What is your heart’s desire? What do you dream of doing? What is the strangest thing you’ve ever done? Is your heart a stone or a feather? From the very start, Hotel Medea (a collaboration between Brazilian company Zecora Ura and UK artist Jade Persis Maravala) asks its audience to do more than watch and […]

In London the plague came in 1665: ‘one hundred thousand dead but I alive’. This is not the opening line from Ten Plagues but the ending, the epilogue, a joyful ‘I will survive’ statement from our protagonist, who has worked his way though fear, disgust, panic, loneliness, isolation, superiority, and humility to reach this point of liberation. […]

‘Take care not to tread on the props,’ says the usher as we enter the space – an empty space save for a row of tawdry everyday objects and accessories placed at the front-row audience members’ feet. There’s a few plastic toys, a pair of spectacles, a walking stick, a wok. Some green Lycra leggings, […]

Bringing circus, theatre and dance together the Gandinis, a juggling troupe led by Kati Yla-Hokkala and Sean Gandini, made their way to the National Theatre’s Watch This Space over the weekend. Given the fact that their two headline shows, Smashed! and Blotched, were both commissioned by Watch This Space – Smashed! for last year’s festival,Blotched for this year’s – it was […]

Directed by Nigel Jamieson, Wired Aerial Theatre’s As the World Tipped is a large-scale outdoor spectacular that takes as its subject the Copenhagen Conference and the subsequent failure of world leaders to initiate any meaningful directive on climate change. It starts well. A large, square white stage is occupied by scurrying suits who move from desk to […]