Bloodthirsty buffoons, a giant snail, a pit of fire-breathing snakes, an invisible orchestra, and a troupe of death-defying showwomen: Out There International Festival of Outdoor Arts and Circus 2024 had something for everyone, as Dorothy Max Prior discovered. Additional reporting by James Foz Foster

It’s the first night of Out There Festival 2024, and although this is predominantly an outdoor arts festival, we are indoors, in the Hippodrome, Great Yarmouth’s legendary purpose-built circus venue. It’s a beautiful space – even the toilets are beautiful, with their red-painted doors plastered with old circus posters in glorious technicolour. It’s ten minutes before the first show of the Festival, and there’s a buzzy crowd taking their places in the rows of red velvet seats rising up in steep tiers from the ringside.

So yes, we are here for a circus show, of sorts. But it’s not a run-of-the-mill one – there’s more here than mere tricks and turns (although there are plenty of those too). The show – merging theatre, circus, and performance art – asks: What happens to the showgirl when she grows up?

The answer, ring-mistress Marisa Carnesky tells us, is that she becomes a showwoman – with two ‘w’s, one for the ‘show’ and one for the ‘woman’. A showwoman, we learn, is ‘showing herself because she wants to’. And, vitally, ‘she never misses a show’. 

 Showwomen has been researched and directed by Marisa Carnesky – who was initially inspired by her trips to the National Circus and Fairground Archive in Sheffield – and created in collaboration with three others: performance poet and sword artist Livia Kojo Alour, ‘fire lady’ and suspension artist Lucifire, and Veronica Thompson, aka hair-hanger extraordinaire Fancy Chance. For the Out There Festival performances, Marisa, Livia and Lucifire are joined by aerialist and hair-hanger Jackie Le in place of Veronica Thompson, who has commitments elsewhere.

In the show, the contemporary performers explore their own showwomen circus and sideshow practices with reference to the legacy of forgotten and marginalised female British entertainers. Before we get going on the individual stories, there’s a nice little ensemble scene in which our showwomen act out a medley of telephone enquiries. They state the nature of their acts, their price, and their conditions of engagement. A repeated mantra emerges: ‘No, I don’t do that – but I know someone who does.’ 

The show weaves fabulous individual circus acts and death-defying stunts with autobiographical revelation, vintage film footage and stills, and musings on the historic showwomen that each have forged a connection to. There’s a gorgeous aerial hoop routine by Jackie Le, who is of Asian heritage, to the tune of Mae West singing, ’I’m an occidental woman in an oriental mood for love.’ All irony fully intended. The historic 1880s teeth-hanging aerialist superstar Miss La La is referenced in the show, although we get hair-hanging from Jackie rather than teeth-hanging, a truly treacherous practice! Marisa, replete in a pomposity of pom-poms, summons up the spirit of 1930s clown Lulu Adams. Livia – formerly a sword-swallower, but now confining herself to (merely) walking on blades and (gasp!) broken glass – channels the 1940s circus star and fakir Koringa, who may or may not have been Black – exploring the dubious heritage of the exoticised Black female body in circus and cabaret. Lucifire whip-cracks-away with breathtaking skill, repeatedly breaking the sound barrier in homage to 1950s Western skills performer Florence Shufflebottom, a sharpshooter and snake-charmer who started off in the family business as part of her father’s knife-throwing act, aged just 5 years old. 

And here’s a thing: in the audience tonight are members of the Shufflebottom family, including Florence’s son! The family’s contribution to the post-show discussion adds a wonderful poignancy to the evening. 

It’s a fabulous show, merging all of its various elements seamlessly to create something that is both an exposition of top-notch circus skills and a deconstruction of those skills; alongside an exploration of where the contemporary showwoman is placed in relation to the history of circus and sideshow. Why do women continue to put their bodies and themselves on the line in the name of entertainment? And are we still willing to break taboos? We return again and again to those two key maxims: She is showing herself because she wants to. And she never misses a show. The show must go on…

With the change of dates of Out There to the end of May, it is the Festival’s intention going forward that they have a show in the Hippodrome each year. And with a new circus and arts centre, the Ice House, opening at the 2025 festival, there will be an increase in indoor programming for the Festival from next year onwards. But for this year, the outdoor work remains at the heart of the festival, although there is also the usual programme of indoor shows and activities at the organisation’s headquarters, The Drill House. 

This year, Friday and Saturday were the key days for the outdoor programme, rather than the usual Saturday and Sunday of past years – with the Party in the Park nights kicking off on Thursday evening. As it was spring half-term holiday, Friday and Saturday saw the main sites for the shows – St George’s Park, Trafalgar Road and the Marina Centre Car Park – packed with family audiences out and about despite the squally weather. Thankfully, regardless of wind and occasional spots of rain, all shows went ahead, and a good time was had by all. Also, the move to late spring meant extended daylight hours – so shows continued well into each evening.

As always, the work presented was an eclectic mix of the traditional and the experimental – and much that, like Showwomen, merged the two. There was street theatre (some static and some promenade), circus of all sorts, dance, music, comedy, interactive game-playing – and some boundary crossing shows difficult to categorise!

Out There Festival has always been a strong supporter of street theatre of all sorts, from the traditional character-comedy shows that England always seems to have done well, to the more experimental imports (often from France).

In that first category came Festival favourites Cocoloco, who took to the streets with Mafia Wedding, a promenade show which tells the tale of a mafia boss with a pregnant daughter in urgent need of a groom (not to mention a bridesmaid or two, a priest, and a congregation) for a shotgun wedding. The show has been in the company’s repertoire for quite a long while as a two-hander, but here is given a makeover, with local community performers and students (many of whom took part in last year’s Cocoloco show, Shangri-la-la) returning to swell the ranks of the wedding party, resplendently dressed in pin-striped suits and furs, high-heels and hats. Cocoloco’s Trevor Stuart – whose longstanding and noble street theatre heritage includes many years with The Natural Theatre Company – was clearly born to play the mafioso father of the bride; and partner Helen Statman’s nine-months-pregnant Maria is a superbly pitched character. The shockingly hilarious ‘waters breaking’ scene in the middle of Yarmouth’s busy Trafalgar Road will stay with me a long time. And I did so enjoy dancing The Godfather waltz…

Also homegrown, and also a promenade piece: Jones and Barnard took us on their Golden Tour along the seafront drag, aided and abetted by another street theatre veteran, Paschale Straiton – who comes with excellent credentials, as her company Red Herring have created more than one fabulous performance-guide to a seaside town!  

We gather at the Marina, and are issued with colourful parasols, which we are instructed to wave in the air with gay abandon. The gaudy parasols are a nice touch, uniting us as a group, inviting amused glances from passers-by. Matt Barnard, dressed in a luscious violet velvet suit and a cheeky little hat, is our principal guide (or perhaps that should be mis-guide) – although he does pass the baton to the other two along the way. Gareth Jones and Paschale employ quick-change strategies to play a number of different characters, channelling Great Yarmouth’s history, real or imagined. Thus, Paschale morphs from Trixie Tarot the flouncy fortune-teller to a beard-stroking Charles Dickens who apparently lived locally for a while; whilst Gareth plays ‘Jerry’ – the whole of the Luftwaffe, no less – who bombed the local sea defences before being seen off by Dad’s Army, later becoming an amalgam of two famous local divers, our plucky performer taking an almost-naked dive into a bucket of cold water, assisted by a posse of strong men drawn from the audience. No mean feat in the low temperatures of the day, with the North Sea winds gusting! At one point on the journey, Matt disappears to re-emerge in wig and frock at the door of old music hall The Empire, having transformed himself into locally renowned opera singer ‘Lily’. We cross the road from The Empire to the seafront lawns, the other two joining ‘Lily’ in a fabulous rendition of Gilbert & Sullivan’s Mikado hit ‘Three Little Girls From School Are We’. The trio then morph into rappers to big up the history of the Ice House and sing the praises of Yarmouth’s ice cream parlours (nice link there, lads and lassie). Jones and Barnard’s obvious parallel with Laurel and Hardy, in body size and master-and-servant clown roles, is honoured, as the two give us a Stan and Ollie song-and-dance number outside Britannia Pier.

It’s a show full of brilliant ideas, with very many great vignettes – although some scenes are stronger than others. The pace is a little wonky, and it needs a fair bit of ironing out, but it is important to acknowledge that it’s brand-new, and with this sort of work – promenade in public space with numerous interactions and costume changes – there is no real way to rehearse it other than to do it. It is site-specific to Great Yarmouth, so it’s not as if they could easily transpose it elsewhere and get the usual bedding-in that new street theatre shows receive in the summer season. But as it is full of potential and so clearly belongs here in Yarmouth, let’s hope Out There bring it back next year with more development time beforehand – it certainly deserves that!

Fraser Hooper brings us a very different sort of clowning to Jones & Barnard’s cheery repartee – solemn and silent, for the most part. He’s to be found Lost in St George’s Park, wearing a ridiculously over-sized backpack, carrying a map and looking bemused. Where is he trying to get to? Does he need help? As he turns the map around, he spins 180 degrees and careers into passers-by. Some people laugh, some look cross, some try to ignore him – which is ridiculous. How can you ignore a man with a backpack so big it takes up the width of the path? At one point, the silent mime speaks: a woman points out that his map is of the Lake District so not much use here in Yarmouth. ‘It’s the only one I have,’ he says with a sad shrug before moving on….   

 And yet more clowning, of another sort: comedian Paul Currie works a seafront crowd with fabulous skill and enormous energy. Objects play a key role, as Currie riffs wildly on one theme after another, moving on at a breathless pace. Gloves and glove puppets singing “She Gloves You’ and ‘Glove to Glove You Baby’. A boomerang croc shoe. A toy dog stuck onto a keyboard (‘the huskeyboard’). Sometimes no props are needed, it’s just his delighted delivery and our imagination that does the work: ‘the middle aisle in Lidl’ is enough to provoke roars of laughter, as is ‘asparagus pee’. He takes requests, and we end riding invisible dragons in tribute to The NeverEnding Story. A true clown – so upbeat and uplifting, and so very, very funny.

Over to the other end of the spectrum now, the darkest of dark humour, and an edgy French troupe called Compagnie Têtes de Mules (the Company of Mule Heads!) who brought us Parasite Circus, in which a bolshy female bouffon and her sulkily subordinate male companion torture and mutilate a whole troupe of puppet circus characters, all of whom have fabulous names (Pinky Bunny is a favourite). Our two bloodthirsty clowns start on the roof of their decrepit caravan, playing a broken accordion and the strangest looking tuba ever seen, heralding a show score with echoes of Carlos d’Alessio’s soundtrack to the film Delicatessen. They descend, mock the audience, conjure up the puppet performers, and the mini splatter-fest begins. Le sang! Le sang! Bring on the blood! A bendy box splits goes too far, until the poor creature is mercilessly rent asunder, an aerial rig becomes a gallows, and as one unfortunate after another meets their fate, puppet guts splatter the audience. Then, the ripped and torn remnants are unceremoniously binned – accompanied by demonic laughter. I have no idea what the company’s provenance is, or where they trained, but their classic bouffon techniques of laughing unashamedly at ‘death, fear, disease, difference and deformity’ courting a ‘desecration of common sense and the idea of political correctness’ are very much in the tradition of the work of Jacques Lecoq. Grotesque burlesque to the nth degree – a gruesome, carnivalesque success.

There’s most definitely a circus-sideshow vibe at this year’s Out There Festival, and this is echoed in Ava-go-go-ville, a mini festival within the festival on Trafalgar Road, between park and seafront. 

Within this site you’ll find a bar and numerous sideshow attractions, including Professor WM Bligh’s Circus Photo Tent, which invites you to have your picture taken as a circus act – be it knife-thrower, strongman, or trapezist; Willow Phoenix: Electric Hamster Racing (‘time to get competitive, only the fastest hamster will win’); and the Hocus Pocus Unsolicited Advice Bureau caravan hosted by self-discovery gurus ‘Tony’ and ‘Pam’ who are offering Speed Life Coaching and Public Art Therapy. There’s also the ever-popular The Loser’s Arcade – a phantasmagoria of ridiculous neon outfits, and ludicrous games (‘Roll up, roll up – everyone’s a loser!’). A favourite game features children racing in imaginary creature outfits, accompanied by the wonderful Ernesto on trumpet who plays joyfully out-of-tune accompaniments to the music drifting in from the seafront arcades. It all fits in perfectly with the Great Yarmouth seafront vibe, being loud, tacky, glittering and life-affirming. You can’t help but come out giggling.

Returning at night to Ava-go-go-ville, we encountered Paka the Uncredible’s Bag of Snakes, which has a loose connection to Paka’s ongoing interest in addressing the bad image Medusa has received over the years. This theme will manifest more in future developments: for now, Bag of Snakes is presented as a fun fairground activity – an ‘interactive pyro-kinetic, addictive and dangerous game experience for all shoe sizes’. It’s a take on the popular mole-thumping challenge – in this case, the ’snakes’ in the pit, known as The Medusa Misfits, light up, hiss and spit fire as contestants bash away at ever-faster-changing coloured pads. Great fun! Another night-time hit in Ava-go-go-ville is Miniscule of Sound’s The World’s Smallest Nightclub, which is exactly what it says on the tin – as close to a London clubbing experience as you’ll get inside a tiny booth with room for four people. You walk down a red carpet to be met by mirror-shaded bouncers and then led in to the soundproofed box with a live DJ behind glass in his booth, cheering you on. There’s very loud classic club anthems, and just about enough room to dance ecstatically. A joyous experience.

Elsewhere, live music played a key role in this year’s Out There Festival, with styles ranging across a full spectrum: crowd-pleasing party favourites and cover versions; rousing gypsy jazz, ska, and funk; and inventive, wonky, hauntological music made from found objects and played on old broken instruments… Talking of which, here’s Eric Tarantola and his Imaginary Orchestra – seen indoors at the Festival launch at Drill House on Thursday evening, and outdoors on Friday and Saturday. Eric is a tall Frenchman with a wild hairstyle, a gentle mime-clown who plays a homemade guitar/ banjo double-neck and a junk shop old trombone; these looped with the sound of wind-up clocks, metal cutlery and other random objects, which provide a percussive rhythm accompaniment. As the show progresses, he picks up an old mechanical clock from inside a battered suitcase and turns it around to reveal he has integrated a kalimba into the back, allowing him to play a melody to the clock’s beat. Very charming, very French – and like the aforementioned Parasite Circus, reminiscent of the films of Jean-Pierre Jeunet, as soundtracked by Carlos d’Alessio.

Still on the ‘wonky with homemade contraptions’ side of things come Rimski & Handkerchief with An Afternoon Out. Rimski sits on his Bicycle Piano, an old piano bedecked with artificial flowers, horns and hooters that is attached to a chain-driven tricycle base, pedalling the piano up and down paths and managing some very tight corners. Handkerchief plays the Double Bassicle – which is, as you’d imagine, a similar contraption for her double bass. They sing and play a medley of whimsical old songs: ‘I Don’t Want to Set the World on Fire’ and, as the dark clouds gather above our heads, ‘Stormy Weather’. At seemingly haphazard moments, they change and shift direction. There are unexpected musical stops and key changes – the pair sometimes shifting in and out of the familiar melodies into (possibly) their own compositions, all perfectly timed to the stop-start and direction changes of their pedalling. Even when they sing ‘It’s Time to Go’ they are followed along the way by a smiling crowd who are ready to give them a push if they get stuck in a pot hole.

A firm favourite of many festivals is the musical walkabout troupe playing Eastern European influenced gypsy jazz and ska. Enter Portuguese troupe Kumpania Algazarra, the ensemble featuring a winning combination of trumpets, tuba, electric guitar and bass, drums and percussion. They were kept pretty busy throughout the festival. Wearing matching coloured hoodies and shades, they processed along the seafront, gathering a large and enthusiastic audience along the way. They played the park stages; they led off the Grand Finale procession; and they entertained at the late-night Festival Lounge at The Drill House. It was impossible to miss them! They are great musicians playing tight, funky versions of classic hits and Eastern European and Latin standards, interacting well with their audience – a definite crowd pleaser.

Another crowd-pleasing act is Loveboat – inspired by the TV series of the same name, and featuring two men dressed in short-sleeved merchant navy outfits, one playing keyboards, the other singing and occasionally playing guitar to backing tracks of rave/disco bangers, with a touch of 80s easy listening cheese, all accompanied by over-the-top dance routines and flashing disco lights. Loveboat is a heady brew, evoking a disco party night on a Mediterranean cruise ship featuring exotic cocktails. Like Kumpania Algazarra, they certainly sang for their supper: they played the main music stage in Party in the Park, a small intimate set in Ava-go-go-ville, and entertained the late-night revellers at The Drill House.

A thumbs-up too for the Young Out There (YOT) musicians, who had their own stage on one side of the park, but also took over the main stage now and again. Some of the acts we caught included Oasis-inspired Parallax, head-banging rockers Kuiper, and alt-rock/punk band Amourette. All three had endless energy, and held the crowd’s attention throughout their sets – and it was good to see the young bands take to the main stage with confidence, with such a supportive local crowd to-hand. One YOT act we sadly missed was Terran Burrell, who plays Shruti box, blending its drone sound with vocals to create a neo-folk set – with a few video game soundtracks blended in, apparently! But good to learn that there are young people out there at Out There choosing more unusual musical instruments and influences.

Music also, quite naturally, played an important part in many of the dance shows seen. Vanhulle Dance Theatre’s Olive Branch is performed by two martial-arts trained contemporary dancers who balance on roughly-hewn logs, playfully demonstrating a need to work together – there’s a message there, for sure. They merge expert equilibrist skills, stunning martial arts moves, smooth contemporary dance/contact duets, and gentle clowning to create an enjoyable and well-received show – which was developed in Yarmouth at The Drill House, with the support of Out There Arts. The music, composed by Italian jazz guitarist Domenico Angarano (who has previously worked with renowned choreographers Akram Kahn and Hofesh Schechter), was the perfect accompaniment to the skilled physical performance. 

An unexpected delight of the 2024 dance programme, also featuring a great musical score, was a small but perfectly-formed piece by two teenage artists, collectively known as Stacked Wonky, who hail from rural Somerset. 4 Minutes starts with our young male performers approaching from afar, walking down the centre of the road carrying chairs. These are placed behind a wooden table stood in the middle of the street. There follows a breathtaking ten minutes of beat-the-clock game-playing, alternating between collaboration and competition as the table is laid upon and leapt over, chairs spun like skipping ropes to be hopped over. In quieter moments, a gestural dance-theatre vocabulary of ticks and touches and shrugs is played out, T-shirts pulled up over heads, small glances exchanged. It’s a truly lovely piece of dance-theatre work, with the added bonus of a great live music accompaniment, featuring the beautiful electronic looping viola of Argentinian composer and multi-instrumentalist, Sebastian Tesouro.

Collectif Bim’s Place Assis (which translates as ‘a place to sit’) is a non-verbal performance set on a public bench. It’s a well-played piece of ensemble physical theatre, with the five performers imaginatively transforming the aforementioned bench into a car, boat or horse. There’s a fair bit of ‘school’s out’ type romping, with bags stolen and chucked around, and a lot of pushing and shoving and chasing round and round, all cleverly choreographed. It’s not going to change the world, but it’s a fun piece of work that goes down well with the audience.

Gorilla Circus are best known for their aerial work, but for this edition of the festival, they presented RPM – a dance, acrobatics and rollerskating piece set on a moving treadmill. Because of the unseasonably cold weather, it did feel hard to stay still and connected for a 45-minute-long static show, on in the park at 8pm. That said, the section seen (before the cold got too much, sending us scurrying to The Drill House) was a breathtaking display of acrobatic skill and co-ordination. And Gorilla Circus are to be applauded for trying something that’s new to them. There’s also the need for companies to produce work of different scales for touring – and as so much of their repertoire is large-scale, requiring a lot of rigging space, here’s a show that is more easily tourable, suitable for indoors or out.

Other circus companies seen at this year’s festival included Belgium-based 15Feet6 with Primus, a collaboration between Finnish Cyr wheel specialist Rosa Tyyskä, and the equally skilled Belgian Jasper D’Hondt who specialises in acrobatic bicycle and roller-skating. The 2020 lock-down forced the couple off the international touring circuit and into collaboration with each other – Primus being the result. And what a result – it really is a gem of a show, exploiting the performers’ skills beautifully. 

The pair are dressed in a kind of neutral school uniform (grey shorts/short skirt with white shirts) and the show plays out a love-hate competitive schoolyard friendship, starting slowly and building beautifully. In the beginning, they work the crowd, with two young volunteers co-opted to give out raffle tickets for a school-fete style tombola, the draw of which goes with a bang (literally). In a kind of parody of playground tactics, they each demonstrate their respective skills – aided, abetted or undermined by the other. Rosa zips around with extraordinary ease on her Cyr wheel; Jasper counters with a mocking hula-hoop act. Jasper hops on his bike and demonstrates some fabulous tricks; Rosa leaps on with him, shoving her behind in his face, or jumping up on his back. After lots of running jokes about their roller skates (Jasper’s are almost given away by Rosa in the tombola!), they don their wheels for a superb roller-skating doubles finale – fantastically fast and furious, demonstrating wonderful partner work, all rivalry now dropped and everything all about the two working as one. Primus was certainly one of the outstanding shows of Out There 2024.   

More rollerskating: Dulce Duca’s Unstoppable at first purports to be a one-woman show. Duca, resplendent in an extraordinary purple tulle outfit, channels her inner diva, strutting around full of herself and her accomplishments, demonstrating her club-juggling and roller-skating skills, and building a brilliant repartee with her audience – the juggling challenged a little by the fierce winds blowing, but she overcomes all obstacles. All obstacles, that is, except a late-arriving audience member who walks across the performance space and fussily seats herself, arranging her shopping trolley by her side. Then the fun and games start, as the annoying woman (who we soon realise is a plant – played by actress Tsubi Du) starts to disrupt the show – subtly at first, but later running into the space to grab clubs and jam them into her trolley. It all gets more and more farcical, and builds to a suitably ludicrous climax, with Duca and her combatant finally united in a ritual task – the funeral for the broken clubs. Unstoppable is a very sweet play on the challenges of performing outdoors, a space where anything can happen and probably will – wild winds, squally showers, dogs on strings, drunken old geezers, mouthy teens, crying babies, and bolshy old ladies with shopping trolleys disrupting the space! Street theatre queen Dulce Duca sees off all disruptions and reigns supreme. A master (or is that ‘mistress’?) class in crowd control.

Finally, we come to the The Final Grand Finale – the very last shows ever for local heroes The Insect Circus.

The Insect Circus was created by partners in life and work, Mark Copeland and Sarah Munro. The project has seen many incarnations, from painting exhibition, to travelling museum, to indoor show, to outdoor show. Very many different circus artists have been involved over the years and many are back for the grand finale – the show has been revived after a five-year hiatus, to be retired again after the Festival, this time for good! 

So here we are: this is the end.

This incarnation of the show has a cast of 25 drawn from across the country, and indeed from across the world. Many of the old favourites are back. Pippa Coram (all the way from Australia) is the hula-hooping Albina the Awesome, accompanied by a brace of lurid green praying mantises.  Simon Deville is Western skills maestro The Great Flingo, pinning the poor unsuspecting butterfly to a board to the tune of the ‘Bonanza’ theme tune, and ‘Don’t Hem Me In’. Marcos Rivas Farpon is Mr Maroc, taming the wild and beastly Sylvester the Stag Beetle with a dash of classic matador Paso Doble, assisted by Flamenco dancer The Delightful Dolores. Phoebe Babette Baker performs as Phee and her Bee on the tightwire (when the wind dies down for long enough, anyway); and Ashling Deeks brings Dungo the balancing scarab beetle out of retirement. Dungo’s trainer, Peggy Babcock IV, is played by Persephone Pearl, who also reprises her turn as the back end of a pantomime horse (at least, I think it’s her in there – it’s hard to tell). But there is also the next generation: aerialist Vicky McManus is returning with her daughter Saskia Poulter for the Mothball Bolero and other aerial acts; and two of the younger members of the team play aerialists Molly and Dolly Lollipop, performing a very lovely doubles hoop act. Mark is ringmaster, pulling it all together, and Sarah plays Nursey, on hand in case of insect bites and stings (Pemma Ricardo, aka Constance Courage, keeps control of the Vicious Vespa Wasps, but they have been known to run amok). Nursey also does her own short act as a warm-up before the main show – The Mighty Mites Tea Party, a fabulous little puppetry show in which the eponymous mites behave very badly indeed. 

We must also give a mention to the fabulous Sybil the Snail, a giant beast who, unlike the other creatures of the circus, will possibly not be sent off to be cryogenically frozen in A(n) Ice House, but will live on as the Out There Arts mascot…  

It was Sybil who led off the grand parade for the Community Carnival on Saturday evening, in celebration of the Ice House, and honouring 20 years of The Insect Circus – a wonderful finale to Out There Festival 2024. The Festival’s musical troupes, including Kumpania Algazarra and classical string-quartet Bowjangles, joined forces to provide a rip-roaring live soundtrack; artists and volunteers at the Festival processed from The Drill House to the park waving colourful flags; and The Insect Circus creatures took their final final bows before being ceremoniously retired, leaving the children and grandchildren of the company in the ring hula-hooping.

Perhaps, muses ringmaster Mark to us afterwards, the grandchildren will one day take up the baton and ‘unfreeze’ the insects. Until then, it’s the end of an era for The Insect Circus, but the start of a new one for Out There Festival – the Spring slot having been well and truly christened.

The show must go on, the show will go on – here’s to May 2025! 

Featured image (top): Compagnie Têtes de Mules Parasite Circus. Photo James Bass Photography

This year’s edition of Out There International Festival of Outdoor Arts and Circus ran 30 May to 1 June 2024. 

More About Out There Arts – National Centre for Outdoor Arts & Circus

Great Yarmouth based, but collaborating internationally, Out There Arts – National Centre for Outdoor Arts & Circus is a registered charity and Arts Council funded National Portfolio Organisation dedicated to supporting excellence in the development, creation and presentation of new and high quality artistic work, delivery of outstanding circus and outdoor arts festivals, and events for and with diverse local communities and wider audiences.

Out There Arts shares Great Yarmouth’s vision to become the UK Capital of Circus. Their focus on circus and outdoor arts grows naturally from this seaside town’s rich performance heritage, providing an accessible medium to support their work.

www.outtherearts.org.uk 

Fresh Street at Out There Festival 2025

Fresh Street – The International Event for the Development of Outdoor Arts is back for its fifth edition on 28–30 May 2025. This flagship professional meeting bringing together key European and international players, artists, programmers, producers, researchers, and policy-makers from for three days of dynamic discussions and stimulating exchanges on how we can imagine the outdoor arts of tomorrow.

Fresh Street #5 is co-organised by Circostrada Network and Out There Arts in the frame of Out There Festival, in partnership with Outdoor Arts UK.

https://www.circostrada.org/en

More About the Ice House

A Grade II listed building of brick construction with a thatched roof, the Great Yarmouth Ice House, once one of a pair, is now the only one of its kind left in the country. 

Out There Arts have a vision to transform it into a National Centre for Outdoor Arts and Circus. This imaginative and creative use of the building will further develop the town’s reputation as the capital of circus in the UK as well as further link the town’s fishing and circus heritage.

All funding is now in place, with the project supported by the Architectural Heritage Fund and the National Lottery Heritage Fund, Arts Council England, Great Yarmouth Borough Council, and the building’s former owners Towns Deal Brineflow.

Capital works began in February 2024, and is scheduled for completion in March 2025, in time for Out There Festival 2025.

See www.outtherearts.org.uk 

The Insect Circus Museum

The show may be finished, but The Insect Museum lives on! Now in permanent residence at a house in Great Livermore, Suffolk IP31 1JN. Visits by appointment. Contact Mark Copeland on: theinsectcircus@gmail.com 

This year’s Out There International Festival of Street Arts and Circus in Great Yarmouth has a distinct carnivalesque vibe – channelling the sideshow traditions and popular entertainment tropes of days of yore, writes Dorothy Max Prior

Circus, street theatre, music, interactive game playing, and outdoor arts of all sorts across Great Yarmouth’s streets, parks and venues. Yes, here we are again – another Out There Festival. They come round quickly! But hang on – it doesn’t feel like a year since the last one. Which is because it isn’t – the Festival has moved from September to the spring half-term holiday weekend at the end of May/beginning of June, meaning that the 2024 edition comes hot on the heels of the last one in Autumn 2023.

‘It’s been hard work and something of a rush,’ says executive director Veronica Stephens. ‘I had a short holiday after wrapping up the last one, then it was Christmas, and then – countdown to the next one!’

But they’ve done it – bravo. Artistic director Joe Mackintosh, Veronica, and their team of bright young producers and administrators have somehow pulled it all off. And that’s whilst also instigating the development of the Ice House – a massive project that will see the building developed into a multi-use community arts venue and a national centre of excellence for circus and outdoor arts training and creation for Yarmouth.

And it’s another great line-up for Out There this year, with the usual mix of local, national and international work of all scales – although this time round the festival is a little more contained, starting on Thursday evening with Party in the Park and some indoor shows; then bursting out all over the town on Friday 31 May and Saturday 1 June, but with a substantial amount of community engagement leading up to that action-packed weekend programme.

One of the shows I’m most excited about is the return of the legendary Insect Circus: We thought they’d retired, but the insects and their trainers are back for one final extravaganza … The Final Grand Finale, in fact –  staged on the Friday and Saturday evening of the festival in the Park. 

The Insect Circus was created by partners in life and work, Mark Copeland and Sarah Munro. Both are visual artists with a theatrical bent. Mark is a BAFTA winning designer (for his work on the BBC series Gormenghast). His work as a maker and painter can be seen in Yarmouth at Out There’s headquarters at the Drill House – it was he who designed the fabulous ‘giant paper theatre’ proscenium stage for the venue, and his legendary pink snail painting hangs on the venue’s wall. Sarah is a sought-after costume designer, these days well known for her work with theatre company 1927. The couple have a longstanding relationship with the Festival, having brought numerous shows to previous editions, including The Equidae Retirement Home for Pantomime Horses, set in the windows of  Palmers department store; and Miss O’ Genie’s Dazzling Dollirama, in which Miss O’Genie and her Damnable Dolls presented an alternative approach to a coconut shy, giving us a chance to throw things at famous misogynists. 

‘They have an amazing ability to reflect on circus and theatre work of the past and give it a modern twist’ says Joe.

The Insect Circus started life as a set of paintings by Mark Copeland – giving us such wondrous images as ‘a giant stag beetle closing its jaws around Mr. Maroc the Beast Tamer, two ladybirds drawing a pram with a clown inside, and the Great Flingo outlining the fragile wings of a butterfly with thrown knives’. (As eloquently described in an interview with Mark in Sideshow Circus Magazine) 

Then came The Insect Circus Museum, an installation housed in a specially modified truck – an old horse box kitted out like a vintage gypsy caravan – which toured to festivals. Audience members entered in two’s and threes to find a fabulous display of carefully crafted figurines, skilful automata, letterpress posters and other printed ephemera celebrating the daring-do’s of the fleas, butterflies, wasps and ants who were the stars of this allegedly world-renowned circus. ‘Cabaret Mechanical’ style boxes lit up when buttons were pushed to reveal the teeny performers in action: snarling wasps are tamed; fleas hop in acrobatic harmony; and The Peaple, a Liverpool-based bug band, sing their little hearts out. The installation was finally retired as a touring show a year or two ago, and is now housed in its own specially designed ‘museum’ at Great Livermore in Suffolk.

A couple of years after the installation was set up came the idea of a live show, with circus and cabaret artists taking on insect roles, wearing beautiful costumes designed by Sarah. I particularly remember the show at London’s beautiful old music hall venue, The Hoxton Hall, featuring a lovely aerial act that told the sad story of the Mayfly, who only lives for one day… 

Many different artists were involved over the years – the show is almost a roll-call for Britain’s contemporary circus and variety community. Lots of those legendary names are back for the grand finale – the show is being revived, but then immediately retired again. It’s a catch-it-if-you-can last chance scenario! Mark and Sarah put a call-out to anyone and everyone who had ever been involved, with the idea of bringing 12 performers together. They’ve ended up with 25 travelling to Yarmouth to take part. ‘And that’s not including the children,’ says Mark, who goes on to tell me that one performer, Pippa Coram (aka Albina the Awesome), is coming all the way from Australia for the show! There’s also Simon Deville as The Great Flingo, Marcos Rivas Farpon as Mr Maroc (expect some Iberian stag-beetle wrestling), and Safia Amalgharabi as Talullah the Worm Charmer. Aerialist Vicky McManus is returning with her daughter Saskia Poulter for the Mothball Bolero, Phoebe Babette Baker will perform as Phee and her Bee on the tightwire, and Ashling Deeks brings Dungo out of retirement. Then there’s Dungo’s trainer, Peggy Babcock IV, played by company stalwart Persephone Pearl, who was last (un)seen as the back end of a pantomime horse… 

This year’s festival will also see another Insect Circus associate Marisa Carnesky on the bill – one of the few indoor shows on the programme, her magnificent Marisa Carnesky’s Showwomen is on Thursday 30th and Friday 31st at the Hippodrome – Britain’s legendary oldest purpose-built circus venue.

Joe tells me that programming in to the Hippodrome fulfils a longstanding ambition: ’We used to put some shows in there,’ he says. ‘But then the Hippodrome’s summer show season was extended, so September was no longer possible – but with our change of dates to May, it is now possible. And it is our intention going forward that we do have a show in the Hippodrome each season. Something that does span the popular and contemporary worlds. With the Ice House opening next year, we hope to build on our indoor programme ’. 

Showwomen is a spectacular four-woman show researched and directed by Marisa Carnesky It has been created in collaboration with Veronica Thompson (aka hair-hanger extraordinaire Fancy Chance), performance poet and sword artist Livia Kojo Alour, and ‘fire lady’ and suspension artist Lucifire. The show asks: What happens to the showgirl when she grows up? And why and how do women perform dangerous and taboo acts? The four contemporary circus/live art performers explore their own showwomen circus and sideshow practices with reference to the legacy of forgotten and marginalised British entertainers; taking as inspiration 1880s teeth hanging aerialist superstar Miss La La, 1930s pioneer clown Lulu Adams, 1940s body magic star Koringa, and 1950s Western skilled performer Florence Shufflebottom. The show interweaves live action, in-depth interviews and archival footage to create a dreamlike landscape mixing death-defying stunts, taboo-breaking acts, notions of political resistance, and secret backstage rituals. ‘Expect witchy goings-on in full leopard-print, naked crocodile women scaling walls, ladders of swords, live hair-hanging, never-ending pom poms and ectoplasmic clowns,’ says Marisa.

Back to the outdoor programme: something that immediately caught my attention was Compagnie Têtes de Mules (great name!) with Parasite Circus, which promises ‘fairground theatre, smoking, nudity, loud bangs, buffoons, and hideous puppets’. An irresistible combination, I’d say.

‘They’re a French company, and it’s real street theatre, ‘ says Joe. ‘There’s a bit of a lack of that on the European circuit at the moment, with a lot of the work dance or circus based. Têtes de Mules combine a contemporary arts sensibility with popular entertainment values. Blood spurts over the audience – it’s a lot of fun! Dark humour, we like that!’

Ah, so a tie-in with Marisa Carnesky’s Showwomen and The Insect Circus – adding to the carnivalesque circus-sideshow vibe of this year’s Out There Festival. ‘Exploring the sideshow tradition in a contemporary way,’ as Joe puts it. 

Also with something of a sideshow vibe comes legendary maker Paka the Uncredible, who is returning to Out There Festival with Bag of Snakes, addressing the bad image Medusa has received over the years… 

‘Paka will be part of what we’re calling the Ava-go-goville,’ says Veronica. 

This bespoke zone will be sited on one of the greens in the town, between park and seafront, and will feature contemporary mock-amusement-arcade type interactive entertainments. The Losers Arcade (a big hit in 2023) will be back, along with the  Miniscule of Sound’s World’s Smallest Nightclub, and Professor WM Bligh’s Circus Photo Tent.

Also channelling the carnivalesque will be perennial favourites Rimski and Handkerchief, the musical clown duo who will roam the streets of Yarmouth on their pedal-powered Bicycle Piano and Double Bassicle. We are invited to accompany Rimski & Handkerchief as they pedal, plonk and play their way through some of Out There’s key locations, singing songs of timeless wonder, en route to a favourite picnic spot for An Afternoon Out – which will no doubt see them setting out their stall of bric-a-brac and wondrous objects of all sorts.

Great also to see that local supported artists and Festival favourites CocoLoco are back again, this time with Mafia Wedding, which will engage students from local performing arts colleges as bridal entourage and wedding guest extras. The show tells the tale of a mafia boss with a pregnant daughter in urgent need of a groom (not to mention a bridesmaid, a priest, and a congregation) for a shotgun wedding about to take place! Out There have been instrumental in moving CocoLoco on from their classic two-handers to larger ensemble shows, often working with community performers and students, for example in last year’s show Shangri-la-la, which is now touring in the UK and elsewhere.

‘They’ve got an amazing wealth of experience and knowledge [in street arts and performance] and we’ve been hooking them up with younger artists and students for quite a long while now,’ says Joe.

Another company who have received consistent support over the years from the Festival is Gorilla Circus, who this year have been artists-in-residence at the Drill House, the organisation’s year-round venue, and take a new direction when they return to Out There Festival 2024 not with flying trapeze, high-wire or hair-hanging – as seen in a previous outings to Yarmouth such as their large-scale show Unity.This time, it’s a ground-based show, RPM.

‘It’s more urban dance than circus – no aerial at all this time,’ says Veronica. So, dance acrobatics and rollerskating – all staged on a moving treadmill.

‘Thematically, it’s exploring the repercussions and recovery from colonialism,’ says Joe. ‘And with some really unusual movement work – a really strong piece.’

‘Unity was the show they developed after they’d had the experience of working with Generik Vapeur,’ says Veronica. (Gorilla Circus worked with French maestros Generik Vapeur on Bivouac and Merci pour l’Accueil.)

 ‘Unity has spoken word, working with a poet, and is a political piece – moving away from the spectacle; the ooohs and the aaahs. Meaningful and very moving’

Gorilla Circus are based in the region and are now an Arts Council England National Portfolio Organisation.

 ‘We’ve helped them on the road – and are helping get their work out in Europe,’ says Joe. ‘They are touring Unity now – but also creating work in new directions (such as RPM) rather than staying with the familiar. We’ve always encouraged them to explore a greater range of artistic forms and to experiment with scale. Unity is a work of scale, but cleverly designed, so transportable. But they have smaller scale works too, which is good.’ 

Also on the circus and dance front, we have a good number of strong international shows. 

Primus, by Belgium-based 15Feet6, is a collaboration between Finnish Cyr wheel specialist Rosa Tyyskä (formerly of Cirque du Soleil and the Finnish female collective Sisus), and the equally busy and skilled Belgian Jasper D’Hondt who specialises in teeterboard, Russian bar, acrobatic bicycle and acrobatic roller skating. The 2020 lock-down forced the couple off the international touring circuit and into collaboration with each other – and the bicycle-for-two show Primus was the result!

Collectif Bim”s Place Assis (which translates as ‘a place to sit’) is a non-verbal performance that explores the ways people behave on public benches – and the way they interact with each other, the five performers challenging the norms that rule public spaces and social relationships.

Portuguese born (but Yarmouth based) Dulce Duca – juggler, rollerskater and street performer extraordinaire – is back with Unstoppable – a two-woman show, first made with Sarah Munro for the Bartholomew Fair in London, and on this occasion performed  with Tsubi Du from Australia – a costume designer and actress now based in Norwich, which Joe says will be ‘highly participatory’ and a ‘classic piece of street theatre, drawing people more and more into the show’. Which I can well believe: I first met Duca in Guadalajara when we were both performing with the Ficho Festival Caravana, where I witnessed her taming gangs of Mexican teens in some of Guadalajara’s more deprived neighbourhoods, training them to throw her clubs or allow her to balance on their shoulders.

Joe points out that participation and inclusion – always key components to Out There Festival – will take centre-stage at next year’s Festival, which will have participation and  inclusion as its theme, and will see a collaboration with international circus and street arts organisation Circostrada, with the Fresh conference welcoming a large cohort of international delegates, and an enlarged Festival in May 2025. 

But back to 2024: I’ve also noticed some interesting musical acts lined up: the Imaginary Orchestra, for example.

‘That’s Eric Tarantola,’ says Veronica. ‘I saw him at Chalons [French street theatre festival] and he is very engaging – simple and effective – a one-man-band using everyday objects to make good quality music.’

‘You’ll remember that we had a focus last year on music within circus and street arts,’ says Joe. ‘We’ve long championed the more unusual musical forms, that fit with the festival, and Eric is a good example.’

Veronica also flags up Kumpania Algazarra – a Portuguese company of musicians who bring together high energy jazz, Latin and Balkan rhythms, with both a static show and a processional walkabout act.

’They’re great at interventions in public space – parading around, jumping into arcades and cafes,’ says Veronica. ‘We feel that they’ll engage well with the Portuguese speaking community in Great Yarmouth’. For indeed, there are very many of those in the area – people from Portugal, although more likely from Angola, Mozambique or other former colonial territories.

This year’s Out There Festival will also see the launch of YOT – Young Out There – recognising what Joe describes as ‘the upswelling of youth music and grassroots music here in Yarmouth, which we’ve helped to develop in tandem with the Creative People and Places’ Freshly Greated programme. We hosted a season of gigs – GIGGY – in the autumn. We had a reach out to the community to find young bands and musicians, and we wanted to find some more unusual ways and means for them to perform at the Festival. Some of the  young musicians had submitted videos of themselves rapping in cars, so we thought – let’s get a car!’

Hence, getting an old scrapped car that could be be graffiti’d: somewhere other than a regular stage where young artists could perform – in, around or upon! The car will be in the park throughout the Festival, as part of the YOT programme. 

Also part of the outreach programme is the now established relationship with East Norfolk Sixth Form College, who will host a week-long programme of workshops, training sessions and seminars run by Out There artists, attended not just by the students of the Sixth Form College, but by participants from a number of local schools and colleges – with over 1,000 young people taking part.

The organisation’s communications and audience development manager, Marcin Rodwell, who leads on access for Out There, flags up the SEND festival (Special Educational Needs) programme – now linked in to Out There Festival, as using the Festival’s resources seems to make sense! So Out There opened their doors to the collaboration. And it’s a two-way process:

‘They help us with our access offer,’ Marcin says. ‘They will be providing British Sign Language interpreters and audio description, touch tours and more.’ 

Marcin also flags up the ongoing heritage training and outreach programme for the Ice House, which once played a crucial role in Great Yarmouth’s fishing industry. They are working with 11 schools and three local colleges,  running workshops and enabling participants to create art work in response to the site’s heritage.

‘Participants are making a creative response using different artforms,’ says Marcin. ‘That could be photography, literature, film, game design, sound design…’

Veronica mentions the Out There professional programme, which will take place at the Drill House from Thursday 30th onwards, with informal meet-and-greets, drinks receptions, and sessions run by Outdoor Arts UK, the national organisation for all professionals working in the sector – artists, producers, programmers and more. 

So once again, the Out There International Festival of Street Arts and Circus is going to be a hub of activity of all sorts. Get out there, do!

Out There Festival runs 30 May to 1 June 2024. View the programme here. 

More About Out There Arts

Great Yarmouth based, but collaborating internationally, Out There Arts is an independent arts development charity dedicated to delivering outstanding circus and street arts events. 

Their focus on circus and street arts grows naturally from this seaside town’s rich performance heritage, providing an accessible medium to support their work. 

The organisation delivers an arts development function for Great Yarmouth Borough Council, developing the town as an International Centre of Excellence for circus and street arts creation, training and delivery.

More About the Ice House

A Grade II listed building of brick construction with a thatched roof, the Great Yarmouth Ice House, once one of a pair, is now the only one of its kind left in the country. 

Out There Arts have a vision to transform it into a National Centre for Outdoor Arts and Circus. This imaginative and creative use of the building will further develop the town’s reputation as the capital of circus in the UK as well as further link the town’s fishing and circus heritage.

All funding is now in place, with the project supported by the Architectural Heritage Fund and the National Lottery Heritage Fund, Arts Council England, Great Yarmouth Borough Council, and the building’s former owners Towns Deal Brineflow.

Capital works began in February 2024, and is scheduled for completion in March 2025, in time for Out There Festival 2025.

See www.outtherearts.org.uk 

‘What is a memorial device? Is it like a pocket watch that you’ve inherited? Is it like a gravestone? Or is it more like a dictaphone – a dictaphone where you can record your memories? Is it like a marker in the sand? What is a memorial device?’

This is Ross Raymond speaking. He’s invited us here, to this theatre, to celebrate and commemorate Memorial Device. Ross wants to share his memories of the band with an audience who may or may not remember them, too; for us, collectively, to rediscover these experiences in a ritualistic manner. ‘I can’t do this without you,’ he says. ‘You are the final element of this ritual, this spell.’

I’m sure you do remember the band, am I right? Well, if you’re of a certain age, anyway. From Lanarkshire in Scotland (Airdrie, specifically)? Made waves – industrial strength waves, to be precise – in the early- to mid-1980s? Kind of a cross between garage band psychedelia and Krautrock? Although it’s hard to pin-point their sound exactly…

And yes, after performances of the newly re-staged theatre show, This is Memorial Device, or after readings from the book of the same name that it is drawn from, by acclaimed Scottish author David Keenan, people do come up and share their memories of the band – or even suggest point-of-information corrections about which band members lived where in Airdrie, and who did what back in the day.

There’s only one problem with this: the band never existed. Or perhaps it is more correct to say that the band only exists in the imagination of David Keenan – and nowadays also in the heads of the very many people who have read the book sometime over the past seven years, or engaged with the very many Memorial Device manifestations in the real or virtual world, which include the theatrical adaptation (touring Spring 2024), the numerous fan-fiction tributes, and the band’s Twitter/X account – which has nothing at all to do with David Keenan, but has an independent life of its own. So Memorial Device have been conjured up into the world, as if by magick. They exist as much as anything else exists in our memories and imaginations. And who on earth knows where memory ends and imagination begins?

‘People do think it is real,’ says David. ‘I’m interested in how you can retrospectively affect people’s memories.’  

David’s novel is a fabulous smorgasbord of first-person accounts that can be read as stand-alone short stories, but taken together add up to a history of the mysterious and legendary Memorial Device and the post-punk and alternative arts scene of Airdrie and surrounding districts in 1983 and 1984. A history, yes, but not a definitive one. There are numerous narrators, reliable and unreliable. There are conflicting accounts, and incidents are revisited from multiple viewpoints throughout. 

‘The book is unfathomable,’ says David. ‘There is no bottom to get to. You don’t solve the mystery of Memorial Device. The reason This Is Memorial Device is so alive seven years after publication is that it is a living, growing entity.’ He says that readers could read the stories in any order they wished; and, gleefully approving of the fact that I found it hard to keep up with all the characters and events in the book, suggests that I re-read it from the end story back to the beginning. ‘It’s designed like an ouroboros – when it ends, you can begin again. There are multiple entry and exit points.’

I’ll say also that it all feels true to life because it is. The characters and plots might be fiction, but it’s informed by David’s own experiences growing up in Airdrie in the late 1970s and early 1980s, and his involvement in the post-punk music scene. So all the details – the houses people live in, the objects in their homes, the bands, the music, the rehearsal rooms, the venues, the weird makeshift art installations and zines and happenings – all live and breathe. There’s a real sense of emotional truth and lived experience at the heart of it all. And despite a few harrowing incidents, and the background of tough working lives and lurking violence or abuse, the overall feel is one of optimism – a ‘let’s say yes to life’ vibe that is ever-present.

‘The book is all about possibility,’ says David. ‘Things were so incredible then, post punk, especially in small working-class towns. The avant-garde was on the street – it really felt like anything was possible.’

Book, and theatrical adaptation, also serve as psychogeographic journeys to an Airdrie that no longer exists. The opening shot in the show is of a grainy photograph of David playing guitar, back in the 1980s. A photo taken by schoolfriend Martin Clark, who happens coincidentally (and what is coincidence, after all) to have come on board as the show’s video maker. Still photos are a crucial element of the show’s scenography.

‘For the past 25 years, I’ve been photographing Airdrie with absolutely no goal in mind,’ says David. ‘I’d go there and drive around and take black-and-white photos of streets and cafes and houses – often unpopulated shots. The Airdrie that exists in those photos is gone now…’ 

Which prompts another interesting reflection: photo as memorial device. The camera captures a second, and that image replaces any memories we might otherwise have had of that moment in time. The stage show uses those images, projected as a backdrop: ‘It’s remarkable how it has all come together’.

Sometimes we don’t know why we are doing something, but the reason emerges much later. It’s an argument in favour of instinct-led art making. As David puts it, ‘artistry is uncovering, finding out what the piece wants to be, rather than going in with a fixed idea of what it will be’.

‘OK. Why am I doing this? I’m doing it because of Memorial Device. I’m doing this to stand up for Airdrie…I’m doing it because for a moment, when everything seemed impossible, everyone was doing everything – reading, listening, writing, creating, sticking up posters, passing out, throwing up, rehearsing rehearsing rehearsing in dark windowless rooms, like the future was just up ahead… and now already it’s the rotten past, isn’t it?’ – Ross Raymond

This is Memorial Device is not your regular kind of theatrical adaptation of a novel. It’s a piece of collaboratively made total theatre that merges first-person storytelling, ritual, quirky choreography, striking visual imagery, and video and photo projection; with a musical score developed in tandem with the other elements. 

The starting point came pre-pandemic when writer/director Graham Eatough mentioned to David Greig – Suspect Culture collaborator and artistic director of the Royal Lyceum Theatre Edinburgh – that he had read and loved This is Memorial Device, and would be interested in musing on ways the novel could be adapted to a stage show. Graham had previously worked with David Greig and Nick Powell on the stage adaptation of Alasdair Gray’s 1981 novel Lanark, presented at the Edinburgh International Festival in 2015. 

Graham was a friend of musician Stephen McRobbie of Glasgow band The Pastels – also known as Stephen Pastel – who is a longtime fan of This is Memorial Device and a friend of David Keenan.

‘I felt that if David was on board, I’d be happy to be as well,’ says Stephen. ‘It is such an incredible novel that I wanted that affirmation from David. As it happens, Graham and David got on like a house on fire. And we all agreed that we wanted the show to keep the intensity of the book – we really didn’t want it to be lightweight nostalgia for the 1980s.’

The three worked together to create an initial workshop and a reading with music, presented at the Royal Lyceum Theatre’s Playing With Books slot at the Edinburgh International Book Festival. This experience gave them the impetus to pursue the project into a full theatrical adaption – and prompted the Lyceum to commission the work.

‘It was great to work with the author; the primary source,’ says Graham. ‘David was so generous with his material. The book invites you to reconsider your own experiences of this time… Adapting became a process of selection and amplification. The book has so many different voices in it, and so many different stories in it, that the process of selection was really challenging!’

Which is understandable, as the book has 26 different stories, mostly narrated by different characters – although it starts with Ross Raymond, would-be music journalist and zine editor, who is one of the few to get more than one story in the book. 

The solution was to make Ross Raymond the narrator of the theatre piece – although with some material filched from another character, Johnny McLaughlin. Ross, played by renowned Scottish actor Paul Higgins, is the only onstage performer – other characters are represented on-screen. 

‘Paul is absolutely magical,’ says Graham. ‘He has been completely central to the project, and really owns it. He’s around the same age [of the story’s main characters] with a similar background and some comparable experiences. He loves the book, and he’s bought into the idea of really doing something extraordinary in collaboration with the audience for that hour and a quarter they are together.’

So, no fourth walls here! The fact that Paul once trained for the priesthood is probably an added bonus when it comes to creating a sense of communion and shared ritual with the audience. It turns out that Ross has his own agenda that is slightly different to that stated at the beginning, this revealed as the show progresses, but that is for the audience to experience and discover.

So Ross and his, and our, relationship to Memorial Device is at the heart of the show, with some other elements of the novel necessarily sacrificed. 

‘A lot of our favourite stories aren’t in the show,’ says Graham, ‘because we had to be true to our chosen narrative; to put the real-time onstage storyteller Ross at the heart of the 75-minute show.’

It’s a wise decision – to give time and space to the limited amount of chosen material, rather than trying to shoehorn in too much. And although the focus is on Ross’s memories of Memorial Device, we never actually get to hear the music the band made.

‘One of the things that was always on my mind is that there shouldn’t be any music by Memorial Device in the production,’ says David. ‘Everyone has their own Memorial Device and I don’t think any music could live up to the idea people have of them in their head. Stephen and collaborator Gavin Thomson did this really well – worked around it somehow, without overtly stating it.’

Stephen talks of the process of creating the score, which evolved in tandem with all the other elements of the production, in consultation with Graham and David – so a truly collaborative venture. 

Stephen learnt, after the Playing with Books workshop, that it would be crucial to get trusted sound designer and technician Gavin, who he has worked with on Pastels live gigs, on board. And Gavin became far more than a technician:

‘Gav always does The Pastels live sound. He’s easy to be around and great with sound – and he’s a problem-solver, no tantrums. With This Is Memorial Device, I suppose we brought him in as our tech but he became a trusted and equal collaborator for me. I’d never worked with him in the studio before this, but will probably do so from now on.’

Stephen started with revisiting old cassette tapes of music he had made in the 1980s – so, music that existed before the book was even written:

‘The first music that I found that I thought fitted was made with my friend Corky [John McCorkindale]. We’d made this stuff as teenagers in his bedroom – usually when very drunk! We had this track called We Have Sex. We were trying to sound like Cabaret Voltaire, but were pretty inept. David heard it and thought it was a masterpiece!’

This and other 1980s pieces aren’t presented in their pure forms in the show, as Stephen says they are ‘too gnarly’, but have been worked into new sound compositions, created with Gavin: ‘There is a lot of beauty in the book and we wanted to bring that out.’  

He cites a track called ‘The Most Beautiful House in Airdrie’, which he describes as reflecting the fact that the house is indeed lovely, but infused with an air of decay. The resulting instrumental piece is a softly melancholic, bittersweet mix that captures the essence of the house perfectly. I see the track as featuring a typical Pastels guitar sound, but Stephen clarifies:

‘Gav and I both wrote chord progressions for ‘The Most Beautiful House In Airdrie’ – both of us on keyboards away from each other, unaware of what the other was doing. Gav played the guitar on this, as I had bad arthritis on the day we recorded it. I think he played it with a nod to my style and we didn’t revisit. I really like his playing! I’m on keyboards and xylophone on this one.’

And yes, elsewhere we get dashes of post-punk, industrial and noise music – but these merging effortlessly into melodic tracks that have more in common with Ryuichi Sakamoto than Throbbing Gristle. Stephen has employed his Pastels bandmates Katrina Mitchell (vocals) and Tom Crossley (flute) together with drummer Jennifer Hamilton; and he has worked with Gavin – a self-declared synth enthusiast – on creating a score that constantly echoes and references the experimenters and garage bands of the 1980s whilst sounding contemporary.

The final track of the show is the one that comes closest to evoking Memorial Device. The theatrical conceit is that it is the last piece of music made by the band’s singer Lucas Black before his death. Lucas has made field recordings outside his home at the break of dawn, and this track, ‘The Morning of the Executioners’, has been subsequently ‘sonically dicked with’ by Lucas’s bandmates, guitarist Patty Pierce and bass player Remy Parr.

‘That final track is euphoric, uplifting, transformative,’ says David ‘Audiences have responded so well to it. It’s a big YES!’

And David likes the word ‘yes’! His favourite ever book ending is James Joyce’s Ulysses, which ends with Molly Bloom saying ‘… yes I said yes I will.’ The on-stage This is Memorial Device similarly ends with a yes – this written in by Graham without him making the Ulysses connection until David pointed it out. Another meaningful coincidence…

‘I’m learning more and more about the book by watching the production,’ says David.

A story from the book that becomes a lynchpin of the show is that of band fan and associate Anthea Anderson. She recalls the Memorial Device rehearsal room under the railway arches, where a train would pass every fifteen minutes and the whole room would shake with this industrial noise: ‘You can hear it on the early recordings’, she says. ‘They said it added to the ambience.’

She goes on to recall a landscape painting on the wall that she said seemed incongruous:

‘But when I would go to the rehearsal to hang out, I would sit and stare at it, this forest scene. It was as if I could imagine myself entering it… It was as if the music had made it open up, as if it were alive. This is only me probably, but I’d go wandering amongst the trees and the bushes along this path. It was always confused. Like, it wasn’t really happening, but I wasn’t imagining it either. It was like a portal, you know? Does this sound crazy? It was there to get inside.’

The notion of portals through which we can pass to explore the music of Memorial Device and the enigma of the band, and indeed to find out more about ourselves and our memories, is central to the stage production. In essence, we are taken on a quest of discovery – and we must commit to that quest.

This story also includes a description of the band’s music, which has made it into the show’s recorded score – a track that emerged from Stephen and Gavin jamming a response to the scene. Their music invites us to form our own impressions of the band, complementing rather than illustrating Anthea’s description:

‘Patty playing one chord on the guitar, Richard playing a mechanical rhythm on the drums, Remy alternating between these two notes on the bass… and Lucas would step up to sing and he was so handsome back then. His big lips,  big Bambi eyes, his long fringe… He’d step up to sing and his lyrics would be about one thing at a time – thinking something, then seeing something, then doing something. One thing would happen after the next, like an automatic voice playing out without any personal volition…’

Although Memorial Device remain the focus, I’m pleased to learn that the story of another Airdrie band, Chinese Moon, makes it into the show…

Chinese Moon are showroom dummies. Literally. The narrator of this story is Chinese Moon member David Kilpatrick, who tells the tale of how band member Duncan’s dad, who had a high street clothes shop, agreed to let the boys appropriate the store’s mannequins, dress them in their school uniforms, and place them in the shop window with tapes playing behind them – something in between an installation and a gig. So this becomes how the band always appear when they play – absent but present. Chinese Moon appear on stage in the production as, naturally enough, mannequins.

‘The mannequins are a great way of populating the stage,’ says Graham, ‘and there are all the associations of animation and resurrection that are relevant metaphors’. Another element he highlights is the choreography (by movement director Kally Lloyd-Jones), inspired by a story in the book that describes Lucas Black leading a dance workshop in the local library. The idea of what that might be is turned into an element of ritualistic performance; a recurring movement motif that weaves through the show.

‘We invent endings, really… There is no resolution. No fixed beginning, no neatly tied up end. People have tried to read into it so much, but it was just a moment – passing.’ – Ross Raymond  

So for an hour and a quarter we are taken on the quest with our narrator. From a theatrical point of view, it is a complete experience – but it isn’t one that answers all questions. There is room to think on.

‘People want art that can be solved, wrapped up, and thus abandoned – filed away in a folder marked “understood”. I’m much more interested in art that is an organic entity,’ says David.

He is confident that Memorial Device will continue to mutate into new incarnations. The book and the theatre show will live on, as will the spin-offs not authored by David Keenan – who in any case sees himself as ‘a vessel, a channel, not a puppet-master’. Having toured Scotland through Spring 2024, the show is at Riverside Studios for its London premiere from 23 April to 11 May 2024.

The album – another part of the story – is in the can, created by Stephen and Gavin and collaborators, with a gorgeous cover by former member and long-term Pastels collaborator Annabel Wright (aka Aggi).

So who knows what will emerge next. An installation, a site-responsive event, a painting exhibition, an exploration in contemporary dance, perhaps…

‘There’s that stupid expression – that writing about music is like dancing about architecture – but why not dance about architecture?’ he says. ‘You can definitely fucking dance about architecture’.

Why not indeed. 

This Is Memorial Device.

To be continued… whenever, wherever.

Featured image (top): This Is Memorial Device. Photo: Mihaela Bodlovic

Dorothy Max Prior spoke to David Keenan, Graham Eatough and Stephen McRobbie via Zoom, 2 April 2024.

This is Memorial Device, adapted and directed by Graham Eatough from the novel by David Keenan, was commissioned by the Royal Lyceum Theatre Edinburgh: @lyceumedinburgh

It was developed with the support of the Stephen W Dunn Theatre Fund and originally produced in a co-production with the Edinburgh International Book Festival. 

Scottish Spring 2024 tour dates:

Tron Theatre, Glasgow – 27-30 March 2024

Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh – 3-6 April

Lemon Tree, Aberdeen – 18-20 April

This Is Memorial Device comes to Riverside Studios for its London premiere from Tuesday 23 April – Saturday 11 May 2024

7.45pm (Wednesday and Saturday Matinees at 2.30pm, not 24 April) £30 (£20 concession)
www.riversidestudios.co.uk

Twitter/X: @riversidelondon | Instagram:@riversidestudioslondon

David Keenan was born in Glasgow and grew up in Airdrie, in the west of Scotland. He is the author of six novels, including the cult classic This Is Memorial Device (Faber & Faber), which won the London Magazine Award for Debut Fiction 2018 and was shortlisted for the Gordon Burn Prize. He is also the author of England’s Hidden Reverse (Strange Attractor Press), a history of the UK’s post-punk/Industrial underground, as well as To Run Wild In It and Empty Aphrodite, (Rough Trade Books), two experimental novellas, and is the co-designer, alongside Sophy Hollington, of his own tarot deck, the Autonomic Tarot (Rough Trade Books). 

Twitter/X: @reversediorama

Graham Eatough is a theatre maker who also works in visual art and film. He is the writer/adapter and director of the stage show This Is Memorial Device. Other recent work includes co-writing and co-directing the book and film for the Floating Worlds project made with Dutch artist Andre Dekker on the Island of Mull in Scotland; an adaptation of Naoki Higashida’s book about autism, The Reason I Jump staged in a specially designed outdoor maze for National Theatre of Scotland; How To Act written and directed for National Theatre of Scotland; Nomanslanding a large scale floating public artwork to commemorate the First World War (Sydney Harbour, Ruhrtrienalle, Glasgow Tramway). He was artistic director of Suspect Culture theatre company from 1996 to 2009 creating over fifteen pieces of new work with the company, shown across the UK and internationally.

Stephen McRobbie (aka Stephen Pastel) co-founded The Pastels in Glasgow in 1981. They were a key act of the Scottish and British independent music scenes of the 1980s, and are specifically credited for the development of an independent and confident music scene in Glasgow. The group have had a number of members, but currently consists of Stephen McRobbie, Katrina Mitchell, Tom Crossley, John Hogarty, Alison Mitchell and Suse Bear.

The Pastels now operate their own Geographic Music label through Domino, and are partners in Glasgow’s Monorail Music shop.

Instagram: @pastelsthe

The album This Is Memorial Device by Stephen Pastel and Gavin Thomson will be released 28 June 2024.

Available from https://www.dominomusic.com/uk and https://monorailmusic.com/

An appreciation of Penny Francis, MBE who died in June 2023. Dorothy Max Prior and a host of other friends, former students, and colleagues from the world of puppetry and visual theatre tell us what the incorrigible Doyenne of Puppetry meant to them.

We have lost our Queen! 

Dear Penny Francis has left the building.

That’s Penny Francis, founder of the Puppet Centre Trust, and a tireless advocate and supporter of puppetry for seven decades.

Penny Francis, educator, puppetry tutor, and lecturer on the prestigious MA in Advanced Theatre Practice at the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama. 

Penny Francis, writer and editor, author of Puppetry: a Reader in Theatre Practice, and tireless translator of the works of her friend Henryk Jurkowski; founding editor of Animations magazine, contributing editor of Animations Online and Animations in Print, and long-term contributor to Total Theatre Magazine.

When I asked people to send in their appreciations of Penny, the same words and phrases popped up again and again: Penny, we all agree, was a legend, formidable, an inspiration, dedicated, funny, enthusiastic, independent, open-minded, supportive. There again, she could be strongly opinionated – and sometimes a harsh critic. She was never afraid to speak her mind. She radiated ‘fierce intelligence, determination, and sparkling optimism’ says chair of the Puppet Centre Trust,  Mervyn Millar.

The last time I saw Penny in person, I went to her house in Bromfelde Road in Clapham for afternoon tea. When I arrived at 4pm, clutching flowers, wine and cake, she said, ‘Oh never mind the tea, let’s open the wine!’

Like many of Penny’s friends and colleagues, I have fond memories of this house, having drunk many a cup of tea and glass of wine in the comfy sitting room that overlooked her pretty walled garden. At other times, we might be sat at her table tucking in to an Indian take-away after an Animations editorial meeting; or gathered around the piano in the front room on a winter’s evening, singing Christmas carols whilst Penny thumped the keys.

Her funeral was, of course, a very sad occasion but a splendid tribute to Penny, featuring Music Hall songs and puppetry alongside the more traditional hymns and eulogies. I was pleased that we got invited back to her house afterwards. Just to see her piano one more time was such a pleasure, and to drink a glass of her favoured white wine as we swapped memories and anecdotes – many of which seemed to revolve around Penny’s erratic driving and bizarre parking choices.

When looking through my old emails, I find that the last one I received from Penny had the subject line ‘Do Come With the Chablis Soon’. As always, it was addressed to ‘Maxie Waxie’ and signed ‘Henny Penny’. As with so many of people who knew Penny and remember her here, what had started as a work connection had turned into a rich longterm friendship that had lasted until she died.

I’m trying to remember how and when I first met Penny. When I was appointed editor of Total Theatre Magazine in 2000, I ‘inherited’ Penny as a regular contributor, and advisor to the editorial board. But I’d met her before then, I know I had. She seemed to always be there.

Perhaps I first met her at the Puppet Centre at Battersea Arts Centre. I lived around the corner for a few years in the mid- to late-1980s, and frequently visited this fabulous storehouse of puppets,where you might find anything  from Bagpuss to Balinese Wayang Kulit. My baby son Gabriel loved going there. He grew up to be the Animations Online designer, before going on to become a film-maker, always praised and encouraged in his work by Penny, who was a fantastic supporter of talented young people.

Then again, I had probably been introduced to Penny sometime in the 1990s at a London International Mime Festival show. This annual festival ran from 1977 to 2023, showcasing the best of the world’s visual theatre, including puppetry and animation, and Penny was a vociferous supporter, and sometime advisor. 

‘We loved Penny. What a star! What a loss,’ say LIMF directors Helen Lannaghan and Joseph Seelig.  ‘She supported our festival from the outset, with friendship, and with recommendations of unusual puppetry seen on her travels. And she’d seen everything. She was clever and determined, sparkling fun and always great company. Forever youthful. We miss her.’

I do remember attending a Puppet Centre meeting at BAC, where the then-director of the venue, Tom Morris, asked if anybody might be interested in joining with Penny Francis to discuss the re-launching of Animations magazine. I put up my hand. Just a few days later, Penny turned up at Total Theatre HQ at Circus Space in Hoxton, with an emerging puppeteer called Mark Down in tow. Mark knows all about websites, Penny says by way of introduction, and we think that we could re-launch Animations as an online magazine, with you as editor. It was clear that saying no wasn’t an option. So we did, the three of us, with no finances or other resources. 

Mark was one of Penny’s former students. Anyone who entered her orbit tended to stay there – she seemed to collect people (as well as puppets). He’d first encountered her when he auditioned at Royal Central School of Speech and Drama in 1995:

‘She waved her hands in the air animatedly and told us all, “I’m the puppetry tutor!”. I didn’t know what a puppetry tutor was. I found out that it was someone who suggests you use puppetry in all your projects, at every opportunity, and as much as possible. And I took her advice. After drama school, when I was very ‘out of work’, Penny put my name forward for jobs involving puppets, she invited me to puppetry conferences, she introduced me to people who did puppets, she invited me to birthday parties with puppets, and she asked me to join the board of the Puppet Centre Trust. She did the same, I believe, for and to countless other people (and puppets) over many generations. To me she was puppetry tutor, puppetry mentor, and puppetry friend. She was a force of nature.’ 

A little while after that, with Animations Online up and running, Penny made another introduction: Beccy Smith, also an ex-student, who was going to come to work with Penny at Puppet Centre Trust, and would get us some funding. And that’s what happened – the young Beccy was soon raised up to the lofty heights of Director of PCT, and did indeed bring in some much-needed income for the Centre and for its publication, Animations, which we were now talking about developing further, with an annual review, Animations In Print, being mooted.

‘Penny was a compelling person who inspired many of us during her time at Central,’ says Beccy,  ‘We learnt the value and relevance of puppetry as a contemporary artform through a combination of relentless critique and unstinting loyalty. Like many others, I owe what has become a rewarding career in puppetry and producing work to her. At the Puppet Centre she was a rigorous champion for the artform and a truly inspirational mentor, driven always by the potential for excellence she could discern in new work and new people. What I loved most, however, was her sharp mind (and tongue) and sense of fun. Fearless combatant in the art of The Parson’s Cat and game player of ridiculous murder mysteries (her Frazzle the Clown was unforgettable, darling!) but often beaten in the game of Find the Car. She modelled a unique way of contributing to culture and community.’

Penny, Beccy and I worked together for many years on Animations Online and Animations in Print – and Beccy and I continue to work together on Total Theatre Magazine, which Penny contributed to regularly from its founding in 1989 until 2018.

Penny and I shared duties on numerous panels and talks about puppetry and animation, across the UK. There was many an outing to see shows together. We went to the London International Mime Festival, to Visions Festival, to The Little Angel Theatre, to Riverside and the Southbank and of course to Battersea Arts Centre. With Penny, I met many of the world’s leading puppeteers and puppetry companies. 

We often socialised together, going out for lunch or dinner in London, or going to parties at Beccy’s house in Brighton, which she shares with her husband and collaborator in Touched Theatre, Darren East.

During the various lockdowns of recent years, Beccy switched her legendary murder mystery parties to Zoom, and Penny would participate, determinedly staying in character as Miss-Lost-Her-Marbles or whatever as she struggled with the technology: ‘I can’t see you! Where have you gone?’ was a frequent cry. 

Another of Penny’s students was Rachel Riggs, who co-founded DNA puppetry company after leaving Central, and who also went on to be a close friend, a relationship that blossomed from when they met in the Green Room in Manchester 30 years ago, through the Central years and beyond into professional practice for Rachel in both the UK and Australia; continuing right to the end, with Rachel helping to care for Penny in her final days, then joining granddaughter Kati Tārā in the arduous task of clearing Penny’s house and re-distributing her precious books and puppets.

‘Penny was my mentor, and she changed my life,’ says Rachel. ‘When I met her she said, “You absolutely have to come on this course I’m starting at Central School of Speech and Drama – you must, darling, you must!” So I did, and one month later, sleeping on my friend’s floor in a flat in Hampstead, I was enrolled and a real student of puppetry – she made my dream come true… We had a year of amazing experiences, training of the highest quality with master puppeteers in theatre and television, the whole wonderful world of puppetry opened like a magic box of delicious tricks, and we were the luckiest students alive! She took us to the festival at Charleville Mezieres, to perform our student group show, and to experience the amazing universe of international puppetry for the first time. Penny was my fairy godmother, and she lit up the world for me… She demanded proper representation and professional education for puppetry – an artform often seen as being only for children. In an often male-dominated arena of Punch & Judy professors and Machiavellian-minded puppeteers, Penny was a strong and determined woman.’

Penny Francis was born Penelope Ann Elsdon-Smith in Kolkata in India on the 17th of April 1931. She was an only child, and she attended the Hilltop School in India, before being sent to the UK to complete her education at Cheltenham Ladies College, where her favourite subjects were athletics and dancing. She was, it is said, extremely good at performing even at that early age. She left school at 18 and started a degree in Spanish at Kings College, but left to go onto the stage.

In 1954, she married her husband Derek Francis whilst they were both working at the Oxford Playhouse. They subsequently set up home in South West London; a home described by Derek Parry, family friend and celebrant of her funeral, as an extension of the West End – replete with its own puppet theatre, and an ever-revolving cast of actor friends (Ronnie Barker was best man at Penny and Derek’s wedding). Penny was widowed in 1984 when she was 53. The couple had two children, Tessa and Julia (sadly, Julia died in 2008) and a number of grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

Puppeteer Ronnie le Drew was a longterm friend of the family:

‘I first met Penny In the early 1960s. I was taken to Penny and Derek’s then-home in Putney. I saw a wonderful production of the Christmas story, performed by Penny and Derek for their two girls, Tessa and Julia.’

Penny was a renowned actress and Ronnie describes Derek as ‘a brilliant character actor, not only on stage, but in television and film, and an amazing puppet maker and designer’.

Seeing this performance was the start of a very long friendship for Ronnie and the Francis family. He continues the story:

‘Penny was such a vibrant and passionate woman, and it wasn’t long before she got involved with the puppetry organisations – she had given up her acting career to look after her children, but now her passion and vitality was channelled into puppetry. And it proved immensely helpful to us struggling puppeteers, for she made connections with the Arts Council of Great Britain and other funders. It wasn’t long before she had organised an International Puppetry Festival in London, the first of two. She then went on to co-found The Puppet Centre Trust which had two large rooms (at Battersea Arts Centre) dedicated to puppetry in all its forms; where there was a library of books and videos, and a permanent exhibition of puppets on show. Courses and talks soon took place, as well as performances by new professional puppeteers and established companies. The larger companies performed in the main auditorium of the arts centre. She joined the world puppetry organisation, UNIMA, and travelled to festivals around the globe, championing British puppetry and puppeteers, soon gaining respect globally from many of the world’s most famous puppeteers. She later became the patron of the Curious School of Puppetry, and attended and spoke at many of its events, always with humour and integrity. As she got older, I visited her at her home. Even if her body didn’t allow her to go to her beloved theatre anymore, her mind and humour never left her. She would say “Darling would you like a drink of wine? Just go downstairs and get some glasses…” and when I came back, she produced a bottle of wine which she’d kept by her seat for the occasion.’

Penny was so beloved of so many people within the puppetry and visual theatre community. There follows a number of further reminiscences and appreciations from the people she worked with, taught, mentored and supported. 

I think I speak for everyone when I say: we miss you, Penny! 

‘It seems inconceivable that Penny Francis, the great grandmother of puppetry, is no longer with us. Since the very beginning of my journey with the puppets, from The Ghost Downstairs to The Vinegar Works, Dr Faustus, Shockheaded Peter, Satyagraha, and My Neighbour Totoro, which we are working on right now, Penny’s presence was always there. At a time when puppetry was virtually ignored, Penny was a quiet supporter and loud advocate for the puppets. She connected us to a noble lineage that didn’t just know puppetry was more than trivial; it was a form that could go deeper, darker, more radical, and could say the things the humans couldn’t. Penny herself has now become part of that lineage, and her kindness and passion will continue to inspire us through the creativity, commitment, and love of the puppeteers she has supported and loved over the years.’ Phelim McDermott, theatre and opera director, Improbable

‘Many of my most treasured memories of Penny were formed in and around editorial meetings of Animations Online and Animations-in-Print. Penny consistently championed British companies such as Improbable  and Faulty Optic that she admired and felt close to, while at the same time was constantly attentive to French and other European puppetry, and other puppet companies around the world. Her enthusiasm and openness to new forms and styles of puppetry were contagious.’  Matthew Isaac Cohen, Professor, University of Connecticut

‘I met Penny at the Puppet Centre. She had previously supported my father’s puppetry act The Buckmaster Puppets and then went on to support me to receive the Puppetry Bursary. She continued to support me throughout my career, as she has done for so many people in the puppetry world.

We shared a birthday and a passion. She was an inspiration. Her dedication and achievements were so impressive. She will be very missed but her impact lives on.’ Sue Buckmaster, artistic director of Theatre-Rites

‘I was the first Education Officer at the Puppet Centre from 1989 – 1992, just out of teaching and new to London and arts world  – I learned a lot from Penny.  She was the best advocate for puppetry and widening understanding of its possibilities in theatre, performance, education and training. She was funny and inspiring and wove her way uniquely through the world.  She will be much missed.’ Anna Ledgard

‘As a dear family friend, Penny was a part of every pivotal moment of my creative life. She most importantly supported, as advisor and Patron, the founding of Curious School of Puppetry. Penny delighted in meeting young puppeteers – artists whose passion for puppetry mirrored her own and who gave her energy and hope for the future of the artform she loved so dearly. I miss her deeply, her boundless positivity and her joy in people. Penny and my dad (John Wright, co-founder with Lyndie Wright of the Little Angel Theatre) would both attend any event, say yes to any opportunity, and encourage me to do the same saying, “Go, do it, you never know who you might meet!”’ Sarah Wright, puppeteer and director of the Curious School of Puppetry

‘Penny was probably one of the first people I met in the puppetry world, when I was still an actor and she was heading the puppetry course at Central. When I finally stepped onto the puppetry ladder to work with Christopher Leith in 1997 at the Little Angel, Penny was right behind me. She encouraged and mentored me throughout the next 20 years, seeing every single show I was in and having constructive stuff to say about all of them – well, nearly all! She knew what worked and what didn’t, and didn’t hold back if something wasn’t working for her. She had boundless energy and enthusiasm and was generous with her extensive knowledge. She supported me and everyone else who was part of this world of puppetry and animation, whether they were just starting out or at the top of the tree.’ Mandy Travis, actor, puppeteer and musician

“It was early 1990. I had studied for a Bachelor of Theatre and worked full time for a puppet theatre for two years in Australia. Newly arrived in London, I asked around for information about the puppetry scene in the UK. Very quickly I was told to speak to Penny Francis, particularly as I was keen to see the inaugural graduating class at ESNAM in France. Penny immediately offered me a lift in her car, so I got on the ferry at Dover as a pedestrian. Penny, with her usual generous spirit, found me lodgings, and introduced me to her European colleagues – and a firm friendship was born. Penny was a powerhouse. For thirty years she encouraged me to keep trying, keep improving. Penny did more to advance and promote the status of puppetry as an artform and the skills of the puppeteer than anyone I have ever known, and likely ever will.” Adam Bennett, puppeteer, co-founder DNA

‘Penny was puppetry royalty and an absolute gem of a person, dedicated to the sector and determined to raise up both established and new puppeteers. I had the joy of being interviewed by her at the very start of my career for Animations Magazine and it was a joy and inspiration to speak to someone so knowledgable and kind. We kept in touch through the years and she continued to be supportive of my work (she even appreciated soap I made her). People like Penny are rare. It’s so sad we have lost her but she will shine on in all who knew her.’ Shona Reppe, theatre-maker & puppeteer (and soap maker)  

‘Penny was very serious about the things that bring light to people’s lives. Theatre for example. She knew the power of the puppet as storytelling master/mistress in her very bones. In a hotel room in Poland, where we were attending an international puppetry festival, she told me over a glass of vodka: “Never forget. Puppets can express things that are too unbearable to utter one moment, leaving you heartbroken, and then double you over laughing with their nonsense and joy the next.” She stayed in touch all the years beyond my time as a student at Central. Although for some reason the Xmas cards I sent her each year were almost annually returned to me in March, despite her insistence that I had her correct address. How very Penny. An international woman of Festive mystery. She gave us an olive tree when we got married. That meant a lot. One of the last times I spent with her in the flesh she was dressed as a clown with orange hair and never broke character. 100% present in every moment. That is how I will remember Penny Francis.’ Zoe Hunter, actor, writer, and puppeteer

‘I first met Penny during my audition for Central’s MA in Advanced Theatre Practice. At that point in my life (1999), I was in the midst of a soul-searching journey, grappling with questions about my artistic identity. I had explored various facets of performing arts, including acting, mask work, physical theatre, and dance, but none of them seemed to offer me a true sense of belonging.

‘Penny inquired about my past experiences in theatre, and as I shared my journey, she remarked: “Well young lady, you are a puppeteer!” Penny held belief in the visual ideas I harboured, even when I doubted myself. Her encouragement empowered me to bring my artistic visions to life on the stage. I became a professional puppeteer. This gift she gave me remains with me all this years, influencing my theatre work. And Penny’s role as a tutor did not end with my graduation. She continued to ensure my ongoing personal and professional development. I am sure she did it with others as well. She had essential impact on a broader community; from her I got the sense that puppeteering is a kind of family.’ Avital Dvory, puppeteer and visual theatre director

‘Penny was one of the first people I encountered at the Puppet Centre when it had a physical space in BAC in the 1990s. I met her first as a theatre-maker curious about puppetry, later as an applicant for Puppet Centre bursaries and schemes that would profoundly influence and transform my career, as they did so many others. Penny managed to combine being an extraordinary enthusiast for and champion of puppetry with being a phenomenally acute and perceptive critic. She set extremely high standards for herself and expected them from those around her. She encouraged participation but was most thrilled and excited by virtuosity, expertise, experiment, and the richness of the artform. It wasn’t possible to meet Penny without emerging invigorated, inspired, with a renewed sense of the importance of puppetry, and usually with two or three recommendations of shows to see – she was always keen to promote the work of emerging artists and companies of note.’ Mervyn Millar, puppeteer and chair of the Puppet Centre Trust

Finally, let’s remember Penny on the occasion that her professional life went full circle, performing one last time with former student Mischa Twitchin, a director and dramaturg, and co-founder of Shunt, the renowned ensemble company that grew out of Central’s MA in Advanced Theatre Practice.

‘Thanks to the generosity of Luis Vieira and Rute Ribeiro, the wonderful directors of the Tarumba/ FIMFA puppetry festival in Lisbon, Penny made her return to the stage after many decades as the doyenne of puppetry in the UK – not on the main stage but directly below it! 

‘In 2013, we played our Beckett show – In the Zone of Stones (with text drawn from Ill Seen Ill Said) – in the atmospheric space directly beneath the main stage of the historic Teatro San Luis in the heart of Lisbon. The low wooden ceiling was held up by wrought iron pillars, in between which we and the audience shared an extraordinary, intimate darkness. In this space, resonating then with Beckett’s narrative, Penny performed a solo “pantomime of memory” with a handful of objects taken from and returned to a small suitcase that she clutched to herself. We did only a few performances but it was all a wonderful experience – from rehearsing in Penny’s living room in Clapham to then participating in this international festival, where Penny was, of course, known to so many of the other artists performing. 

‘The dinners during the festival were as much a highlight as the shows, full of the warmth and humour of Penny’s innumerable friendships. In this respect, her special relationship with Henryk Jurkowski should also be remembered. Amongst so many other projects, Henryk was editor in chief of UNIMA’s World Encyclopaedia of Puppetry and Penny worked tirelessly to make his research and insights accessible to an Anglophone readership, including through a second edition of the essays collected as Aspects of Puppet Theatre, now published by Palgrave (originally published by the Puppet Centre).

‘Perhaps the best word to evoke Penny’s presence might be, indeed, ‘animation’ – whether in the art of theatre or in personal relationships, and most often where these two were interwoven.’

Penelope Ann Francis, born 17 April 1931 in Kolkata, India; died 29 June 2023 in London. 

A film of the above mentioned performance, In the Zone of Stones (with text drawn from Samuel Beckett’s Ill Seen Ill Said), featuring Penny Francis, can be seen on Vimeo: https://vimeo.com/manage/videos/84826418 

 Puppetry: a Reader in Theatre Practice by Penny Francis is published by Palgrave Macmillan (2012). 

The last article written by Penny Francis for Total Theatre Magazine, Puppetry in Performance, can be read here: https://totaltheatre.org.uk/archive/pathways/puppetry-performance

A memorial event to commemorate Penny’s life is planned for April 2024. Details will be published nearer the time on the Total Theatre Magazine social media pages.

Featured image (top of page) Silent Tide: The Adventures of Curious Ganz. Director Sarah Wright. Photo Steve Tanner.

A round-up of Out There Festival 2023 which brought good cheer and top-notch physical, visual and musical performance to the streets, parks and seafront of Great Yarmouth. Dorothy Max Prior reports 

It’s 11am on a sunny Saturday in September, and here we are, in St George’s Park in Yarmouth, sitting at a cafe drinking a flat white and eating a pastel de nata – there’s a massive Portuguese-speaking community here, and these delicious little custard tarts are very much a local delicacy. As I sip my (excellent) coffee, I’m watching the park come to life for Out There Festival’s biggest day. 

There are small brightly-coloured vintage caravans scattered around the park, acting as information points. There are craft stalls, and booths selling food and drink. There is an interesting-looking contraption put together by Japanese musician and installation-maker Ichi, a kind of giant marble-run made out of scrap objects, which he’s called Tobogan Gaki. There are flags and tree-dressings and hanging sculptures. A big mechanical metal horse is whinnying and tossing his head – this is Paka’s wonderful creation, the trusty Rusty, who’s about to go Out and About with a Whinny and a Canter. A nun on a giant hoverboard sporting a baby grand piano (Musical Ruth) whizzes past Rusty, who neighs loudly at her. And all across the park, soundchecks and rigging checks are happening at the six or so different stages and pitches, where in just an hour’s time, the day’s programme will kick off with a whole host of outdoor arts and circus shows of all scales and styles.

Although Saturday is the fullest day, the festival is well and truly in the swing by now. It had started on Friday with a day of professional networking for artists, producers and other industry types. As people arrived in the morning, they were greeted with a What3Words game to share where they’re at and how they feel about the current state-of-play, for their own practice and for the sector. A communal lunch gave people the chance to catch up, and this was followed by a panel discussion on music in outdoor arts – the Sounds Out There strand of the festival saw an emphasis on music as an integral part of the outdoor arts sector, as witnessed in very many of the shows in this year’s programme, in which the music was far more than just an accompaniment to physical performance. At the official festival launch on Friday early evening, tributes were paid to artistic director Joe Mackintosh, on the occasion of this year’s double anniversary: 15 years of the festival and 25 years of Out There Arts, the organisation behind it that Joe has steered from small-scale outfit to Arts Council National Portfolio status. The role that Joe’s right-hand woman, executive director Veronica Stephens, has played in that was also acknowledged. Veronica is well known to many in the outdoor arts industry as as a former director of Zap Arts (in its later days) and producer of Streets of Brighton – a once major part of the Brighton Festival which is sadly no more. Brighton’s loss is Yarmouth’s gain, clearly…

Friday evening saw Party in the Park animating St George’s with a team of renowned DJs and dancers, and the organisation’s HQ at Drill House was also a hive of activity. Meanwhile, along the seafront at St Nicholas’ car park, we had the fabulous opening night show Résiste by Les Filles Du Renard Pale, who festival director Joe described as the ‘all-female powerhouse’: a dynamic duo who combined live music with a breathtaking display of tightwire skills on a rig that was scarily tugged and tilted into different permutations. The duo comprises a talented multi-instrumentalist who is equally at ease with grungy feedback guitar, trip-hop synths, and dreampop vocals; paired with a very talented circus performer who dangles and dances on the wires with wild abandon. And sometimes the musician also joined her, cocooned in an aerial pod hung from the wire! Here was a show where the music and the physical performance worked together in perfect symbiosis – an exciting start to the weekend. A shout out also to local bands Arthur Black and Jehenna, who warmed up the space for an hour or so before the main show, with an onsite bar to help ease everyone into the weekend.

The coming together of circus and live music was something of a theme for this year’s Out There Festival. In one way, nothing new there: live music has always been a key element of traditional circus, and it is usual for clowns to also be talented musicians, incorporating their musical skills into the ground routines (providing the space for aerial rigging and act turnarounds).

But what is different here is the number of companies that are integrating live music into a more progressive or experimental contemporary circus landscape – often with no demarcation between roles.

Take, for example, Sur Mesure with their show Barriere, presented as part of the Spotlight on Flanders showcase, and seen Saturday daytime. The story here is of four border guards who get up to all sorts of high jinks when bored. The staging is a small hut next to a metal barrier which is attached to a winch that can be cranked up and down. Our team of three women and one man have an astonishing array of skills between them. All are fabulous physical performers. The trio of women also gig as a music ensemble, and all three are talented multi-instrumentalists and singers. We have guitar, banjo, various brass instruments, keyboards and percussion in the mix. The barrier, when cranked up, gets used as an aerial rig – giving us a very lovely upside-down coffee-drinking act, and a comedy straps number. The male performer does a great macho put-down as he paso doble dances himself into a tight corner. It is all a joy to behold, and musically brilliant to boot – a mix of great tunes and fabulous sung harmonies. 

Also part of the excellent Spotlight on Flanders programme is Collectif Malunés with We Agree to Disagree, which was the big draw in the park on Saturday afternoon. And my goodness, what a show! It has it all. There are extraordinary circus skills, including high-flying swinging trapeze on one rig and doubles on another, wire-walking, teeter-board, acrobatics and hand-to-hand. It has live music. It has humour a-plenty. And it has audience interaction – and then some. Audience members are roped in to tug ropes and counter-weight, to read out speeches, sing in a choir, play keyboards, throw rice at a ‘wedding’, push buzzers, be climbed upon or jumped over – and even to be taken up as high as the sky on the trapeze (firmly and safely held by the artists). A young girl looks like she’s achieved her heart’s desire as she is carried high, supported from above and below as if by angels; and an elderly woman standing on the trapeze, the aerialist wrapping her arms around her as they are drawn upward to the heavens together, is beaming with joy. It is a fabulous 75 minutes of immersive performance of the highest order – one of the best outdoor shows I’ve seen in many a year, and one that will stay with me for a long time.

Meanwhile, down at the Marina Centre on the seafront, a stage on the beach is the setting for Orbita, an intriguing mix of music, dance and circus. The music is mostly live classical/flamenco guitar (with a little bit of looping and effects here and there) by a wonderful female guitarist, who moves around the stage with ease; with a fantastic coming together of flamenco dance, urban dance and circus skills (hand-balancing, Cyr wheel, acrobatics) from a very talented male performer.The couple, collectively known as Zen del Sur, come from Cadiz in Andalusia, but are now based in Granada. I’ll admit, as a flamenco aficionado, to some trepidation as I arrived at the start of the show, as these kind of hybrid re-interpretations of flamenco can so often go awry – but within minutes I relaxed, aware that I was in the hands of people who loved the form and had worked hard on a respectful honouring of the traditions whilst demonstrating a wonderful willingness to experiment and to create something brand-new and exciting. I particularly love the way that  objects such as the cajon percussion box and the Cyr wheel are used in an innovative way – the cajon used for hand-balancing, the wheel enclosing the two performers into a tight circle. A magical performance.

Poppy Plowman and Zara Hudson’s Turk(ish) also combines live music and contemporary circus. Here, we have cello from Zara Hudson and tightwire from Poppy Plowman. Plus, pre-recorded verbatim text and live spoken word – a mix of autobiography and true-life stories giving us a feminist debunking of the intrinsically racist Western beauty industry. Turk(ish) comes with good intentions, and both performers demonstrate a high level of skill in circus and music. The use of radio mics feels like an unnecessary faff – not least because they are erratically-functioning, so the live text is often inaudible, but also because turning radio mics on and off before doing a hair-hang or a complicated dance along a tightwire feels a little awkward. Perhaps it would be better if all or most of the spoken text became pre-recorded and integrated into the soundscape? But these are decisions for another time – this was the very first outing for a show newly devised, and outdoor arts work inevitably needs to be tried out in the open air with a live audience to know what works and what needs working on. It is early days for (Turk)ish and as the show is supported by Out There Arts it will no doubt get further development.There’s the makings of a good show in there: both performers are clearly talented, there are very many strong visual images, and the ‘subject matter is interesting.

One of the most exciting and extraordinary music and circus combinations seen at Out There 2023 was a collaboration that only came about at the eleventh hour. Amoukanama are a Flanders-based acrobatic troupe, comprising performers of African heritage, who only just made it to Yarmouth after a hair-raising dash across Europe to pick up visas that had previously been refused. They were paired with The African Choir of Norfolk, who feature songs from 16 different African nations. After just one Zoom rehearsal, and an in-person meeting a mere hour or so before the show, the two companies pulled out all the stops and wowed the night-time park audience with an extraordinary display of song, dance and acrobatics. We started with the beautifully-dressed women singers – resplendent in traditional circular skirts and head-dresses – doing a short set on a stage. Then, the male acrobats burst into the space, giving us a fabulous display of tumbling and balancing, human towers and pyramids rising and falling. The women then moved down onto the grass, and their lyrical song and traditional dance moves were met by the acrobats, so that all of the space was filled with one harmonious team creating a wondrous mix of music and physical performance. Amoukanama also performed a number of great daytime shows in St George’s Park the next day – seemingly still full of energy.   

Music of another sort was seen in the Oktopus Orkestar trio which features three wonderful one-man bands: orchestra leader Karl Stets, a former circus performer now focusing on his music, but retaining a circus sensibility and flexibility; the Martin Kasper Orkestra which declares itself to be ‘minimalist and virtuoso all in one’; and Santiago Moreno (from Argentina) who uses a series of pulleys and strings along with his guitar, utilising the principles of puppetry and the complexity of Latin American rhythms. I catch Santiago Moreno’s show down at the Marina Centre, and marvel at just how many things he manages to manipulate with his hands, feet, arms, elbows and head. I see the multi-armed and many-legged Oktopus at Drill House, where each man gets a solo slot, then the three combine to create something extraordinary that is far more than the sum of their parts. It really does sound as a if a full orchestra is on the stage, with brass, wind, guitar, and percussion of all sorts combining into a magnificent musical melée.  The trio were greeted with tumultuous applause at the Drill House – definitely a popular booking!

One of the many things I like about Out There Festival is the thoughtful programming that sees a genuinely eclectic mix of experimental and genre-defying work with the classic crowd pleasers of traditional street theatre.

In this second category come such stalwarts as MarkMark, who seemed to be everywhere over the weekend, with interactive walkabouts such as PC Gone Mad, which comes with the tag line ‘whatever you’re doing, stop it now’ and the ‘spectacularly camp’ swashbuckling Pirates of Northants; an indoor cameo slot for Team B Gees, their irrepressible tribute to The Bee Gees, seen at Friday’s launch event;  and static show The Maniax, presented right outside the Drill House on a high stage, and featuring comic routines, daring stunts and illusions, and a Houdini-inspired escapology finale, replete with audience countdown.

Also outside the Drill House – and at numerous other locations across Yarmouth – were Hicks & Rudkin with Tony & Ray Find Their Feet, in which two mature workmen steal a moment to indulge their passion in eccentric dance. A mobile tool cart becomes the vehicle for a portable sound system, so the team are self-sufficient – and although static for their ten-minute slots, they provide many of the advantages of a walkabout act. This was the show’s very first outing, but it is already a winner – the combination of well-honed physical humour (as the pair attempt to capture an invisible squeaking something-or-other on the ground) with the lovely little dance routines, that include a classic soft-shoe-shuffle and a paso doble, working very well. Of course, the two-man act is a mainstay of physical comedy, in both music hall and film/TV – and these two play on all the tropes of rivalry and one-upmanship with experienced ease. I suppose it could develop into a longer show, but there is something very pleasing about it being a little burst of heart-warming humour that pops up all over the place, in between the longer static shows at the fixed pitches, or anywhere on the streets.

The solo clown or comedian is also well in evidence here, with a great one-man act from Daryl J Carrington, whose word-free act combines clowning, juggling and object manipulation with comic portraiture (in chalk) and audience participation, as he draws (literally) two men in from the audience to form part of his giant-ball-throwing team. Belfast comic Paul Currie – a last-min addition to the programme – is certainly not word free. His act, presented on the seafront stage, features a barrage of patter from beginning to end. It’s great stuff! Described by the man himself as ‘a screaming hysteric waterslide ride of joy all the way back to your childhood’ it’s chock full of popular culture references, mostly from TV and film of the past couple of decades so much of it goes over my head, but I love it all anyway. He has us all flying through the air riding a dragon, playing imaginary pan-pipes, and dancing like there’s no tomorrow. There are an endless number of props, dragged out of a suitcase he constantly rummages through. He plays a ‘hus-key-board’ – a little Casio inserted into a husky dog puppet – and a pair of panda puppets become his ‘panda hands’. There are plenty of comic references to his Belfast childhood of 40 years ago, at the height of The Troubles. When handing out party poppers to a row of kids he says ‘Beware Belfast men handing you explosives’. A noisy, windy beach might not be the ideal pitch for this sort of act, but Paul Currie overcomes all obstacles and conquers the crowd. His control of the ‘house’, the ad-libbing and the full-on interaction with the audience (particularly the children) is of the highest order. A grand success!

Still with the comedy: The Miraculous Theatre Company’s Dead starts as a processional piece as we follow a pair of undertakers (a classic pantomime duo of bossy fool and obsequious servant) as they manoeuvre a coffin from a pub through the backstreets of Yarmouth. They rap on church doors to be let in, stop the traffic with officious bluster, and enlist audience members to help carry the coffin. When they arrive at the Drill House, they set the coffin in place on a bier outside. The energy goes up a notch as we learn that our undertaker friends are fed-up with their usual traditional offerings, and have decided instead to transform the business into Happy Endings Funeral Services. Audience members are enlisted to don grass skirts and Hawaiian leis in rainbow colours, and to dance and play the ukulele to see the dead off with gay abandon. Only one problem: they seem to have lost the body… A solid, old-fashioned piece of British street theatre, well realised and performed by two seasoned artists who know how to work an audience.

French company L’Abre a Vache are also a comic duo, but of a fabulously surreal bend. Goodbye Persil is the story of two brothers on a mission: to bury their dearly departed dog in a small roadside park. Sporting balaclavas and glasses, one tall and dressed in casual hipster mode, one short and wearing an ill-fitting shirt and tie, they make an odd couple. They arrive in a car which, like the famous Herbie the Love Bug, has a mind of its own. They hop out, dead dog wrapped in a blanket, and try to locate their spades, and their dog’s beloved toys, for the burial – but then the trouble starts. The seemingly sentient car is out to sabotage: it sounds its horn whenever it wants to, turns its windscreen wipers on and off, locks the brothers out, and shakes and bangs at random moments. All the neighbourhood dogs are alerted, and a ferocious barking starts up from over the wall, causing our heroes to go into total panic mode. Worse, as they dig the grave, pipes would seem to be hit, and fountains spurt all over the place. The show is a text-book example of a great concept brought to fruition with perfect precision and attention to detail, and fantastic performances from both actors. Street theatre of the highest order – and managing to be both crowd pleasing and innovative at the same time. One of the highlights of the Out There 2023 programme for me.   

Other theatre offerings included the UK’s Inverted with The Precious Thing, a tale of environmental concerns about planetary care and water preservation that uses colourful costume and set (all yellow to start, with purple creeping in slowly), well-chosen props, and a soft and gentle performance mode to tackle its subject in a pleasingly non-polemical manner. The two performers use object manipulation, including some very nice hat juggling, acrobatics, hand-balancing and contortion, and clowning to tell their tale. Look after what is precious, is the message – it might not last for ever. With so many ‘take care of our environment’ shows out there, it’s good to see one that treads softly softly rather than ramming the message down our throats.

Cocoloco is a Norfolk-based company supported by Out There Arts. Their latest work Shangria-LaLa, a 2023 premiere, is set on a mini-site of its own on the edge of St George’s Park, a circle of calico tents enclosed by a fence. Shangri-LaLa promises the delights of heaven on earth, exploring famous utopian ideas from Avalon to Xanadu. A showman brings us through the entrance into the site where we are welcomed with a short speech introducing the ‘I Have a Dream’ theme, then led off into the first utopian space, Arcadia, where all is gentle pastoral pleasures. I’m picked to be a sheep, which is a great honour, and dressed in a woolly sheep-robe and mask, sat knitting on a bale of hay (rather like the old ma sheep in Alice Through the Looking Glass, I think to myself). Baaaaah! All is indeed an Arcadian utopia – until the butcher arrives to lead away us sheep… Next comes Avalon, where we encounter the Knights of the Round Table, who are sat around a circular table, putting the world to rights. A note of disharmony creeps in when we hear what Lancelot has been up to; and there is also a rather odd, deliberately anachronistic, debate on gender and sexuality that I don’t quite get. And so we continue, into more utopias. Cocoloco’s very own mystic, Dr Yaya, takes us time-travelling; we get a touchy-feely New Age moment of gazing into another’s eyes; and we get to write our utopian wishes onto a wall. A good time is had by all! It’s an ambitious show with a large cast and a great deal of audience interaction and participation – and thus the sort of show that has to be rehearsed in public, so to speak. This was its first outing, and I am sure it will blossom and grow with each new presentation. Big dreams are nothing without a dash of pragmatism is the message, it would seem.

Interactive shows have always been a key component of a successful street theatre festival, so it was good to see so many different sorts at Out There. The Losers Arcade is a giant games emporium with nothing to lose. ‘Leave your ego behind and join the Losers as you focus on putting the fun back in failure’ says the invitation. Like Shangri-LaLa it’s on its own site within a site, set up like a mini fairground, bobbing ducks and all. I try my luck on a roulette wheel spin and am rewarded with a shot of sour apple liqueur (there is a non-alcoholic alternative, I’m told). Every one’s a winner!

Right next to it is a tent housing Professor WM Bligh’s Circus Photo Tent, in which photographer Martin Thompson is set up in a Victorian style photo studio, with a low stage, a beautiful backdrop, a selection of props (knives! clubs! balls!), and two rails of splendid dressing up clothes. The Prof is aided and abetted by artists Mark Copeland and Sarah Munro – they of the legendary Insect Circus Museum. Audience are invited to stroll up and have their portraits taken, dressed as a circus artiste. You can have the end result emailed to you for free, or buy a print for a mere £2. It’s a lovely idea, and when I go along – to be kitted out as an over-the-hill pierrot in faded gold – I’m second in line to a family who are dressed as strongman, trapeze girl and baby clown in a tiny pink hat; and followed by an excited gaggle of girls who all want to wear flamenco dresses. A roaring success which will hopefully return to a future Out There Festival.

This lovely booth show is an example of one of the unique festival commissions that differentiates it from many of the country’s outdoor art events. With the Without Walls shows dominating the programming of so many festivals these days, it is good to see Out There putting on some very different work that you won’t get to see anywhere else. Pair that with the collaborations with overseas partners that the organisation has nurtured – with Catalan arts organisations in past editions, and Circuscentrum in Flanders here in 2023, for example – and you have a truly unique programme.

Out There Festival is always a great event. This year’s programme was full of phenomenal work in so many different forms and genres – a fitting celebration for both the 15th edition of the festival and the silver jubilee of the organisation that presents it, Out There Arts.

It is also the end of an era – and heralds the start of a new one – with a move for the 2024 festival from September to the May-June spring half-term week, alongside the exciting news that the company has received a substantial National Lottery Heritage Fund award to develop its second venue, the Ice House, into a year-round national centre for circus and outdoor arts training and professional development.

It has been a fabulous story to date – with a lot more to come from Out There Arts over the coming years. Here’s to the next 25 years!

Featured image (top of page): Les Filles Du Renard Pale: Résiste. Photo David Street

Out There Festival ran 15–17 September 2023, its 15th edition.

Over those years, the festival has established an international reputation for its exceptional, innovative and diverse programme, attracting more than 60,000 people to Great Yarmouth each year.

Out There Arts and the festivals and events it produces has built a national and international reputation for world class artistic quality, new and diverse work, regional artistic talent, international collaboration and innovative community engagement.

The Ice House is set to be transformed into a new Centre of Excellence in Outdoor Circus and Arts. Built between 1851 and 1892, the Ice House was once a vital asset in the Great Yarmouth’s once-thriving fishing industry, enabling the storage of freshly caught seafood before transportation to London’s Billingsgate fish market.

Out There Arts recently received news that their National Lottery Heritage Fund bid had been succesful, and the project also receives support from Great Yarmouth Towns Deal, Brineflow, and the Architectural Heritage Fund, enabling the Ice House building to be repurposed into an arts and circus training hub, with opportunities for performances plus a licensed bar.

The completion of the project, which is being led by Out There Arts, would be a significant step towards the realisation of a vision for Great Yarmouth being recognised as the UK Capital for Circus and Outdoor Arts.

The development for The Ice House has been a long term project for Out There Arts. Much of the vision had been established with the local community through community consultations and events surrounding the building.

Out There Festival returns to Great Yarmouth 30 May – 2 June 2024

See https://outtherearts.org.uk/