News

I’m delighted to have been invited to work with Visible Theatre on their new piece in development, The Wardrobe Project.

Visible make new theatre of provocation and beauty that celebrates and transcends age. The Wardrobe Project is inspired by the fashion choices women make as they grow older, what that reveals about their own identities, and also about changing societal and cultural attitudes to age and body.

The Wardrobe Project will be written by Sonja Linden, based on interviews conducted by the acting company, and designed by Agnes Treplin. Sonja and Agnes collaborated on Visible’s launch production, Who Do We Think We Are? which was a huge success at Southwark Playhouse in 2014 (image above).

If you’re interested in finding out more please contact Visible’s Education and Outreach Director, Claire French, on info@visible.org.uk

 

 

 

On Monday 2 November 2015, at 7.30pm, BBC One’s Inside Out London will be featuring Trellick Tales – the intergenerational heritage project based on the infamous Trellick Towers, produced by SPID Theatre Company.

As Associate Director for SPID, I helped develop the ideas and practice behind the project, and fronted our winning bid for the £50,000 Clore Prize Fund Award. You can watch it live, or catch it here afterwards.

This time last year I was working as dramaturg and director on ‘Spoken Truths‘ – a piece of verbatim theatre exploring the dirty laundry the charitable sector would rather not hang out in public.

In the audience was a producer from the BBC, and she was so moved by the performance that she commissioned the writer, David Russell, to turn it into a piece for BBC Radio Four’s speech programme, Four Thought.

It was aired in August of this year, but you can listen to it here, anytime.

Moby-Dick Unabridged was a great success! A brilliant model for collaboration, and for public participation in the arts.

A cast of 150 readers and another 150 members of community dance, drama and choral groups performed the novel in its entirety (footnotes and all) over 4 days in Southbank Centre, headed up by literary night The Special Relationship.

And I unexpectedly made my stage debut at Southbank Centre, steeping into the breach when a reader dropped out at the last minute. You can here me here (starting at 4 mins 44 secs).

I’ve also added a page about the project to this website.

Call me Ishmael.

I’ve been invited by Southbank Centre and The Special Relationship to work with them on a live four-day performance of Moby-Dick Unabridged, as part of London Literature Festival. The marathon event features hundreds of readers drawn from the public, comedians, actors and writers, as well illustrations, animation and several dramatised, choreographed and composed sections.

It’s on in the Clore Ballroom in the foyer of the Royal Festival Hall, 1-4 October 2015. More info here. Come on in, the water’s lovely…

 

SPID Theatre Company (for whom I’m Associate Director) were fortunate to win a £50,000 award from the Clore Prize Fund for the brilliant arts/architecture/community project ‘Trellick Tales’ – exploring the history and stories of the brutalist social housing block, Trellick Towers, in West London.

Petia Tzanova of the Clore Leadership Programme asked me to write an article for their website, introducing the project. Here it is:

Introducing Trellick Tales Post

I was asked by Dominic Haddock of OperaUpClose to write a guest blog for their website, and this is what was on my mind at the time:

Emotional Intelligence, Parenthood and Directing