Me
I am a theatre maker from Cumbria. I make projects about people, the places they come from, and what those places mean.
I act, sing, move, write, direct, make and facilitate. I am passionate about how we can bring joy into our creative processes.
This Town
Contact Theatre and Derby Theatre
Movement Director and Assistant Director
Written by Rory Aaron. Directed by Cheryl Martin. Performed by Kate Ireland and Rory Aaron.
This Town is a modern-day epic narrative poem, performed and written by exciting new talent Rory Aaron (BBC New Creatives, Southbank Poetry Collective). An ode to home, This Town uses powerful spoken word to transport us to a post-industrialised landscape, weaving together stories of loss, PTSD, and friendship.
Yes Chef
The Roundhouse, Studio
Movement Director
Written by Laurie Ogden and directed by Hetty Hodgson (Pigfoot Theatre). Yes Chef explored the lives of women working in Michelin starred kitchens.
In this piece, I was drawn to the language and the choreography of the kitchen, with a focus on the precision and repetitiveness of these actions. As a starting point, I created a series of activities that would help the performers develop a vocabulary of gestures that we could draw upon when creating motifs and movement segments in the same way a contemporary dancer uses their learned choreography.
We have performers delivering precise, stylised, and repetitive action. We also explored the pace, depth, and intensity of these actions. For me, the movement is there to build the space and create the world as much as the text
Project Lockdown: Unlocked
Contact and International Partners, site-specific
Lead Artist
Project Lockdown was a collaboration between Contact Mcr, Art-Fact Tilburg, and Fameus Antwerp. Working twenty young artist from across the three countries Project Lockdown occupied three different cultural buildings.
My role as lead artist (co-led by Ali Wilson) was to stimulate, provoke and inspire a new piece of contemporary theatre in a 24hour locked-in period.
This piece responded to the site it was based in (the people's history museum). Working within mixed disciplines the piece explored collectivism, identity and loneliness.
4 Us To Rule
HOMEmcr, Theatre 2
Associate Director
Directed by Kate Colgrave-Pope 4 Us To Rule was a co-created show with HOMEmcr's Young Company and the first in-house produced show for HOME post-covid.
The show explored freedom, rules and the future. Working with visual artist Sam we created a multidisciplinary show that operated as part gallery part participatory experience. We encouraged the audience to draw on the set, bowl cricket balls at the actors and dance.
As the associate director I worked closely within the creative team to inspire new ideas, generate material with the young people and help foster the initial concepts of freedom v.s rules.
LOB
Space 1, HOMEmcr, Contact Theatre (2022), Outburst Festival (2022)
Movement Director and Co-Director
Written and performed by Roma Havers LOB was commissioned by the LGBT Foundation, Manchester. A one-person show combining dance and monologue, exploring identity, gender and sport.
This is an ongoing project. My goal is to create a choreography that identifies and contrasts with the written content. For example the final sequence develops from a static 'tight' choreography into a gradual free-movement improvised dance - a break away from the binding nature of binaries and stereotypes that we also see in the text into a joyful unrevoked sense of self. I aim to highlight the stasis that binaries place us in and question the performative actions they condition through a physical break away.
[M]Others
The Royal Exchange, site-specific
Lead Artist/Performer
Created for The Royal Exchange's Co:LAB festival in 2019 intersecting movement, poetry and site response. Exploring our relationship to the planet, our mother's and our childhood.
We ran a two-week R&D with two community arts groups to create a twenty minute site specific piece of promenade theatre. We performed this in a two hour loop; combing poetry, dance and sound design. Using the natural echoes and high ceilings to create billowing acapella soundscape and the curvature of the room to create a pathway through three different spaces.
Audience were encouraged to stay and watch the performances again, to see it from different angles or to sit and listen in another part of the Royal Exchange's Great Hall.
Let's Play
The Royal Exchange Studio
Dramaturg
An intergenerational collaboration between SwitchMCR and Elders Exel. Exploring play, age and technology through the medium of storytelling, ensemble and comedy.
Over a two week period we developed an ensemble and created short sketches, poems and choreography. Initially exploring how we played in our childhood and exchanging the differences and similarities between the generations we then focused on how we told stories and produced an ensemble-led upbeat production.
The goal of this show was to present two generations that are often politically alien in unification through play, joy and sharing the performance space.
8055
SwitchMCR, 53Two Main Space
Director
Written by OJ Cage and part of SwitchMcr's opening night as resident theatre company at 53Two. 8055 explored the complexities and idiosyncrasies of the bureaucratic world.
Using comedy, clowning and abusrdism we created a hyper real workplace. Exposing the absurdities of workday practice through choreographed movement pieces depicting corporate office minutiae set to 70s funk and soul music.
To achieve this we focused on developing rigid choreography and strict characterisation that slowly unravelled as the piece developed concluding with a highly precise slow motion pool noodle fight. For me it was essential that the characters felt hyper real and almost robotic in the linear way they moved around the stage in order to create the greatest contrast when characters had to perform bizarre tasks.
Oh Man
Contact Theatre, site specific
Assistant Director
A collaboration between Hetain Patel and Contact's Young Company. OH MAN considered the role of masculinity in the modern world. A multi disciplinary piece set in a garage in Salford.
The four week research and development process focused on collecting verbatim anecdotes and workshopping them into a dynamic site specific work, that shifted gears rapidly in the rehearsal stage between graffiti, chat show sketches, choreographed movement pieces and choral rap.
My goal as A.D within this piece was to explore the significance of expectations of the performance of masculinity within young men aged 13-25. We are accountable as a society for the way men perform. I wanted to be part of creating a show that took the aggression of toxic masculinity and used it's energy to create a high tempo dance sequence or an orchestral percussion vignette composed of tyres, buckets of screws, hard hats and trolleys. To celebrate what that energy can do alongside highlighting where that energy is unhelpful or toxic.
Poetry
I write about the intersections between nature and ourselves often discussing love, birth and connection. I have worked internationally and performed at festivals across the UK. Most recently performing as a commissioned poet for The Ripples of Hope Festival in the main space at HOMEmcr. I have also participated in the BBC Words First program and written for PUSH Festival, HOMEmcr.
Performing
I work best as a devised performer within an ensemble but frequently work from script as a character actor. I specialise in character work and movement and have a background in traditional theatre training alongside contemporary performance.
See below Arndale Christmas advert (2022) created with Young Identity
Image from Bedlam, Peckham Art Cafe, 2020