How not to Live in Dramaturgy: Annie Siddons @ Edfringe 2016

Annie Siddons presents:

How (not) to Live in Suburbia

Summerhall, Anatomy Lecture Theatre, 3 – 29 Aug 2016 (not 10 & 15 & 22), 4.50pm (6pm)

Annie Siddons takes a look at the time in her

credit Nicki Hobday

life when she found herself – performance maker, part Greek, part Egyptian, full Londoner – as a single mum living in the nuclear family haven of curtain-twitching Twickenham. Through performance and surreal film, she recalls her gauche attempts to fit in with the yummy mummies who run triathlons and the families that row and cycle at weekends in the most married place in London.
What was the inspiration for this performance?
I was extremely lonely. It was very painful and embarrrassing. I realised that I couldn’t be the only person who was and I wanted to talk about it, as it’s an extremely difficult thing to talk about. I needed to do it for myself as it was the driving force in my life at the time, and I wanted to do it for other people . 

Also, I’ve been trying to lessen the gap between me and audiences over the past few years. 4 years ago I hadn’t performed in a show for a long time. Then I made my first solo show, Raymondo, which was spoken word and had an intimate feel but was in a magic realist idiom, which I think gulled some people into thinking it wasn’t about anything in particular. Which was not in any sense true. Not everyone thought that, but some people did. 

So with this show I want to lessen the gap between me and audiences even more.

How did you go about gathering the team for it?
I’d been in Edinburgh in 2014 on Escalator East to Edinburgh, and happened to meet a whole smorgasbord of brilliant, interesting and provocative people, such as Richard de Domenici, Anthony Roberts, Jen Smethurst and Nicki Hobday. Then I wanted to continue working with some trusty collaborators that I already had, Justin, Andy and Adam.

How did you become interested in making performance?
I always have been, from as long as I can remember. 

Was your process typical of the way that you make a performance?
No. I tend to be quite hasty, I spend long fallow times gathering stuff and myself and then I tend to make things in quite a quick splurge. But with this, because we had films in it, and because I was working with Richard, who is very busy, the process was protracted and bitty and we didn’t find the live show till quite late in it.

What do you hope that the audience will experience?
I want them to feel less alone, to feel understood. Or if they know someone lonely not to judge them so harshly. And in the experience I want them to laugh, be moved, and enjoy the craft of the storytelling, performance, and films.

What strategies did you consider towards shaping this audience experience?
Hmmmmmmmmm. We’re still working on this one. I love dark work, and there’s a massive difference between dark work that is somehow responsible, owning its own shit, and being a grown up, and dark work that is leaky and weird and not doing those things. And I wanted to talk about difficult things openly and honestly without making audiences feel like shit. 

And so we’ve experimented with the form of the show in order to maximise that. Also, in a show about connection, we had to go down the route of exploring involving audiences in the actual physical show and in the films, but it transpires that I have a very particular set of rules around that, for myself as a performer – you have to really earn it, or be extremely skilled and charming like Jamie Wood, and so we’ve ended up not doing that. 

There was a moment where we considered working with local communities for part two of the show. I bought a van and I was going to set it up as a living room where my neighbours, whom I don't know, and me, could hang out and get to know each other. But my teenage daughters put a moratorium on that, and I was secretly relieved.

Do you see your work within any particular tradition?
Well, I’ve been working as a playwright for the past 14 years, and it’s only in the past 3 years that I’ve started making my own performance again. There’s always going to be a strong written element in my work as that’s the way I negotiate myself and the world. Same with music. 

I had a very isolated Victorian childhood reading books and gaining musical accomplishments, so those things are hard wired into me. Sometimes the tradition you end up in is based on the venues that want to programme you, so sometimes these categories can be a bit arbitrary. But it’s something like experimental theatre slash new writing, with a jus of live art, a side salad of spoken word and some stand up comedy fries. 

But to be honest, I have never woken up in the morning and thought about a tradition of work. I have people who inspire me, whom I adore, and I’ve had a patchy training of different things, and I go through phases with work. I’m still figuring it all out.





Summerhall, Anatomy Lecture Theatre, 3 – 29 Aug 2016 (not 10 & 15 & 22), 4.50pm (6pm)

Sweet Child of Dramaturgy: Bron Batten @ Edfringe 2016

Gilded Balloon, Bron Batten and The Edinburgh Fringe Festival 

Sweet Child of Mine, 

featuring performer Bron Batten and her 65 year-old parents live onstage.

Watch as they discuss art, theatre and what Bron actually does for a living. Their insights are poignant, earnest and at the same time, painfully hilarious.

Asking themselves and and the audience: what exactly is the POINT of art?


VENUE: Gilded Balloon Teviot- Dining Room, Bristo Square Edinburgh
DATES AND TIMES: 1.45pm from the 3rd- 29th of August 2016 (no show 16th or 23rd)
TICKETS: £5.00/£9.50/£10.50/£11.


What was the inspiration for this performance?

The inspiration for this performance (Sweet Child of Mine) was born from a place of frustration. The piece was made in 2011 and at the time I was watching a lot of theatre in Melbourne that required a degree in contemporary performance theory to engage with. And I thought (and still do) that that wasn't the point of art- that the form shouldn't exclude people from engaging in it or having an opinion about it. 

And I'm not by any means saying that means theatre should be dumbed down or made with any less rigour or imagination- I'm saying that it can all all those things and still be enjoyed by someone who didn't go to drama school. 

So I decided the best way to investigate this would be to talk to my parents about art, theatre and what they think I do for a living. My Mum's a retired midwife and my Dad was a taxi driver for 15 years so they're not engaged with the creative industries at all- so I figured they'd be a good starting point for what normal people think about theatre in Australia.

What resulted was a frank and funny discussion about art- but one that also offers an insight into our family and my relationship to my parents, as well as their relationship to each other. I asked them to do this- and even though they didn't know why, or what I was doing it for, they helped me because they love me. And now five years later, my Dad and I are still touring this show.

How did you go about gathering the team for it?

I found them in my parents lounge room! Because of the lack of funding for theatre in Australia, it was made with a very small team. Myself and my parents, an outside eye director called Gerard McCulloch and a sound composer called Edward Gould.

How did you become interested in making performance?

I've always been interested in making performance- ever since I was bossing my siblings into performing dance routines as a five year old. I studied devised theatre as the main part of my undergraduate and post-graduate degrees and was never really interested in being in other people's work. Of course I have and do appear in other people's work and have always learned and enjoyed the process, but I suppose it also comes from being somewhat of a control freak that I want to create my own performance.

I also create work primarily from my own life experience so in that way the performance is intensely personal and auto-biographical, which can make it hard to include other artists and performers. I'm drawn to the medium of theatre because it creates something from nothing and it's practical yet ephemeral.

Was your process typical of the way that you make a performance?

Yes I suppose it was... The starting point for Sweet Child of Mine was recorded video interviews with my parents, around which the piece was built quite organically and intuitively. My most recent live-art piece is called Onstage Dating and involves me going on first dates with strangers from the audience live onstage. It was made after I went on 50 first dates in a year, arranged with strangers through the internet. So you could say I take quite a practical approach to my work! 


What do you hope that the audience will experience?

Everyone has parents- of some kind- and everyone brings that lived experience to Sweet Child of Mine, for better or for worse. It can be an emotional experience as well as an emotional topic for people and we try to be sensitive to that fact. We try to create a joyful live experience, one of sharing and openness, where people and their parents can engage playfully with each other. I want people to leave the theatre happier than when they arrived.

What strategies did you consider towards shaping this audience experience?

The audience experience as well as the audience participation in Sweet Child of Mine is developed very gradually and very deliberately. The first interaction we have directly with one another is one that they volunteer for, as well as it occurs from the safety of their own seat in the dark. 

It also happens about half way through the show, after they've had a chance to get to know Dad and I a little bit and feel confident about our skills as performers. The next section asks for audience questions that Dad fields about anything they want to know about his life, and the third asks them to come onstage to complete a role play with me about my relationship with my mother.

I believe that audience participation is something that most, if not all audiences are up for, they just need to feel confident in the way it's being handled by the artists and feel like their contribution is going to be valued and not used as fodder to make fun of them.

I consider audience experience as a whole as the most important thing in my work. It's the whole reason to work in a live medium, in a world where staying home binge watching episodes of Game of Thrones is infinitely easier and cheaper. If people are going to leave their houses and pay money to come and see my work, I'm damn well going to include them in the experience and not pretend we're in a 19th century drawing room behind a fourth wall.

Do you see your work within any particular tradition?


I suppose I would place it in a post-dramatic tradition. There is no fourth wall, the artifice of theatre is fully exposed and I don't do acting. Neither does my Dad- mainly because he can't remember his lines.

Devised and performed by Bron Batten and her parents, James and Linda Batten
Outside Eye Direction: Gerard McCulloch
Sound Design: Edward Gould


WINNER: Best Experimental Performance at the 2011 Melbourne Fringe Festival
SPECIAL COMMENDATION: Best Theatre, Adelaide Fringe Festival 2013
NOMINATED: Best Theatre Production, 2013 Perth Fringe World Festival

A mixture of theatre, dance, stand-up and awkward family function, Sweet Child of Mine is for anyone who has trouble talking to their parents about who they are - or what they do for a living.

Come and hear some Dad jokes- direct from the source.

Dramaturgy gets Out: Rachael Young @ Buzzcut

Can you tell me a little bit about the work that you are bringing to Buzzcut?

‘OUT’ is collaboration between theatre maker and writer; Rachael Young and choreographer and dance artist; Dwayne Antony.  We are two artists of colour from Jamaican heritage.  We decided to collaborate to create a space to recall and examine our own experiences of the stigmas associated to queerness and gender conformity within the black community.

“Males and females are put into boxes of expectation when we are born. As we grow we start to realize the damages that those expectations cause to our spiritual and emotional understanding of ourselves and life”.
[Willow Smith]

The piece examines and challenges ideas that we have been indoctrinated with throughout our Caribbean upbringings, exploring the sense of shame that has felt ever present.  It comments on the tightrope we have to tread and unpacks the multitude of  pressures and repressions surrounding the experience of upholding a family’s social standing.


How 'typical' is this work compared to other pieces that you have made? Did the process follow a familiar or new pattern?

‘OUT’ is the first time that Dwayne and myself have worked together. It has provided a real opportunity for us to share our practices with each other, whilst creating a new piece which feels like it comes from both of us.  The process has followed a different pattern for me, in that much of the work I’ve been making recently has been text driven and in this piece I don’t speak at all, so the process has been a much more about developing a physical and visual dramaturgy.

It is vital to us both as makers to be constantly conscious of the authenticity of what it is we were striving to say.

Buzzcut is concerned with the idea of 'community'. Does community have a special meaning for you, and what relationship do you feel your work has within wider communities?

The idea community is a double edged sword, it can feel like an affectionate hug and a mighty bitch slap, often at the same time; loving and understanding with a huge sense of camaraderie and kinship. However in order to have that everlasting feeling one must, toe the line, act right and remember not to bring shame to the family door.

Whilst making the piece we discussed a topic very similar, we called it the “Black Mantra”. A mantra of long-lasting words and phrases we both recall hearing growing up. I guess the question we have to ask ourselves is, how much of the black mantra was/is good for shaping us into good well-mannered people? And how that mantra we grew up hearing so much, stopped us feeling free enough to know truly who we are and most importantly become the versions of ourselves that we feel most connected to.


What are you hoping that the audience will experience?

I hope the audience come with an open heart and mind and experience the notion of questioning and recalling, which we bring to the space. You will see two stories running simultaneously in the space that exploring how we reappropriate our own culture so that its fits who we are.

Rachael Young is a writer, theatre maker, artist and performer. Her practice includes solo contemporary theatre, interactive installations and socially engaged participatory projects. Her work is playful, experimental and often autobiographical. It seeks to represent voices that are often unheard in the arts and engage with audiences to explore new collective voices and participatory forms of expression. Concerned with the way we navigate the world as women and specifically black women, her work subtly questions societal norms, aiming to empower audiences to embrace and celebrate who they are.


In 2013 Rachael became a ‘Breakthrough Artist’ at Curve, Leicester and then in 2014 she received an annual BBC Performing Arts Fellowship, hosted by mac birmingham. These opportunities, coupled with support from Arts Council England and Ovalhouse have enabled Rachael to create I, Myself & Me.

Dwayne-Antony Simms is a dance artist and

choreographer. His artistic development has taken him through Europe to the United States and Middle East. In 2013 Dwayne travelled to Israel to attend an experimental dance residency to develop a new project called 'Roll on the L.LAW'. 

No Dramaturgy III: Laura Rosemary Murphy, Terry O’Connor, Moe Shoji and Bridie Moore @ Buzzcut

Laura Rosemary Murphy, Terry O’Connor, Moe Shoji and Bridie Moore
Each performer has answered 3 questions each...
Can you tell me a little bit about the work that you are bringing to Buzzcut?
No Performance III is a text-based triptych featuring, and bringing together, three women who have a collection of both contrasting and overlapping life experiences. Much of the work is grounded in the personal experiences of the performers, thus considering the many variations of the ‘woman’ within society, and how we ourselves and our experiences are shaped by language.

What is it about Buzzcut that attracted you to perform as part of it?
Because it is an amazing, artist-led, smorgasbord of live art and performance, which embraces experimentation, queer-ness, inclusivity and difference. We want to both contribute to and be in dialogue with this!

Do you see your work within any tradition - and are there any artists (performance and beyond) whom you regard as a peer or an influence?
We inevitably draw upon the work of Forced Entertainment (Terry O’Connor is directing the work), but are also very much influenced by performance artists, who utilize a text-movement synergy, such as: Liz Aggiss, Bobby Baker, Jonathan Burrows and Matteo Fargion.

Are there any strategies which you used to direct the audience experience towards this?
We made our responses, meditation and questions intentionally open. It is an invitation for the audience to explore their own responses. It will be a work-in-progress when it is shown at BUZZCUT, but perhaps it is indeed a right state for this work anyway - to be left open for possibility of further continuation and development.


What is it about performance that enticed you - and kept you making it?
It is its playfulness, its power to question and its potential to create a 'present' moment. While we are all researchers and practitioners, our relationships with performance and individual practices may be very different - personally, I am always fascinated by what performance is capable of and that is what keeps me engaged with performance.


Are there any questions you feel that I ought to ask to understand how dramaturgy works for you?
What does a word 'No' mean to you? When is it difficult to say 'No', and why? These are some of the first questions we asked ourselves as a starting point, which themselves tell something about this work.

How 'typical' is this work compared to other pieces that you have made? Did the process follow a familiar or new pattern?
This is the first time that we have made work together.What has been enjoyable has been to bring the individual responses to the provocation 'no' and to witness the way that Terry has helped us to weave them into a interlacing whole.  The three figures in the piece stage an intersection of femininity with sexuality, race and age. 

 The response of each woman on stage to the word 'no' carries a mark of their specific identity position yet Terry has directed us in a way that foregrounds our individual responses and at the same time shows a sense of playful companionship and competitiveness between us. I think this allows the sense of commonality between the three positions to be recognised.

Buzzcut is concerned with the idea of 'community'. Does community have a special meaning for you, and what relationship do you feel your work has within wider communities?
I have always found my deepest sense of community while making performance of one sort or another.  For me it's quazi religious.  Theatre making is a reason to exist and a way of  communicating with a community, both through the process of making and through the act of performing to, or with, an audience.

What are you hoping that the audience will experience?
The statements of all three women in this piece call for a corresponding recognition in the audience. We hope that the audience will recognise their own response in that of the performer that they will meditate therefore on the word 'no' and ask why the comments of the performers lead from that provocation.

'No' is a politically provocative word of course and we have all felt like saying and have said the word many, many times in our lives.  But what are we compelled to say 'no' to? And why? These are the questions that we would like the audience to think about.

Baby Dramaturgy: Katy Dye@ Buzzcut

I have been noticing knee socks, bunches, the

smoothness of lips, the brightness of eyes, the blushing of cheeks, the lightness of laughter, the vulnerable tremor in a voice. I have been noticing gingham cotton print dresses, Miley Cyrus’s doll-like demeanour, and models blowing bubble-gum with the nonchalant expression of a six-year-old. I have been noticing myself and how I change when I want to be attractive.

What makes me act smaller than I am? What makes me feel like removing my body hair would be a good idea? What makes me want to change?

Baby Face explores stereotypical images of female infantilisation to unpick and understand their complex effects. I am interested in the paradoxical nature of living in a society that condemns pedophilia, yet where the sexualisation of children and women as childlike is so apparent. I want to understand why people are so uncomfortable to use the word woman, and in turn, feel like a woman.  I want to draw attention to the desire to be cared for and the blurry lines between protection, tenderness, and infantilisation. 

Baby Face explores the challenging reality of being a woman today, when in many ways, women are still expected to look and act like little girls. 

Can you tell me a little bit about the work that you are bringing to Buzzcut?
The piece I am bringing to Buzzcut is called Baby Face and is about the infantilisation of adult women. Due to the way that I look, I have often been treated as though I am younger than I actually am. I knew I wanted to create a performance looking further into the many subtle ways adult women may experience infantilisation – physically, emotionally and sexually, and how this effects how women are seen and how we see ourselves. 

I noticed images of women I saw around me and how their smooth, girlish and even babyish qualities were emphasised in advertising and films, and the disturbing trend for media images of young girls to display a sexual maturity. It occurred to me that we live in an age where paedophilia is explicitly condemned, yet the sexualisation of children and women as childlike is so apparent. This paradox interested me, and I wanted to see where I could go with these ideas in terms of live performance. 


What is it about Buzzcut that attracted you to perform as part of it?
Buzzcut is a festival where brave and innovative work is encouraged, risks are taken and diverse voices can be heard. I have always enjoyed watching work at Buzzcut over the past few years, and it has given me the chance to see performances that have had a real influence on the way I approach making work. 

I wanted to offer my own work back to a festival which I have taken inspiration from, as well as come together with a community of artists who want to offer something different to live performance today. 

Do you see your work within any tradition - and are there any artists (performance and beyond) whom you regard as a peer or an influence?

Baby Face is a performance that very much falls into a live art/theatre genre. There are lots of influences that I feel have been important to me throughout making the work such as Split Britches, Sh!t Theatre, The International Institute of Political Murder, Pip Utton, David Hoyle and Louise Orwin. 

All of these artists have been important to me because I admire work that manages to explore difficult and often dangerous ideas, in a way that is also inviting and playful. Apart from performance artists, rap artists and spoken word artists also interest and inspire me, and artists who use language/storytelling in a way that is raw/uncensored/exploring the multiple voices of one person and their experiences. 

How 'typical' is this work compared to other pieces that you have made? Did the process follow a familiar or new pattern?
Baby Face is not a typical piece of work for me in comparison to other performances I have made recently. Part of the reason why I was interested in making it was to challenge myself and try new ways of making performance.

Previous performances I have made have often been theatrical, or relied more heavily on the delivery of a certain ‘skill’ which captivates the audience, such as intricate choreography or dance. Baby Face is different in that during the process of making it I tried to look further into what stories I have as a person, and how I wanted these to come across to an audience. In doing so, I feel much more emotional and excited about this piece. 

It has challenged me in completely different ways to previous work in that hopefully there will always be a raw and unrehearsed aspect to its performance. 

What are you hoping that the audience will experience?
I hope the audience will experience something that reminds them of their own lives/attitudes towards infantilisation and feminism. Part of what kept interesting me throughout creating the piece was why it is so disturbing to see an adult look and behave like a child – yet why is this also the image of iconic sex symbols such as Kate Moss or Miley Cyrus? I take on my own infantilised image and explore how this looks and feels live on stage. 

Although some of the images that I create could be seen as provocative or shocking, I would not want the audiences experiences to end with that emotion. My aim is to give the audience an experience to invite them to look at their own attitudes/ideas about what is allowed to be sexy and what is not,

and where they would draw the line. 

A large part of the performance is my personal relationship towards the ideas in the piece, and I hope that by seeing this people will be able to re visit personal experiences and feelings about submission, power/control, and if there was ever an instance when they have felt belittled or like they were treated in a childlike way. I also hope that the audience will experience a playfulness amongst the more disturbing aspects of the performance. I had a lot of fun working in the rehearsal room with these ideas, and I hope some of that humour and laughter can come through in the piece. 

What is it about performance that enticed you - and kept you making it?
Performing/making performance is an outlet for me, and a form of expression that I feel is the more satisfying than other art forms. I have always been fascinated with the live, and people exploring and creating their own versions of who they are. We are often surrounded by such manufactured/airbrushed images of what

peoples lives are like, and I feel performance is one of the only mediums in which we can explore different ideas about peoples experiences, and share our reality in a way that is more emotional or complex. 

People often have so many different things they need to be for other people, a family member, a friend, a worker, and people can often feel like they are nameless and faceless. I am interested in what happens in the moment when people get the chance to be the part of themselves they want to be – and I feel live performance is often a most powerful form to actually change who you are/an aspect of who you are and have others witness this.



Katy Dye is a performance artist who is interested in dehumanisation, censorship and freedom of speech. She creates devised performances to invite audiences to re visit difficult aspects of human nature, and think about how we can begin to acknowledge and talk about their effects. In recent performances she has explored ideas of otherness, feminism, performance in places of conflict and how performance can be used as a re-humanising act. Katy has worked with Camden People’s Theatre, The Royal Lyceum Theatre, Untitled Projects and Z arts Centre in Manchester. She is a recent graduate from the Contemporary Performance Practice course at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland.

Dramaturgy is Here: Helen Walker and Harun Morrison @ Buzzcut 2016

Witness (2009 - ongoing)

STUK, Leuven, Battersea Arts Centre, London, The Basement, Brighton, Cafe Oto, London & Tate Modern, London

Witness is part of an ongoing series of works exploring re-enactment, memory in relation to digital video and group dynamics. It can be seen as a choreographic version of ‘Broken Telephones’.

The work usually involves us devising a site-responsive set of movements for up to five members of the public, this is then video-recorded. Five members of the public are then invited to watch the recording. They have to re-enact the video live. 

The re-enactment is recorded – a new group is invited to watch and re-enact and so on. Usually up to 7 re-enactments are made per day. At the end of a day, the videos are shown back to back to participants and other audience.

In 2013, we created a trilogy of Witness films in collaboration with STUK, Leuven.

Below is a version we created for Tate Modern in the Turbine Hall for four participants. The gestures in the 'starter film' were derived from the observation of movements of visitors to the gallery.


Can you tell me a little bit about the work that you are bringing to Buzzcut?

Witness is part of an on-going series of works exploring re-enactment and memory in relation to video and group dynamics. It can be thought of as a choreographic version of the game variously called ‘broken telephones’ or ‘whispers’. The work usually involves us identifying or devising a site-responsive set of movements with four people, which is then video-recorded. 

Four members of the public are then invited to watch the recording. They are challenged to re-enact the video live. Their re-enactment is recorded - a new group of four is invited to watch this new version, re-enact it and so on. Up to seven re-enactments are made per day. In the evening, the videos are shown back-to-back in a ‘chain’ to participants and a wider audience. The videos are later distributed online or shown in the context of exhibitions or festivals.

What is it about Buzzcut that attracted you to perform as part of it?

We were attracted by its artist-led and artist-centric spirit. We’ve visited Buzzcut in the past and enjoyed the atmosphere of the Pearce Institute too.

Do you see your work within any tradition – and are there any artists (performance and beyond) whom you regard as a peer or an influence?

Augusto Boal, Games For Actors and Non-Actors (London: Routledge, 1992), Hans Haacke, Chickens Hatching (1969), Ten Turtles Set Free (1970), Bowery Seeds (1970), Peter Handke, The Hour We Knew Nothing of Each Other (first performed 1992), Pawel Althamer, Realtime Movie (2008), Siobhan Davies, various works, Trisha Brown, various works, Peter Campus, various works, Dan Graham, various works.

How ‘typical’ is this work compared to other pieces that you have made? Did the process follow a familiar or new pattern?

For Buzzcut we are creating a new series of Witness videos. However, the first public iteration was devised at Tate Modern, London in 2009. It marked a new direction in our work, in that although games were always integral to the development of our work, Witness marked a moment games became THE work. 

A series of works have subsequently emerged from these ideas, including Re-Shoot (2009), STAND HERE UNTIL YOU FIND SOMEONE TO REPLACE YOU (2010), Avoiding the Camera (2014) and Location Scouts (2015).

Buzzcut is concerned with the idea of 'community'. Does community have a special meaning for you, and what relationship do you feel your work has within wider communities?

It’s important to us that iterations of Witness produced in public space add an additional layer of narrative to a site, rather than negate what happens there. At the same time, they are spatially disruptive, but it’s a disruption you are invited to participate in – and the outcomes are freely shared. The work can be seen as a microcosm of how inherited knowledge can circulate in a closed community. The work is also demonstrative of how bonds can be made through the shared experience of participation in the same process. In this sense, an ephemeral micro-community emerges around the production of the work itself.

What are you hoping that the audience will experience?
We hope to remind participants of the pleasurable aspects of close-observation, negotiation and co-operation. Participants are invited to focus on how they remember what they experience through their bodies. We hope they will enjoy seeing the impact their participation has on subsequent re-enactments.

Are there any strategies which you used to direct the audience experience towards this?

The game is explained orally through a set of rules. These rules also contain pointers as to what to focus on. However, it’s an open field as to what you might take away from the experience.

What is it about performance that enticed you - and kept you making it?
Our work is not necessarily resolved through performance. At the same time, it’s integral to this chain of re-enactments. The work emerges through the act of ‘mis-remembering’ and the impossibly of exactitude when it comes to re-enactment of another’s movement.

Are there any questions you feel that I ought to ask to understand how dramaturgy works for you?
In the case of this project we are closer to game designers than dramatists.

They Are Here is a collaborative practice steered by Helen Walker and Harun Morrison. We are currently based in Birmingham and London.

We have worked together as They Are Here since 2006, often extending our collaboration to include those from all walks of life.

Our work can be read as a series of context specific games. The entry, invitation or participation can be as significant as the game's conditions and structure. Through these games we seek to create ephemeral systems and temporary, micro-communities that offer an alternate means of engaging with a situation, history or ideology.

Each They Are Here project has its own unique collaborative structure and hierarchies that emerge through the contributions of various invitees. These contributions may lie in the development of a work or its delivery. The potential of various models of collaboration is an on-going and foundational concern of They Are Here's practice. We continuously explore group dynamics, divisions of authorship and the effects of temporary engagements with practioneers of other disciplines.

We work as gatherers, editors, assemblers and facilitators to generate work.

They Are Here work across media and types of site particularly civic spaces. Institutions we have developed or presented work include: Arnolfini, Battersea Arts Centre, Camden Arts Centre, CCA Glasgow, Chisenhale Gallery, Grand Union, LIFT (London International Festival of Theatre), National Theatre Studio, Tate Britain, Tate Modern, South London Gallery, STUK (Leuven, Belgium), VIVID and Whitechapel Gallery.

Bound Dramaturgy: Lucy Hutson @ Buzzcut 2015

bound has three screens showing my growing

concept of gender and my changing perspective on my own gender expression spanning 5 years. these three films are a mix of interview style candid accounts of my life as a woman who looks like a boy and is confused by my breasts. 

As well as actions born out of the things I feels but don’t know how to explain. I am seen making a fire in full feminine evening ware. Planting tampons, dildos and turkey basters whilst hidden behind a beard and trying to create nature making my own tree with twigs and gaffer tape.

Can you tell me a little bit about the work that you are bringing to Buzzcut?
This is a show about the slippery nature of identities, the ones you give yourself, the ones forced onto you and the ones that were once strong and now you are just clinging on to. More specifically it’s a show about breasts, gender and using urinals. But mostly it is about baring all.

it consists of my being silent drawing the audience whilst 3 films play explaining how i feel about identity and gender in word and image 

What is it about Buzzcut that attracted you to perform as part of it?
i apply to everything


Do you see your work within any tradition - and are there any artists (performance and beyond) whom you regard as a peer or an influence?
i call it live art
i regard everyone else making live art a peer and about a third of them as an influence


How 'typical' is this work compared to other pieces that you have made? Did the process follow a familiar or new pattern?i work in several different ways i would stay its my style but a bit different maybe not as funny



Buzzcut is concerned with the idea of 'community'. Does community have a special meaning for you, and what relationship do you feel your work has within wider communities?i value organisations considering community and how to enable it i think its important


What are you hoping that the audience will

experience?something they can relate to or new perspectives that is interesting


Are there any strategies which you used to direct the audience experience towards this?i just talk about things



What is it about performance that enticed you - and kept you making it?
i wanted to go to drama school to be a Shakespearian actor but i read the prospectus wrong and ended up on a performance art course then disided i like it better i keep doing it because i don't have many skills to do anything else and it keeps me busy


Are there any questions you feel that I ought to ask to understand how dramaturgy works for you?
no

Drone Dance Dramaturgy: Bob Moyler @ Buzzcut

THE PERFORMANCE ADVENTURES OF BOB MOYLER & FRIENDS

Performances that splice myth, science fiction, folk, grotesque and the ridiculous. Bridging physical and fictional worlds and blurring the space between the extra-ordinary and the everyday.

Can you tell me a little bit about the work that you are bringing to Buzzcut?
Drone Dance is a cyborg performance featuring a non-humanoid robot vacuum cleaner and some humanoid performers. It’s essentially a dance class.

What is it about Buzzcut that attracted you to perform as part of it?
The buzz. I like the energy that surrounds the festival.

Do you see your work within any tradition - and are there any artists (performance and beyond) whom you regard as a peer or an influence?
Morris Dancing and folk performance have influenced my work. I danced the sun up during a season with the Mersey Morris Men. Charles Freger’s photos are pretty cool. I’m quite in to the bells. 

How 'typical' is this work compared to other pieces that you have made? Did the process follow a familiar or new pattern?
Collaborating with technology is a new thing for me. I believe this is the first time iRobot Roomba 533 has created collaborative performance with humanoids. Although, who knows?

Buzzcut is concerned with the idea of 'community'. Does community have a special meaning for you, and what relationship do you feel your work has within wider communities?
I would hope that my work resonates a sense of inclusiveness and belonging to and with wider communities. I create work influenced by ideas of folk tradition and communal performance. Done Dance is about welcoming non-humanoid technology into these communities in a way, and questioning technology’s place among us.

What are you hoping that the audience will experience?
An enjoyably challenging encounter with a hi-tech domestic appliance

Are there any strategies which you used to direct the audience experience towards this?
Coercion 

What is it about performance that enticed you - and kept you making it?
I don’t remember what enticed me, the magic probably. I keep on making it because that’s just what I do.

Are there any questions you feel that I ought to ask to understand how dramaturgy works for you?
What’s dramaturgy?

Rough Dramaturgy: Gavin Krastin @ Buzzcut 2016

Gavin Krastin is an award winning South African performance artist, theatre-maker, choreographer and designer-scenographer with an interest in the body’s representation, limitation and operation in alternative, layered spaces. His work is inspired by his immediate South African environment and the history embedded in its shifting socio-political climate. 

Apart from operating within the conventional theatre context, Krastin advocates the migration towards unconventional spaces where unknown risk factors are imminent. The social underpinnings and philosophies of space intrigue him and inspire a questioning of operational systems, thresholds, proximities and the politics of boundary-crossings and transgressions (and the myth making thereof) in his work. 

His approach offers opportunity for intimate engagement, immersive journeys and unique participatory involvement. 


Can you tell me a little bit about the work that you are bringing to Buzzcut?
The performance, “Rough Musick”, explores spectacle-driven shaming and torture rituals of pre-enlightenment Britain and draws parallels of such brutality to Britain’s later colonial era where such modes of violence were transfused into other cultures and territories. 

photo:CatPennels

The work and its content are approached through a post-colonial and post-apartheid South African perspective, acknowledging the atrocities of colonisation and how it continues to impact the lives of South Africans today. Rough Musick is perhaps a provocation of ‘the other’ in the face of Imperialistic hegemony, back then and now; it attempts to return the colonial ethnographic eye back onto the colonial headquarters and appropriate rituals and practices from a culture that is typically used to doing all of the appropriating, in a cheeky and self-embarrassing way.


What is it about Buzzcut that attracted you to perform as part of it?
It was definitely the type of work, both in form and content, and how Buzzcut curates and connects the artists and artworks in a way that results in an energetic hub of performance and live art experiences, conversations and research that attracted me to the festival. 

The team and mission is fantastic in how they aim to really support and spotlight a mode of creativity that often finds itself on the periphery and even dismissed.


Do you see your work within any tradition - and are there any artists (performance and beyond) whom you regard as a peer or an influence?
I suppose when it comes to contemporary performance it is very difficult to speak about ‘traditions of’, as ideas of lineage, influence and precursors become a bit more frenetic and concurrent, especially in this hyper-mediated and hyper-connected digital age. 

photo by SuzyBernstein

Certainly my practice is situated within contemporary performance, post-dramatic theatre, live and performance art, which is historically situated in American and European spaces and discourses, but I am largely inspired by my immediate South African environment and the history, anguish and hope embedded in its shifting socio-political climate.



How 'typical' is this work compared to other pieces that you have made? Did the process follow a familiar or new pattern?
No, I don’t think this work followed a similar process to my other works. Of course I did draw from known choreographic and theatre-making strategies and tools, but that is not to say that the process was the same. I think it is very much to do with the concept and the spaces, histories and experiences that the concept takes you into that directs how the process will unfold, and as these spaces, concepts and entry points are all different in each work the process would be different too.

Gavin Krastin: Rough Musick
The practice of ‘Rough Music’ originated in the small villages of medieval England as a means for the public to disgrace and humiliate petty criminals, sexual deviants and ‘others’. Strangely  Carnivalesque, this public shaming involved the creation of a brutal cacophony of sound and the public would direct this barrage of sound at the chosen individual like a weapon. Fundamentally the public were the ‘Rough Music’.

Inspired by these early practices, Gavin Krastin has created a contemporary re-engaging with these dark rituals of exile. A visual and visceral experience unfolds through the brazen clashing of images and activities sourced from Gaelic folklore, Welsh ‘sin eating’ ceremonies, ‘bogey man’ mythologies and psycho-sexual fetish role-playing games. Spectators of this ritual are invited to participate in its unfolding and to become implicit in the dark demonstrations and fantasies.

Created by Gavin Krastin
Performed by Gavin Krastin and Alan Parker
Original sound by Shaun Acker

Gash Dramaturgy: Kayleigh O'Keefe @ Buzzcut

Gash Land exists in the collective imagination of its inhabitants as an external manifestation of the Glorious Leader’s internal life; a collaborative safe space created in response to being slut-shamed at a sexual health clinic.

In new performance ‘#GASHLAND’ the Glorious Leader is joined by Minister of Showing Off (Benjamin Gordon Wilson) and Penetration Officer (Hayley Hare) to give a snapshot of our cuntry’s distinct culture.

RULE #1 OF GASHLAND: ETERNAL ADORATION FOR THE GLORIOUS LEADER.


Can you tell me a little bit about the work that you are bringing to Buzzcut?
I am the Glorious Leader of Gash Land. Gash Land exists in the collective imagination of its inhabitants as an external manifestation of my internal life; a collaborative safe space created in response to being slut-shamed at a sexual health clinic.

Me and two Ministers are cumming to Buzzcut to show the outside world how to have a rayt gudd tyme through the medium of an explosive gashlightening performance timed to my biological clock. I’m going to use my shamanic skillz and powerful womb to feed a fistful of gash culture to the gaping bummorl of the outside world.

How 'typical' is this work compared to other

pieces that you have made? Did the process follow a familiar or new pattern?
Though this work incorporates other Gash Land performances I am working in different ways to adapt to the logistical challenges of performing far from home. Working with less props and scenery means that I am using performance elements in different ways. I tend towards embracing new challenges in working in diverse contexts and am excited to experiment and play with this work at Buzzcut. This is also the first time I have drawn different parts of Gash Land culture together into one piece in such a concentrated way which is really satisfying!

Buzzcut is concerned with the idea of 'community'. Does community have a special meaning for you, and what relationship do you feel your work has within wider communities?
There is a strong sense of community in Gash Land. The cuntry exists in the collective imagination of its inhabitants, with interactions feeding back in to the work. A lot of this activity happens in a social way both online and offline. Citizens report that they feel empowered and safe to be themselves in Gash Land and this is an important part of any community for me.

I find it interesting that people do feel like Gash Land is a safe haven, sometimes, as they’re also at the mercy of the tempestuous weather of my moods and emotions. They’re only allowed to be citizens if they follow the rules which include giving me eternal adoration and nobody being mean to me ever again. 

Gash Land is actually MY safe space and not that habitable for other people, I think. I sometimes wonder if me being vulnerable and raw is what makes the work empowering for them. I’m their Glorious Leader but I’ll cry when a dikk edd breaks my heart or doesn’t wash my dildors after they’ve borrowed them.

What are you hoping that the audience will experience?
I want the audience to learn about Gash Land. To engage with the concept of my imaginary cuntry. To follow the rules. To feel aroused. To feel repulsed. To feel like filthy bastedds, hot fat bitches and chubby-chasers. To feel the connection in contributing to the work via their interactions in this dialogue. To feel empowered. To experience art that leads by example and aims to make the world better by doing better things. I want them to apply for citizenship.

Are there any strategies which you used to direct the audience experience towards this?
Shock and awe.

Kayleigh O’Keefe: Artist Statement

I am Kayleigh O’Keefe: World Famous Artiste, Glorious Leader of Gash Land, Flabzilla and fertility symbol of the modern world.

I use performance and video to create imaginative new spaces for the exploration and assertion of identity and humanity.

I use humour and the absurd to connect with diverse audiences.

I revel in humanity.

I use my fat body to provoke, express and challenge.

I am interested in the cumulative effect of my open nudity and raw physicality.

I deliberately blur the line between my art and my life.

“In a world where art is more a commodity than a site of public engagement and critique, O’Keefe ‘holds our feet to the fire’ (or wherever she’d like them to be) with brilliant humor” – Krissy Mahan, dykeumentary.com, 2015

Biography

Kayleigh O’Keefe is a contemporary artist working in performance, video and film. She was born in Sheffield (1986), received her Bachelor of  Fine Arts Degree from Falmouth College of Arts (2008) and currently lives in London.


She performs, produces and directs live art at festivals, shows and exhibitions. She collaborates and works with other artists, filmmakers and non-professionals. Her films have been screened internationally at arts, queer, niche and mainstream film festivals.

This is Your Dramaturgy: Joely Fielding @Buzzcut

This Is Your Sex Life is an autobiographical performance that borrows from live art, storytelling & cabaret. The audience hear and see my experiences of my sexuality - from being 10 years old with a fetish for rope, through to my most recent significant experiences with my alter-ego – Ray Taken. 

I make this work because the way that we are taught to think and feel about sex is not only bullshit but is damaging and incredibly dangerous. I make this work because free & healthy sexual expression should not be a luxury reserved for a portion of the population, because I should not have to cross my fingers and hope for pleasure. 



What is it about Buzzcut that attracted you to perform as part of it?

Whilst developing This Is Your Sex Life (working title: Pornapparition) through 2015, I decided that I wanted to get the work to its first full draft by early 2016. The plan was then to try and present this draft through 2016, at festivals in particular, in order to learn about the work and myself in it through the experience of sharing it, and through more explicit feedback in following conversations.

When planning which festivals/events to apply for, Buzzcut was top of the list. I attended Buzzcut for the first time in 2015 and had such a wonderful experience. I got to see some fantastic work that influenced my practice for the year ahead, but more important than that, for me, it was the friendliest festival I had ever been to. 

There was a real openess that in turn seemed to encourage visitors of the festival to chat, share their experiences, and make connections. With this I felt Buzzcut would be a fantastic test-bed for the work outside of my region, particularly as the festival is so successful at welcoming the community in Govan and encouraging conversations.

Sterotype Dramaturgy: Vivian.C.Ezugha @ Buzzcut

Vivian Chinasa Ezugha was born in Nigeria, Enugu state in 1991. She graduated from Aberystwyth University, School of Art with a first class BA in Fine Art. Before that Ezugha was at Halesowen College fine art foundation 2010-2011.

To  start the conversation about the project; I am interested in how history is performed by society and by individuals.  For that reason, I am drawn to the image of the Mammy as a service provider, an object that provides a service. In that I am working with the concept of being a mother type; a black body that serves as a reminder of historical and social prejudices. 

So for example, I've been developing a series of photographs, films (bad quality films) and drawings using simple objects like tables, chairs and materials like milk. So these objects connect to my understanding of the role of the black female as a mammy, many mammies breast fed their white masters children. 

Yet in the dichotomy of being black in a racist society, many of these women (mammies) were never given the rights and respects they deserved. So in that, I use the milk as a symbol of motherhood but distort the activity of feeding with spilling because in my mind the process of breast feeding is to feed and give love, nutrient etc however, the value of that process is wasted when the body that received it grows to abuse the feeder. 

In addition, black women were used as sexual objects. somehow , there's a fear and there's still a fear of the black body. I play with this by being naked in my own flesh but at the same time clothing

myself with the history of western misogyny. 

My creative process is somewhat difficult, I read what I want and by doing this filter information, then I start to create images in my mind and by doing this, I start creating a performance. Then I draw those performances that then inform and direct how I play with movement in the physical. Sometimes I store the ideas in my mind and go straight into physical play. 

The jezebel archetype is somewhat of a mixture between biblical knowledge of Queen Jezebel and the notion that black bodies were seen by their white counterparts as promiscuous and illusive characters. 

Queen Jezebel in the bible was a woman full of evil, sin and somewhat strong. But her downfall was her inability to look beyond the physical and with a hardened heart of sin , drove Israel and her husband to sin. 

The black woman during the slave period was seen as a woman of sinful ways. she was abused but was told that it was because she was a sinner and a whore. Though she didn't chose to be a whore, her body which was deemed sinful was a playground for those upright white males; who in their cleanliness had to purify the black pit with their semen. 

 I've been playing around in the studio with the dichotomy of black illusiveness in today's society. This is a formed notion that comes out of a racist and a bastard western perverseness around the bodily functions of black women's bodies. 

So 'Twerking' a word that stripes the culture and identity of a dance form that stems from our African heritage. a form that goes beyond the  sexualisation of the female buttocks but is in fact an expression, a pride and freedom of our ancestral movement. twerking is also an appropriation of black identity and in that many arses have gone up and down  in a bid to exemplify some form of power. 

Yet centuries before black women -i.e. Sara Bartram was exhibited and misused for the size of her behind. I  hear the contradiction of the immoral and the moral. 

I love and honour every race of people but I am defined by a history that is not mine or my ancestors, I as a black woman, I  am expected to keep quite or be  angry. I am not expected to use the literal depictions that were created by the system in the land in which I dwell in , to challenge the notion of my identity and the characteristics of that identity. 

So in this , I will create a performance that has all the recognisable archetypes of the mammy image and Jezebel. 

mammies & jezebels from vivian ezugha on Vimeo.

I am a float in a sea of social ridiculousness, a sharp knife that cuts through the womb of bullshit. My focus is to politicize the politics of the black female, to make it relevant to our social and political conscious, to reinvent what is known, to remind us of the past and take us into the future...

My method is performance, the root of experience. I look to create and disseminate the history around black women. I use one thing... that is my body and sorely my body, because as an object my body is as political as this statement.