Category Archives: Uncategorized

I was lucky to receive a generous Developing Your Creative Practice grant from the Arts Council earlier in the year. After a period of development, I’m very pleased to have completed The View From Above.

It’s been directed by Charlie Cattrall (with the amazing Stanislav Dobak as Director of Photography). The cast includes Gráinne O’Mahony (SCRUM), Sanee Raval (I May Destroy You), Ruth Everett (RSC), Jerry Killick (Forced Entertainment) and Kulvinder Ghir (Goodness Gracious Me; Blinded by the Light).

It’s one of the more ambitious pieces I think I’ve made, and it’s great working with so many brilliant collaborators. The script attempts to interrogate and critique some of the ways in which the narrative aesthetics used in contemporary storytelling privilege whiteness and maleness. It looks at how our media is used to other people and perpetuate white supremacy, and searches for other ways of seeing.

After sharing an early work in progress version through stage@leedsDigital in November, we’re looking for new contexts to show the finished piece next year. Updates soon.

After limiting my private Feldenkrais practice for a few years, I am starting to teach again in York. So if you’ve got stiff shoulders, a sore back, or you just want to increase your mobility, balance and ease of movement, please get in touch.

I’ll be running these lessons for charity. In response to the growing cost of living and the fact that around 1 in 4 of the UK’s children live in poverty, donations will go to York Foodbank.

You can find out more information about the Feldenkrais Method here.

My short story Pilgrimage has been published in New Writing: The International Journal for the Practice and Theory of Creative Writing. You can read it here: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14790726.2021.2004169

I wrote up some notes for my current students following a session feeding back on their work.

They focus on how to make choices with reference to questions about spectatorship and reception.

A lot of the ideas draw on research from my book, Theatrical Reality, but I’ve tried to connect  them to practical problems in the rehearsal room.

The basic question is how to keep focused on the audience when the audience isn’t in the room.

This is Version One.  It could be a whole book, but hopefully what’s here will be useful.

Empathising with the audience

Walking Towards Ithaca is on at the Soho Theatre on the 11th and 12th November.

The play tells the story of a 200-walk from York to London – examining social alienation in the aftermath of Brexit along the way.

https://sohotheatre.com/shows/walking-towards-ithaca/

A few images of Dancing Through Storytime at Halton Library and York Explore.  Who knew stories were so exhausting?!?

My new interactive dance piece, Dancing Through Storytime, will be on in October.

It’s an interactive performance for families, integrating dance, movement and storytelling.  During the 15 minute performance children aged 4-8 and their grown ups will hunt for sea creatures, get lost in a forest and float into space.  It’s a show for everyone who has ever wanted to jump into their storybook.

13th October at Halton Library in Leeds. 11-1pm

20th October at York Explore Library. 10-4pm

I was very pleased to share my new interactive dance piece ‘Otherwise We Are Lost’ during my residency at Yorkshire Dance last week.  The piece explores how scenography and design might be used to choreograph the audience’s movement.  It draws a lot on my work with the Feldenkrais Method and my recent experiences with parkour.

A few pictures from Philomela and her Sisters, which was commissioned for this year’s Theatre Without Borders conference at the University of Hull.  The piece sought to explore and critique the treatment of female characters in Classical and Renaissance revenge tragedy.  It connects dialogues surrounding #MeToo and #TIMESUP to a selection of works from the Western literary canon.  (Virgil’s Aeneid, Ovid’s Metamorphoses, Euripides’ Hecuba and Shakespeare’s Titus Andronicus.)  I am pleased to say that it will be back in Hull later this year.

Performers: Catherine Marsh, Caitlin McPhilemy, Kira Curtis, Sophie Stones.

Projection Mapping: Ed Denning.

Sound Design and Live-mixing: Jamie Nowell

Dramaturgy: Christian Billing.

Direction and Design: Campbell Edinborough

Photos courtesy of Cat Fergusson-Baugh

My new solo piece How To Look will be presented as part of ‘Hold Everything Dear: Performance, Politics and John Berger’, at the Bathway Theatre, University of Greenwich on 14th April.  Inspired by the writings of John Berger, it integrates dance and spoken text to reflect on the complexities of looking and be looked at.