A Blogpost with a detailed description of birthday events, with Andy Moore’s excellent pictures of the show can be seen here

In celebration of the fabulous work and ethos of Coventry’s Shop Front Theatre, the brainchild of Theatre Absolute’s Julia Negus & Chris O’Connell.

Chris and Julia took over a former chip shop and it became a haven for creative, community-oriented independent performance making. It was initiatives like this that helped Coventry secure it’s UK City of Culture status (while mid-rehearsal for Chris’s ‘CHOKE’ for the We Are Where We Are commissions, we were visited by the DCMS delegation to parade the newly-appointed Minister for the Arts, Matt Hancock) but Theatre Absolute have resolutely shown how vital spaces like this have been needed against the backdrop of 13 years of Tory austerity. Sadly, with Coventry redeveloping the site, the project came to an end this month. Watch this space for Theatre Absolute’s writing of the next chapter.

Expert documenter Jon Randle has filmed and edited this celebration of the Shop Front.

Bodies in Flight latest work, Life Class. Edited together from documentation of the performance projects with Nottingham Mechanics and Fever Dance, Preston (info/responses from UCLan webpage) . Filmed and edited by Tony Judge. With thanks also to Dance 4 for supporting the project.

ChocFest from Jill Dowse on Vimeo.

As close as I have ever performed, I think, to where I grew up, ChocFest is a revealing insight into the machinations of the chocolate industry, and to what has made Bournville what it is. Expertly conceived and handled by The Bone Ensemble (Jill, Adam, Charlotte and team) with wonderful contributions from the Ghanaian farmers, not to mentions singer-songwriter St.Beryl and the phenomenon that is Wanlov the Kubalor. ChocFest struggled to avoid being compromised by the impact of Covid this summer, but here’s a glimpse of the team performing and discussing the work on Bournville Green, in the shadow of the Cadbury’s factory.

To celebrate three decades of work from Bodies In Flight, videographer and long-time documenter of the work Tony Judge has put together this marvellous retrospective of the company’s prodigious output.

Sara Giddens and Simon Jones formed Bodies In Flight back in 1989, and my first BIF collaboration was on the 1992/3 show, ROUGH. So, this year marks the 30th anniversary of my own partnering with the company.

The current show, LIFE CLASS, was presented (against the odds) last Autumn, as part of Lancashire Encounter Festival. Here is a trailer for that piece, created in partnership with Fever Dance, Preston.

No Stone Theatre (Nick Pitt and Johanna Taylor) have been developing the Seeds project since the company’s formation in 2018. Following R&D residencies at Pleasance London, Birmingham REP and Clapham Omnibus, lockdown conditions forced a rethinking of the project’s outcomes. The response is the creation of a wonderfully-produced Podcast, in eight episodes, which is being hosted weekly with partner venues and organisations.

Seeds is inspired by the extraordinary story of Nicolai Vavilov, who pioneered the world’s first seed bank at the Institute for Plant Industry in St.Petersburg (later Leningrad), but who fell foul of the Stalinist regime in the USSR and perished in confinement, after science conflicted with the political interests of the commissariat. The themes thrown up by the story have huge resonances with the perilous nature of our food security systems, and writer Nick Walker has juxtaposed a contemporary voice against a dramatic rendering of Institute employees in their attempts to protect the seed bank from destruction by warfare and the starving population outside.

Director – Nicholas Pitt. Producer – Johanna Taylor

Writer – Nick Walker. Music / Sound design – Jon Ouin

Performers – Jordan Kemp, Kirsty Rider, Graeme Rose, Katy Stephens, Nina Sosanya