Theatre : Dagestan / Mayakovsky

Full length plays have been produced by Penned in the Margins and commissioned by Dash Arts, performed at Rich Mix Theatre in London. Click on the poster below for more information. My longform performance includes theatre, especially my commission for Electronic Voice Phenomena tour in 2013 and my “wrestling” performance with the Almeida Theatre and the Midnight Run in 2015.

Rich Mix Theatre Guest Blog on Dagestan https://richmixlondon.tumblr.com/post/131017660468

…. just as all professions seem to have their own internal language and logic, so Dagestan is also really about a closed, internal world of physical training, through the martial arts, and playful, innovative language. It is a play in the tradition of Beckett, or Pinter, and as Beckett said, “a play is not a simulation of life outside, any more than football is, or the circus, or a game of chess, but an activity in itself.” So it is with Dagestan, not merely as a snapshot of the world, but a way to represent aggression and vulnerability, strength and weakness, expression and physicality through the material of the theatre, that is, with the audience acknowledged, and with the actors switching from exhausting performance to energetic dialogue…

Dagestan has become a non-place in this play, an idea, with its own internal logic, its own presence, that isn’t really real, but perhaps closer to the truth of something for that, for it is not pretend. It is wonderful to have the chance to take risks in theatre, to build upon ideas not immediately obvious or easy to digest, and that are far richer for that fact.”

Greco-Roman Wrestling for the Midnight run with the Almeida Theatre August 9, 2015

I was a part of the Midnight Run in summer 2015, teaching a wrestling class as a performance, in league with the Almeida Theatre and their Greek theatre season. Greco-Roman wrestling was a stop on a 12 hour walk through London, with lots of interesting activities featured in. Inua Ellams founded the project, and the whole thing was really well measured. These beautiful pictures are courtesy of Katie Garrett. Thanks to Kit Caless.