Curious Directive’s latest production has much in common with their earlier work After the Rainfall, which struck me as being fragmented, complex and full of big ideas and clever ways of weaving together seemingly disparate narratives. Pioneer indeed contains all of these elements, and in doing so explores perhaps one of the biggest ideas that […]

In Echolalia, solo performer Jen McArthur brings to life the story of Echo, an autistic woman inhabiting a world made tiny by her own hand. Within the walls of her simply furnished little house, she is safe from an outside world that seems to overwhelm her. Inside these restrictive parameters, Echo has created an environment […]

Light is hard to watch. Literally – it hurts my eyes; I wonder if I will develop a migraine. The show’s language is extreme and astonishing: the stage is in total darkness and every image, setting and character is developed using its own shard of light, from spotlight to strip light and everything in between. […]

In a nondescript living room, on stage in a nondescript theatre, Ans and Greg have a problem. Of that much they, and we, can be sure. They had high hopes to present an inspiring theatrical homage to obscure Enlightenment novel Jacques the Fatalist and his Master by Denis Diderot. They feel it is a masterpiece […]

Leeds-based verbatim company The Paper Birds return to the fringe with their fifth show, an examination of the conditions for and experiences of being ‘Broke’. They describe the production as developing, aptly enough, in straitened circumstances, encouraging their return to a model of making work focussed on the company’s core members: director Jemma MacDonnell, performer […]