— read write play

I’m down in London over the weekend of the 27th October for the first recording of the Penny Dreadfuls’ new BBC radio series. If you’re free on the Friday night – or the following Wednesday – free tickets for the recording are available here.

C.J. Jarvis and C. Cooke – Edinburgh artists now based in London – are in the final weeks of their show at the Madder 139 gallery. I’ve worked with them on various projects over the last few years and hope to collaborate again in the future: there’s a mix of high-level art theory and humour that really appeals.

I’m also in the process of putting together the first issue of a new quarterly online publication – (which, right now, mainly involves calling a large number of friends and contacts working in theatre and the arts to see if they have time to spare). I’ll post something more here when I have firmer details – and when I start the open submission process – but am aiming for a winter edition at the end of the year.

I’m currently working on a paper that covers a few of my research interests: improvisation, activism and interactive theatre. To be more specific, I’ve been looking at World Without Oil – a collective imagining of an real world oil-shock led by Jane McGonigal and Ken Eklund – and trying to tease out the relationship to the methods in other communal, activist performances.

The most productive link I’ve found so far has been to the communal forum theatre form pioneered by Augusto Boal, which shares the same intention to use play as rehearsal for living.

I’m also working with material from a paper I gave at the Improvisation Continuums conference a few months back – there’s a definite sense that the kinds of creativity available are determined by structure. Put simply, we accept limitations or borders in order to make our play more coherent and productive, a concept familiar to most if not all improvisers.

Finally, some (unrelated) pictures from a combination birthday and farewell party for some artists I’ve had great fun working with.

So here’s a brief introduction to a few of the projects I’m currently working on in 2007.

The Penny Dreadfuls are a Victorian sketch comedy group who’ve been touring around the UK since the 2006 Fringe Festival where they appeared to rave reviews. They’ve also recently appeared as part of the BBC’s sketch show, Comedy Shuffle.

I joined the production team last July and have working as a producer and online manager for them since. I’d previously met the cast of the Dreadfuls through the Edinburgh comedy scene – and performed with them all at different times when a member of improvisational group, The Improverts during my student days.

Along with the rest of the production team – designer/producer Idil Sukan and technical director Neil Hobbs – we’re preparing for the 2007 Fringe, where we’ll be appearing in the Smirnoff Underbelly. You can follow the production diary over at the Dreadful’s main site here: www.pennydreadfuls.co.uk.

The Mantilla Foundation are an entirely different kind of project. The short version is that the Foundation is a non-profit, independent group that offers a unique service to frustrated artists.

The shorter version is this: they cremate unwanted art.

For the last six months they’ve been travelling across Europe and to the United States, appearing at art events such as the Arco, Madrid, the London Art Fair and the Armory Show, New York. You might also have seen their ads in the arts journal Frieze. I was approached to work for them as a fixer and designer in November of 2006 and I’ve been with them ever since.

For further details – and to download an application form – please visit their website here: www.mantillafoundation.com.