.

Highlights include the UK premiere of the drama Annabel’s Requiem, what is believed to be the first all-female production of Macbeth in the UK and the professional Australian premier of the hit off-Broadway musical I Love You, You’re Perfect, Now Change.

Acting accolade highlights include being nominated in a field that included Royal Shakespeare Company and Globe Theatre company members for Outstanding Performance in a Principal Role (History) for her “Queen Katherine” in Shakespeare’s Henry VIII for The Show Must Go Online at the Groundlings Choice Awards in the UK, winning Best Actress at the 2025 IOWF in Milan, Italy and Best Actress at the 2025 Florence Film Awards, also in Italy, for playing “Hecate MacFindlay” in Dark Arcadia, winning Best Performer in a Play at the 2024 BroadwayWorld Melbourne Awards for playing “Louise” in the Australian premiere of Only Child at Chapel off Chapel, winning Best Actress in a Web Series at the 2021 Unrestricted View Film Festival in the UK and Best Actress at the 2023 Andromeda Film Festival in Turkey for playing “Macbeth” in Shakespeare Republic: #AllTheWebsAStage (The Lockdown Chronicles).

FILM & TV PRODUCTION BACKGROUND

Sally founded her own boutique production business, Incognita Enterprises, under the Honorary Patronage of Oscar® nominated actor, Sir Nigel Hawthorne KB, CBE in 1997 – an association that continued until his passing in 2001.

Prior to this, she worked in production for the BBC in both their Music & Arts and Commercial Channels Depts. (now UKTV), on series such as One Foot In The Past, Bookmark, The History of British Art, Sister Wendy, Robert Hughes American Visions, Bookworm, Bard on the Box, Poems on the Box and Poetry Nation, during which time she also Chaired the BBC Alternative Program Development Unit and Australian Program Development Unit, submitting several successful television program proposals to the Controllers of BBC1 & 2.

Since her return to Australia, alongside her acting career, she has worked in a variety of production roles for Channel 9, Southern Cross Broadcasting, Freemantle Media and Endemol Southern Star on programs such as Big Brother, Comedy Inc., The X-Factor, Australian Idol and 1 vs 100.

WORK WITH SHAKESPEARE

She is currently the Creator/Director and lead ensemble member of the multi award-winning digital series Shakespeare Republic which has been officially selected and screened at over 110 international film festivals, nominated for over 100 awards and won over 60 awards to date including Best Director, Best Web Series, Best Actress (for Sally personally) and Best Ensemble Cast in numerous festivals and industry awards. A highlight was being the recipient of the prestigious CINE Golden Eagle Award for Best Digital Series in the USA in 2017, which saw Sally join the ranks of fellow CINE alumni such as Steven Spielberg (the then CINE President) Oprah Winfrey, Ron Howard, Martin Scorsese, Jim Henson, Mike Nichols, Robert Altman, Spike Lee, Billy Crystal, Robert De Niro, Martin Scorsese and Sydney Pollack, among others. Fellow award winners that year were Christian Slater’s Mr Robot, Variety’s Actors on Actors and National Geographic’s MARS series.

Another highlight was winning the Best Film Award at the 2020 Falstaff Awards in the USA for Shakespeare Republic Season Three, decided by a jury of academics from around the world. Honorary Mentions for the award that year included the UK’s Shakespeare’s Globe broadcast program, Canada’s Stratford Festival broadcast series and the UK’s National Theatre Live at Home program. Previous winners of this award include the BBC’s Hollow Crown series, Kenneth Branagh’s Hamlet, Joss Whedon’s Much Ado About Nothing and Justin Kurzel’s Macbeth starring Michael Fassbender & Marion Cotillard.

Shakespeare Republic would go on to be named the Most Awarded Anthology Series in the world & ranked as the #6 Web Series globally in the 2021 Web Series World Cup, as decided by the amount of awards the season received from the top web series festivals worldwide. The series was acquired for the official collection of the National Film and Sound Archive of Australia in 2018 and named as an “Acquisition Highlight” in the NFSA’s 2018/19 Annual Report. The third season of the series was acquired and added to the official collection at the NFSA in 2020.

Sally’s Shakespeare-language short film, Speaking Daggers, was officially selected for 22 international film festivals, including being an official selection at the prestigious Academy Awards® qualifying St Kilda Film Festival. The film would go on to win several awards, including a Highly Commended Finalist award at the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust’s Film Festival in the UK, as awarded by the jury, headed by Jury President, Sir Kenneth Branagh.

As well as writing and directing, she appears on screen in both projects alongside fellow actors Nadine Garner, Michala Banas, Alan Fletcher, Scott Major, Christopher Kirby and Dean Haglund, among others.

Sally’s work in the web series world has been highlighted in the academic tomes Short, Narrative & Serialized: a complete guide to the web series phenomenon (Bassaget, Burkholder, 2019) and The Web Series Experiment (Routledge, 2026) and her work with Shakespeare has been the subject of several academic presentations and plenary panels at Early Modern Literature and Shakespeare seminars and conferences in Australia, the UK and USA from 2016 to now.

Her first published work on Shakespeare, an essay exploring her methodology behind Shakespeare Republic and Shakespeare performance in general, was published in the USA by Routledge Press in 2020 as part of the academic essay collection, Playfulness In Shakespearean Adaptations. The third season of Shakespeare Republic has been taught at Syracuse University, USA, discussed in papers presented at the Shakespeare Association of America Conference (USA) and BritGrad Conference (UK) and is also further explored in the Arden Shakespeare collection, Lockdown Shakespeare: New Evolutions in Performance and Adaptation, published by Bloomsbury Press in the UK in July 2022.

In 2021, Sally was commissioned by Howard Fine Acting Studio Australia to create, write and direct a student Shakespeare web series, Walking Shadows. The series ran for three seasons, winning several international awards, including Best Director for Sally at the 2025 LA WebFest & NZ WebFest. The third season was named in the 2025 TOP 10 web series in the world out of 475 shows from 43 countries and announced as the #1 web series in Australia & the Asia/Pacific/Oceania region.

A second spin-off from Shakespeare Republic, the limited short form series, Dark Arcadia, is currently finishing it’s run on the international film festival circuit. It has won 29 awards to date, including a Best Actress award and 6 awards for Best Directing for Sally personally, as well as being named in the Top 10 web series globally in the 2024 WSWC rankings. Also created, adapted, directed and starring Sally in the role of “Hecate MacFindlay”, the series was funded via grants from Creative Victoria, City of Melbourne, Creative Partnerships Australia and the British Shakespeare Association.

Sally’s experience as a Shakespearean actor and director and thoughts on Shakespeare performance in the 21st Century in general were also featured in the book Shakespeare & The Actor through interviews with Professor Emerita, British Shakespeare Association Honorary Fellow and author Lois Potter, alongside actors such as Sir Ian McKellen, Dame Judi Dench, Sir Kenneth Branagh and Sir Antony Sher, among others. The book was published by Oxford University Press in September 2022.

Her work adapting Shakespeare for the screen has been further discussed in the book Authenticity and Adaptation, published by Palgrave Macmillan (UK/USA) in March, 2025. Sally’s work is analysed in depth alongside filmmakers such as Guillermo Del Toro, Sir Kenneth Branagh, Zac Snyder, Taika Waititi and James Gunn, among others.

2025 marked the 10th Anniversary of Shakespeare Republic and was celebrated with the podcast Musing on the Bard: a podcast for the Shakespeare curious, produced, edited and hosted by Sally, made possible by a grant from the British Shakespeare Association. Interviewing various members of the Shakespeare Republic ensemble based around the world about Shakespeare, acting & creativity in general, the podcast debuted on Apple Podcasts at #15 in the Performing Arts category in Australia and at #7 in Romania. The podcast went onto be named a 2025 Fan Fave, Instant Hit Show and Talked About Show on Spotify, as per the 2025 Spotify Wrapped.

Sally brings all this experience with Shakespeare together in her teaching program, Playing The Bard.

TECH INDUSTRY BACKGROUND

She is also notable as being in the first wave of professional web designers and developers in Australia and being one of the few women working in the internet side of the tech industry in Australia during the late 1990s. She was globally recognised in this field, receiving several international awards for her design work and still designs for clients, mostly fellow creatives under the umbrella of Incognita Design. Her most recent work in that area is the design of the official website of New Zealand author, Heather Morris (The Tattooist of Auschwitz).

Sally is also a graphic designer and the owner of the online clothing and homewares store Styled Vintage, selling a range of products featuring her mainly entertainment, literature and Shakespeare themed designs.

PROFESSIONAL ASSOCIATIONS

Sally’s professional memberships include the Media Entertainment and Arts Alliance (MEAA), Associate Member of the Australian Directors’ Guild (ADG) and the Australian Writers’ Guild and a former Professional Member of the Australian Film Institute and AACTA (Actor, Director & Producer’s Chapters). She served as a Juror on numerous individual award juries for several years for the AFI Awards and AACTA Awards (the AFI Awards’ successor) until 2016. She has also had the pleasure of serving as a Juror for the ATOM Awards in the Best Documentary and Best Web Series Award categories from 2014 to 2019, as well as serving as a Jury member for the New Jersey Web Fest, New Zealand Web Fest and NYC Web Fest. She was the founding Chair and Executive Producer of theatre company North of Eight, was a member of the Board of Trustees for the Howard Fine Acting Studio Australia and Melbourne Web Fest, as well as being a previous member of British Equity.

Sally has now run six successful crowdfunding campaigns for various projects, raising between 117% to 168% of the original target for each campaign. She was the recipient of a Good Practice Recognition honour from the Australia Business Arts Foundation (AbaF), now Creative Australia, in 2012 for demonstrating good practice in her work in fundraising for her feature documentary, Champion: The Franz Stampfl Story. This acknowledgement takes in to consideration how the money is raised as well as how the donated money is used and utilised within the organisation or project, amongst other criteria. Other recipients that year included the Melbourne Theatre Company, the Melbourne Recital Centre, the National Gallery of Victoria, Bell Shakespeare, the Melbourne Writers Festival, Heide Museum of Modern Art, Museum Victoria and the Victorian Opera. She was the only independent producer in the country acknowledged with this honour that year.

She has spoken at various schools and events about the importance of creativity, including being invited to give the Keynote Speech at the 2017 Independent Schools Victoria AGM, to a room of 211 independent school principals, the Victorian Minister for the Arts, the Victorian Shadow Minister for the Arts and members of the Victorian Education Department about the importance of the Arts in education. She has also presented on panels for the Australian and New Zealand Shakespeare Association, Melbourne Web Fest, the Arts Learning Festival and the St Kilda Film Festival.

She has additionally held the positions of General Manager for Melbourne Web Fest, and was Founder and Festival Director for Shorts Relief: Flicks For The Fires – a film and web series festival created to fundraise for bushfire relief, held at the Capital Theatre, Melbourne in March 2020.

She has also taught Shakespeare as an industry guest teacher at various institutions including the Howard Fine Acting Studio Australia, Montsalvat, Toorak College and the Equity Foundation.

Sally continues to work as an actor in film & TV while developing several projects – Shakespeare-related and not – for the stage and screen.

For more information, visit her official website: www.sallymclean.com or IMDB Profile.

Profile photo © Julian Dolman (2019)