Why would Liz Aggiss premiere her new show Crone Alone in a former miners’ welfare institute in a remote part of Northumberland? Creative producer Lisa Wolfe explains what The Tute has that bigger and better-funded venues in the UK lack. 

“I never in a million years thought I would have my own space,” says dancer and performance maker Esther Huss. We’re sitting together in that space; an ex-miners’ welfare institute called The Tute, on a street facing the disused railway line that blocks access to the sea.

This is Cambois (pronounced Cammus) an isolated former mining village on the southeast coast of wild and beautiful Northumberland. 

Esther moved here in 2019 with her now-husband, playwright Alex Oates, not knowing anyone. He has family in nearby Whitley Bay, but for Esther this was a leap of faith. “People are very open here,” she says, “but it was lonely. I started with the feeling “today I am going to make a friend’”. That’s a hard enough task at primary school; in your early forties, and coming from a vibrant arts scene in London, it must have been hugely daunting. It was the space that spoke to them first. 

Built in 1929, with a decorative barrel roof, wooden floor and curious side rooms, its rough and readiness was instantly welcoming. Prior to the pit closures it hosted brass bands, film nights and no doubt some fiery union meetings. Esther began using it as a rehearsal space for her own commissioned work and fell in love with the building and the potential it held. She started a dance group, and Alex a writing group, putting leaflets through doors. Slowly interest built in what they were offering, and people began to come.

For Alex, the impetus was partly frustration at a lack of vision from the large regional organisations whose remit, and funding, is to work with communities. Cambois seemed ignored, as were his approaches for a conversation. For the first three years they raised money through community funds, working unpaid, until they could register as a charity and begin to broaden their options. Somewhat inevitably the landlord put the rent up, and raised the asking price for the lease, but the financial position, while still precarious, is at least more stable. 

Five years of hard graft – and two children – later, between them Esther and Alex have not only made friends, they have also built a strong participant base for dance, writing and art classes and a children’s playgroup. They take work into schools and connect with local groups and businesses when opportunities arise. 

The Tute’s most ambitious undertaking is the Rude Health Festival which they launched in 2024, tag-line ‘Because Creativity is Healthy’. Over two months the Festival embraces all genres of the arts, mixing classes with performances and films, with multi-cultural events indoors and in the landscape. Esther and Alex programme artists whose work they admire; those who create with integrity and who they know will surprise, delight and quite possibly challenge the audience. It’s this holding tight to their principles that sets The Tute apart, and is why I’m here this weekend, getting a full blast of Northumberland weather, art and hospitality. 

I’m here with Liz Aggiss for the premiere of her new show, Crone Alone; which came with a related workshop, and a film screening…

In 2019 the supernova of avant-garde dance Liz Aggiss performed an excerpt of her first new show since 2016’s internationally acclaimed Slap and Tickle. 

Programmed by Sadler’s Wells Elixir Festival, which celebrates ‘the artistry of the older dancer’ her persona in Crone Alone was described as “charismatic to the point of perplexing” by Matthew Paluch, in his SeeingDance review. It took another five years, and much re-working, for her to show it again, presented as a work-in-progress at South East Dance in Brighton, in August 2025. 

Given the demand for her work from promoters and festivals across the globe, how exactly, and why, particularly, has she chosen to premiere the new, full version here, at The Tute, in a place with no shop, no post-office, no café, no library, no doctor and barely a bus? 

 “I knew I was going to love it just talking with Esther,” says Liz. She had read about her and The Tute in a 2023 Guardian article and got in touch. Over a long career latterly defined by relentless touring, Aggiss had no desire to pitch Crone Alone to the vagaries of the current venue and festivals circuit. The ethos and ballsiness of Esther and Alex appealed to her; the idea of playing to an audience that doesn’t know her or what to expect, of fitting herself and the show into the opposite of a black box theatre humming with technology. 

They talked, and Esther was clear that Liz needed to come for a week, stay locally, mix with the community, and run a workshop for the regular dance group.

She would also co-host an evening of short films, Women, Dance and The Sea, by female artists, including one by Esther and Katja Roberts filmed on Cambois sands; and the Liz Aggiss and Joe Murray 2011 classic Beach Party Animal. Finally, she would perform Crone Alone.  

In her programme note Liz says: “I’ve missed the delight in sharing, communicating and revelling in performance. So I thank The Tute for shoving me back in the limelight and giving me the opportunity to reconnect with my former self… and to bring this work to a new and equally unsuspecting audience.”

With its intricately constructed mix of music-hall tropes, personal revelations, elegantly wrought choreography, and wondrous costume reveals, Crone Alone astounds and delights this rookie audience. An instantaneous standing ovation is the only possible response. The piece poses a question about individual and collective value and worth, in life and in the arts, that resonates with everyone present. 

With their determination that visiting artists dig in and get to know the area and the people, Esther and Alex are enriching the lives of this community and proving that culture really can lift people beyond their expectations. “There’s a lot of people that have been on a real journey with us,” says Esther. “They begin feeling ‘do I have place here? What is this?’ and now regularly come back.”

Becca Sproat was their first volunteer, having got in touch after spending 16 months at home during lockdown. “She’s our pillar,” says Esther, “she comes to everything and is in all of our groups, completely out of her comfort zone a lot of time”. Even more gratifying is that Becca’s family has started to attend events too – and it’s this gradual process of acceptance and personal development that fuels The Tute team. 

This year’s Rude Health Festival culminates with a scratch performance of From The Sea, a new play by Alex featuring the stories of people with lived experience of asylum seeking, directed by Amy Golding. He’s tentative about how it will be received: Cambois sits in within the district of Blyth, a Reform stronghold. Strong anti-immigrant rhetoric is prevalent throughout the community, from the school-gates to the Cambois Club bar. With their children growing up here, the couple are taking every opportunity to try and open conversations that counter prejudice.

That’s why Rude Health includes artists from diverse backgrounds such as Yuvel Soria, whose work explores his Bolivian culture, and the Indian Kuchipudi dance of Payal Ramchamdani, both based in Newcastle.

In Crone Alone Liz has a catchphrase “just try and stop me” and it applies equally to her own thirst to create and perform as it does to The Tute’s power couple. When the national arts news is dominated by headlines about institutional mismanagement and lack of engagement, when the Chancellor’s latest budget shows zero interest let alone support for the creative industries, when theatres are closing almost as fast as pubs, isn’t it time for a new, nimble, artist-led model? For The Tute to go from an empty, forgotten space to a finalist in the 2025 North East Culture Awards (Best Museum or Cultural Venue) is a well-deserved accolade. 

The pits closed in 1968, the railway three years earlier. Rows of terraced houses were demolished and not replaced. Companies promising growth and investment move into the area but don’t deliver; battery manufacturer Britishvolt notoriously went bust after two years. A massive QTS data campus is planned for the area, offering some sponsorship but few jobs.

Meanwhile, two artists are bringing together a network of colleagues and big gang of supporters, making and sharing some of the best creative experiences in the country. So let’s toot a horn for the Alex and Esther’s of the world, the artists who join them and the communities that get involved. It is they who, with grace, imagination, ingenuity and grit, enrich all our lives.

Featured image (top): Liz Aggiss: Crone Alone at the Tute, December 2025. Photo Luke Waddington.

The Tute is a hub of creativity located in an old miners’ welfare institute in the heart of Cambois, a coastal community in Southeast Northumberland. From this atmospheric space, The Tute is gently transforming Cambois and fostering social growth for the better. It is recognised that this area is at a turning point, and there is a growing need for meaningful engagement to support the changes ahead. The Tute’s goal is to build empathy, alleviate social isolation, and enhance aspirations through the arts. https://thetute.uk/   Facebook: @TheTuteCambois | Instagram: @thetute_cambois

Liz Aggiss is a Brighton-based, award-winning performer, director, choreographer and writer. For the past 45 years she has been re(de)fining her own brand of contemporary dance performance, dodging categorisation and being classified as unclassifiable. Blurring the boundaries between high art and popular culture, she makes uncompromising, challenging, feminist work. www.lizaggiss.com 

Crone Alone has been programmed for Brighton Festival 2026. Dates tbc – see updates on the website. The Festival runs Saturday 2 May till Monday 25 May: www.brightonfestival.org

Lisa Wolfe dives in to Out There International Festival of Outdoor Arts and Circus 2025 – and emerges refreshed…

It’s disgraceful. Thirty-five years in the industry and this is my first visit to the mighty Out There Festival. Better late than never. The reasons for making it this year are threefold: I’m producing an outdoor theatre piece (Holy Dirt, premiering in July) and need a break from spreadsheets; it’s FRESH Street, Circostrada’s International Conference for the Development of Outdoor Arts, so I can meet and mingle with experts; and as a ‘mature’ emerging artist on a funded programme of creative exploration, it’s a chance to watch, listen and learn.

Having not been to Great Yarmouth since I was a nipper, I first need to get acquainted with this quintessentially English seaside town in the unexpected heat of late May. The strip of arcades, exotically named Caesars Palace and The Flamingo, is just like Southend where I grew up. I immediately feel at home. Time to metaphorically dive in, the sea here being notoriously shallow.

The seafront is one of the key Out There Festival locations, this year home to Beach of Dreams, where 800 colourful silk banners are blowing boldly. The flags have been created as part of a multi-artform project, with Great Yarmouth as one of three East Coast Coastal Heritage sites engaged in an exploration of the role that the shifting coastline plays in shaping our collective dreams. This collaborative story-gathering project, funded by Historic England, invited participants to work with artists to explore the unique coastal histories that have shaped these places. Gathered stories were translated into silk pennant designs, created with Kinetika, expert silk flag-makers and pioneers of community-driven art and design. Great Yarmouth was the final location of Kinetika’s May tour.

The Beach of Dreams also features a performance stage, tents for discussions, a pop-up bar, and a huge bamboo climbing frame to give bold young climbers a taste of circus.

On the stage, Bristol’s Many Hands Circus are just finishing their ambitious new show Obscure Desires. Touring this year mainly to indoor venues, it looks great against the sea and broad expanse of Yarmouth sky. The large troupe with a live three-piece band give athletic performances of gymnastic acrobatics in high wind. Impressive.

It’s also here, on the steps behind Costa, where I gamely join a small group holding dainty umbrellas to meet Jones and Barnard, well-seasoned street performers, merciless in their approbation of late-arriving Fresh Street delegates. Gareth Jones and Matt Barnard are familiar faces to Out There Festival regulars and hotly tipped by my enthusiastic landlady who shares her in depth knowledge of the programme each morning at breakfast. This is only the second outing of their new show Dream Tours, a ‘Made in Great Yarmouth’ Out There Festival Commission.

Eventually assembled, holding small paper bags in which we’ve poured some sand, we set off. Entertainingly led, and learning an umbrella dance, we amble through back streets where dreams come to die (a boarded-up hotel) and dirty dreams get washed (the launderette) before settling on a rather scrubby patch of green with a billowing curtain and a gong. 

Gong duly banged, a cast of actors and local participants welcome us, in roles ranging from Insomnia – Paschale Straiton at her eccentric best – to an Astrologer who reveals dreams’ meanings; and two cloaked figures who will swallow your dreams, provided you can blow up a black balloon. It’s up to the visitor to engage with these individuals one-to-one, hence some standing about or hesitancy from those less keen to engage, and a little more guidance would be useful here. When we do get to meet the Sandman in his tented enclosure for a tale and a task, we’re amply rewarded before the journey recommences.

On the stage of the marvellous Hippodrome, we help fulfil someone’s life-long dream through the power of song and dance, umbrellas whirling in joyful unison, then it’s back into town for the grand finale. 

Interspersed with Jones and Barnard’s site-related patter we’ve been hearing recordings of local peoples’ dreams, real or invented, and it’s on a back street that one of these is realised big-time by the whole cast. The invention and fun of this final set-piece perfectly captures the strangeness of dreams and the joy of the seaside in summer. It’s childishly stupid, and stupidly thrilling. 

The beach is also the starting point for a very different approach to street theatre – Kamchatka by Kamchatka, a company formed in Barcelona that’s been working site-specifically with migrant communities since 2006. 

Suddenly everyone is looking east. On the glimmering sand, a horizontal line of drably-clad people, small suitcases in hand, is moving towards us. Their steps hesitant, equally spaced, slowly paced. We are as silent as they, breath held. It’s a heart-stopping and poignant opening to a work as this beautifully framed image slowly comes into focus. They are six men and two women; they don’t speak but seem to intuit each other’s thoughts as with elegant motion and quizzical glances they approach a flimsy barrier.

With an uncanny mix of curiosity and determination the group coerces the audience to do its bidding; they’re at a border, can we help them cross it? Communication is by look, gesture and physical action choreographic in sweep. Lift the pram over the rope? With the baby in it? Of course. Whilst working seamlessly together they are very much individual characters, Prisca Villa earthy and playful, Andrea Lorenzetti, aloof and business-like. The differences become more notable when the action moves to the street and games begin. Suitcases are piled and tipped, an audience member is lifted and caught in a bravura show of trust. 

Moving like a flash-mob they are eight humans audaciously stopping traffic, hijacking the Dotto train, climbing up a bus, being abused by drivers on the busy road. They are seeking our help, searching for loved ones, for a way in or a way out. You feel that wherever this piece is performed, the themes of difference and integration will impact strongly on its watchers, and the laughter, of which there will be plenty, tinged with melancholy at the mess we’re in.  

Moving in-land to the town centre, a large wrist-banded crowd is gathered at the Market Place. The air thrums with anticipation. Help! Three deranged looking clowns, faces daubed with colour, clothes a mix of battered jackets, shapeless trousers, and one filthy ruff, are upon us, pushing through backpacks, bashing one another and generally causing a ruckus. They are not happy fellows. It seems we may be witnesses to something  – better follow them, and quick!

So starts Catalan circus and street theatre veterans Los Galindos’ extraordinary and unforgettable show MDR – Death From Laughter, a UK Premiere. “No photos! No film,” barks Marcel Escolano’s fierce, wild-haired Rossinyol, self-proclaimed troupe leader, bristling with nervous rage. We’re in a secret, illegal space, there’s been a death and is about to be another, so we need to keep this to ourselves. From uncomfortable perches on upturned buckets, the audience reluctantly conforms.

Yet what a wonderfully visual show this would be to capture, the pure effervescent creativity of it as, on a set that looks thrown together from scaffolding poles and planks, workaday objects transform into weapons, power tools go ape, a portaloo comes alive, and a scene of increasingly messy chaos unfolds.

Poor Melon (Gabriel Agosti) has made a joke so funny that someone died laughing, so in clown logic he must be executed in return. How to kill him is the meat of the story, the set and props creating a perilous playground for director Bet Garrell to exploit in increasingly transgressive ways. 

Mardi, here called Tuesday (a fearless Anicet Leon, or possibly Buster Keaton reincarnated) flip-flops from helping or hindering this murder to happen. The trio has a wickedly insincere dynamic; in love one minute, loathing with vengeance the next. 

With split-second acrobatics, gasp-inducing falls, and seemingly scant concern for audience or their own safety, MDR is an ingenious masterpiece that pushes all your buttons simultaneously: joy, fear, disgust and delight. Tell all your friends – no, don’t!

From an urban site to a park now, St George’s, buzzing with shows and food stalls, Paka The Uncredible’s fire dragon Elsie, side-shows and walkabouts. It’s here I bumped into the delightful oddity Pushmi-Pullyu, by stalwarts of the comedic walkabout scene, Cocoloco, the concept lifted from Dr Doolittle, and here entrancing and baffling passers-by with their existential conversation from both ends of a furry grey lama. Fun is had persuading kids to sit on their rump or join a tug-of-war which would split them in two. The chemistry between Helen Statman and Trevor Stuart and their playful, intelligent banter comes from years of working as a double act; this show connects them even more strongly, right through their fluffy middles.

One of several steel-deck rigs in the park hosts French duo Alta Gama’s ‘minimal circus’ show Mentir Lo Minimo, a UK premiere.

It’s not until half-way through that performer Alejo Gomboa makes the big reveal. We’ll have admired his agility at riding a bicycle in a continuous circle. At how Amanda Delgado climbs his and the bike’s frame in intricate, elegant ways. How the motion of their bodies and the wheels seem in unison with each other, backed by Pere Vilaplana’s French-tinged music and Delgado’s live singing, operatic in range. 

What the audience, sitting up close, some on the stage itself, are not expecting is for Gomboa to out himself as, to quote travel writer Tom Vernon, a ‘Fat Man On A Bicycle’. He’s a man who unabashedly loves to eat.

Alejo Gomboa’s large size, and the childhood physical disability that Amanda Delgado has overcome, add a very human dimension to a work that keeps tightly to its format – a journey of circles and balances, suspension and release. There’s humour too: Gomboa is in his pants after all, and he’s a happy man both within his frame and steering one.

A feast of a show.

Feeling peckish yourself? Pif-Paf’s Toast could be just the show to catch. As portable stage sets go, theirs is a beauty. A gayly painted wagon, all wicker baskets and travelling rugs, doubles as a makeshift kitchen and musical box. This sung and spoken show comprises stories collected by performer and company founder Pete Gunson from his hometown of Sheffield. Folks’ tales cross boundaries and Toast is all embracing, generously serving Cypriot dumplings doused with honey and cinnamon. A lovely sounding, smelling, looking (the costumes have proper attention to period detail) and tasting show –there should be one on every street corner.  

Down from the park on a further expanse of greenery is another ‘Made in Great Yarmouth’ commission. It’s pleasing to see a splatter of contemporary dance in Tony and Ray Find Their Feet by Rudkin and Hicks, Matt Rudkin’s Naïve Dance Masterclass being an all-time favourite. Who wouldn’t rather be dancing than cleaning the stage? Presented in long and short versions at pitches all over town, the pair’s distinctive style – Hicks deadpan, Rudkin expressive – works the crowd as our two luckless caretakers go about their job. With slapstick, magic and visual jokes it’s a lovely, gentle throwback to the best of music-hall double-acts, and sends me dancing home.

Featured image (top) Beach of Dreams at Out There Festival 2025. Photo James Bass

Freelance producer and Total Theatre writer Lisa Wolfe attended Out There Festival and FRESH Street conference in Great Yarmouth, 28–30 May 2025. 

Out There Arts produce the annual Out There International Festival of Street Arts & Circus – now in its 17th year and one of the three largest free Outdoor Arts festivals in the UK – with 30-50+ artistic companies and audiences of 60,000+.

Out There Arts – National Centre for Outdoor Arts & Circus is a registered charity and Arts Council England funded National Portfolio Organisation.

www.outtherearts.org.uk  

FRESH STREET is a flagship conference for the outdoor arts and circus sector, held every two years, bringing together key European and international artists, programmers, and policymakers for three days of dynamic discussions and stimulating exchanges on how we can imagine the outdoor arts of tomorrow.

 FRESH STREET#5 was co-organised by Circostrada Network and Out There Arts in the frame of Out There Festival, in partnership with Outdoor Arts UK. It took place 28–31 May 2025 at The Hippodrome, England’s only surviving dedicated circus building.

https://www.circostrada.org/en/actions/fresh-street-5

Holy Dirt, a new collaboration between Vidya Thirunarayan (Indian dancer and potter) and David Glass (theatre maker and director) premieres at Ensemble Festival, London 26 and 27 July 2025.

A miniature epic dream play embodying the spirits of Parashakti (Vidya) and Draupadi (Sasha Krohn), Holy Dirt brings together street performance traditions of Southern India and European physical theatre. Co-commissioned by Certain Blacks and Art Asia, supported by Arts Council England and 101 Outdoor Arts Creation Centre, co-produced with InKo Centre (India). https://www.vidyathirunarayan.com/holy-dirt

Available for UK booking in 2026. Contact producer Lisa Wolfe on wolfework2@gmail.com 

At the crossroads of puppetry, dance and theatre, Dimanche is an award-winning co-production by Belgian companies Focus and Chaliwaté. It is set sometime in the near future, when humanity has failed to adapt to the new environmental reality of climate change. Lisa Wolfe witnesses – and wonders: when will we ever learn?

It is Sunday the 2nd of February: Candelmas, the midway point between the winter solstice and spring equinox; called Groundhog Day in the USA, when a ground squirrel popping up from a hole predicts the weather for the coming months. The term has come to mean something that endlessly repeats in the same way.

What a great excuse for a day of celebration to herald the end of winter. Or a plot for a romantic film. It’s become a folkloric truth. And yet…

Having just, the day before, watched Compagnie Focus & Chaliwaté’s subtly devastating Dimanche, I’m having doubts. For haven’t we been here before – building flood defences, planting forests, pushing catalytic converters? As we diligently separate our recycling, or disrupt West-End drama (The Tempest, of course) the planet boils, burns, shrivels and melts (all at once!) and those who could force change do exactly the opposite. What the blazes can art do in the face of such catastrophe?

My wing-woman for today is creator and performer Liz Aggiss, and, once the standing ovation has dampened down, we spend some time attempting to define what it is we have seen. Is there a term for this superbly skilled, multi-media creation that so neatly satirises our denial of climate change? We see shared qualities with the work of Berlin (also Belgium-based) in the integration of film and innate understanding of what makes a strong stage picture. 

The action here centres on two trios; a family trying to live normally amid worsening weather conditions, and three slightly inept but intrepid film-makers attempting to document climactic forces in action.

These parallel stories play out in alternate sequences at a pace that feels comfortably measured. The couple eat their breakfast despite the melting furniture; their Sunday roast amid a typhoon. This is impressive high-wind acting – they’re practically horizontal against the bannisters as the room is torn apart. It would be funny in a cartoon, but we’ve seen the projected footage from the dwindling team of documentarists. This is dangerous. We laugh at our peril.

Puppetry breathes life into materials; you can almost see the twinkle in grandma’s eye as she shoots an ice-cube down her nightie; feel the polar bear’s roar when its floating home splinters. Bodies become landscapes for vehicles to travel across, starting small, coming into life size; a familiar trope beautifully realised here, particularly when one landmass is a pale, vulnerable, naked torso. 

Throughout the piece Brice Cannavo’s thrilling sound design sculpts the space, whether through a record deck or the bill of a shrieking flamingo. The only human voice is that of Paul Simon on the truck radio, his light tone and chirpy lyrics suggestive of a different place and time. 

Dimanche is a bit of a magic trick; calm and amusing on the surface, devilishly menacing below. We chuckle uneasily at the comedy of the situations, the cleverness of the multi-tasking cast  – Julie Tenret (director of Compagnie Focus), Sandrine Heyraud and Sicaire Durieux (Compagnie Chaliwaté’s creators) – then get a sucker punch at film footage of a giant incoming wave. There is destruction and death under the sea too, as backlit fish flit anxiously away from a predatory shark. Guillaume Toussaint Fromentin paints with light, from the simplicity of a hand-held car-light (with dangling deodoriser, nice touch) to dazzling strobe effects. A moth gyrates in front of a headlamp – the insects and the sharks will survive us all. 

Focus & Chaliwaté have made an extraordinary work of visual theatre, cinematic performance, and stage spectacle. Total theatre indeed. If they can keep making such detailed, exquisite, powerful shows, the arts (at least in Belgium) are in safe hands. The planet alas, is in ours.

 Photos: Mihaela Bodlovic

Compagnie Focus & Chaliwaté: Dimanche, presented by Sadler’s Wells at The Peacock, in association with MimeLondon, 29 January to 1 February 2025 www.sadlerswells.com 

MimeLondon is a new curatorial project promoting thought provoking, unusual work, created by Helen Lannaghan and Joseph Seelig, directors of London International Mime Festival (LIMF), which ended in 2023 after five decades of award-winning success www.mimelondon.com