Artist & Video Maker based in Liverpool
I was commissioned to produce some new work for the newly opened Shakespeare North Theatre in Prescott to tie into the ‘Serious Nonsense Festival’, part of Knowlesy’s Borough of Culture year.
I developed these two pieces around the nonsense poems of Edward Lear as well as celebrating the newly opened theatre. You can find out more about the festival at the link here.
Over lockdown I was lucky enough to work with a couple of friends Bev Ayre and Lou Muddle creating a podcast about a ‘Before The Act’ a remarkable but often forgotten about theatrical celebration held at the Piccadilly Theatre in London in 1988.
It showcased the work of lesbian and gay authors, poets, playwrights and composers and was intended to highlight the harmful impact of Section 28 – a notorious piece of legislation which prohibited the ‘promotion of homosexuality‘.
It’s been interesting working out the format for the story, weaving archive material with present day interviews using the actual performance recordings as a narrative structure. Episode 3 will be out shortly.
I filmed Patrick Dineen‘s new show at the Unity Theatre a month ago and we’ve since put together this short trailer for the piece. It was a tricky show to film just because it was performed in the round and it was quite difficult to find a filming location that wasn’t an obstruction for someone. Really interesting show though – lets see where is reappears.
Last year, My friend and Re-Dock Co-Director, Sam Meech had been working with Tmesis Theatre Company developing visuals for a new show called ‘That’s Amore’. Funding to produce the show came in quite late and Sam was unable to continue work on it, so I jumped in to take over.
I’ve worked on Theatre visuals before, notably, ‘Tiny Volcanoes’ and ‘the Readers Wives Fan Club‘.
With visuals for theatre, it’s always tricky to get the balance right, where the projections add to the performance rather than becoming a clever but unnecessary distraction. With this piece, there was also 3 weeks of rehearsal and tech, which included changes and new ideas to the visual design and I wanted to do these in line with Sam’s original aesthetic, allowing the piece to have some sort of visual consistency.
Last week, was the first outing for the new show with 5 performances at the Unity Theatre in Liverpool. It was a tough start, with lots of lighting and visual queue changes and getting the piece lit well without washing out the screens was always going to be a compromise. I had some projector issues (one of them crashed during a rehearsal), and a few times, both projectors were accidently knocked out of position during some re-focusing of the lights requiring some last minute realigning. All in all though, it came together and it feels like it’s in a good place for the small tour that’s taking place this month, mainly in the North West. Now that everything is fixed, I can actually stand back and look at the piece as a whole and I think there’s some really beautiful moments in it. The tour should be fun too. I’ve linked below to some images from the show as well as some of the reviews.
